To Olivia L. Langdon
10 January 1870 • (1st of 2) • Albany, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00406)

Noon.
Albany, Jan. 10.

It is snowing like fury, Sweetheart—but no matter: we have already got the biggest audience of the whole season, so they say—& if my darling were here, now, I would throw into this lecture all the frills I know—& she shouldn’t feel deserted, & unwelcome & abused, either. Poor child, it cuts me to the heart to think I could not conceal my [down-heartedness ] at Owego, & so save you from distress, (for you felt more than you showed, my darling.) But Livy, I knew perfectly well that I would have no confidence in that little audience, & consequently would simply utter lifeless words—words with no animating soul in them—& such a speech is just as well read from a newspaper as heard from a stage. I felt & knew that you would judge harshly of the lecture, hearing it under such [ cr circumstances ], but that you would not if you heard it before a great metropolitan audience. I was a dead body that night, & so I never succeeded in infusing life into that torpid Owego house—& I knew how it would be beforehand—at least I thought I did.1 But I only hate myself for not [siezing ] with pleasure upon that or any opportunity to do your desire, instead of thinking of nothing but myself in the matter. You never would have thought of yourself in such a case. And until I learn to hold you & your wishes above myself & mine, I shall go on groping in the dark & grov‸eling‸ ing in the dirt & making us both unhappy. But I will learn it.

It still snows—& the wind drives it in [ pal ] almost horizontal sheets. What an eternity a lecture-season is! It seems a full week since I went over to Troy ‸Cohoes‸ from here. Sometimes I chafe so at the dragging days that I almost resolve to break my appointments & go home. I wouldn’t do another lecture season unless I were in absolute want, almost.

I am reading Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe was a knight in Sir Walter Scott’s time. He is dead, now. He married Cedric the Saxon, & the fruit of this union was a daughter by the name of Reginald [Front-de-Boeuf ]. The whole six fell in battle at Ashby de la Zouche. Not one of the family survived this melancholy slaughter but a casual acquaintance that ‸ called by the name of‸ Rachel the son of Beowulf. All the characters are well sustained, especially that of the Atlantic Ocean. You know all that it is necessary to know about this romance, now, Livy darling, & so if you have not read it subsequently you needn’t.

I telegraphed these people that I would remain in Troy until this evening, & so they are patiently waiting till I come. Hence I have not yet got my letters.2

Pleasant dreams, [sweetheart ], & blessings on your dear old head.

Sam

[in ink:] Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira |[N. Y.] [return address:] delavan house, albany, chas. e. leland. clarendon hotel, saratoga springs, chas. e. leland. leland hotel, springfield, ill. h.s. leland & co. metropolitan hotel, new-york. s. leland & co.3 [postmarked:] albany n.y. jan 10 [docketed by OLL:] 172nd

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 Olivia accompanied Clemens to Owego on 4 January and attended his lecture there that evening. He was anxious to perform well because he felt he failed to do so on the only other occasion she had heard him lecture, in November 1868 (L2, 285–86 n. 1, 288; L3, 30). Despite Clemens’s misgivings, his Owego lecture (sponsored by the local Y.M.C.A.) seems to have been a success. The Owego Gazette noted that there was “a full house . . . and all went away satisfied, after a full hour of side-splitting laughter” (“Mark Twain had . . . ,” 6 Jan 70, 3). The Owego Times reported that the audience was

unusually large and refined. His introduction of himself was novel and happy. The awkward Yankee manners assumed by the lecturer were none the less pleasing in that they failed to mask the characteristics of a finished gentleman. His voice was singularly beautiful, and his enunciation very clear and distinct. . . . The lecture was not particularly instructive, but superbly entertaining. Yet many new ideas respecting the Sandwich Islands were more indelibly impressed, perhaps, than would have been by a long dry lecture exclusively descriptive. The fault most seriously complained of was seeming brevity. . . . The house, as an exception in Owego, must have been a paying one. (“The Twain Lecture,” 6 Jan 70, 3)

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2 Clemens’s telegram to his Albany sponsors, the Grand Army of the Republic, has not been found. Olivia had a copy of his itinerary and therefore wrote to him in care of his contact on the local lecture committee, in this case Robert W. C. Mitchell, a bookkeeper for the firm of James Mix, Jr., manufacturing jeweler (“Lectures,” “Amusement Notes,” Albany Evening Journal, 10 Jan 70, 3; L3, 416; Albany Directory: 1868, 125, 223, 264; 1869, 132, 231, 264; 1870, 132, 232, 249).

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3 “How many thousand Lelands there are in the hotel business is more than any ordinary mortal can say, but one would think there were enough to run every establishment of that kind in the country,” according to the New York correspondent of the Buffalo Courier (Rapidan). Clemens had stayed at the Delavan House—“at the junction of all the railroads”—in December 1868, when he may have met Charles E. Leland, who was either the brother or the cousin of his San Francisco friend, Lewis Leland (Albany Directory: 1868, 350; 1870, 350). The Leland Hotel in Springfield was built in 1866. H. S. Leland has not been further identified. The Metropolitan Hotel was well known to Clemens. It was still owned and operated by Simeon Leland and Company, although in December 1870 both Lewis and George S. Leland were referred to as “graduates from the Metropolitan” (Rapidan), indicating they had served a managerial apprenticeship there. That is almost certainly what Clemens referred to in late 1868 when he wrote that Lewis Leland was about to become the “proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel in New York” (L2, 358, 331 n. 3, 2; Krohe, 201, 262; Wilson 1869, 646, 761).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), written on three leaves of the same notebook paper as 7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks.

Previous publication: L4, 15–17; LLMT, 361, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

down-heartedness • down-|heartedness

cr circumstances • crircumstances

siezing • [sic]

pal • [possibly ‘pat’; ‘t’ partly formed]

Front-de-Boeuf • Front-de-Boeuf Boeuf [rewritten for clarity]

sweetheart • sweet-|heart

N. Y. • N. Y[] [torn]