From Samuel L. and Olivia L. Clemens
to Olivia Lewis Langdon
20 February 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 00430)

At Home, Sunday [A] P.M.

Our Dear Mother—

I thank you ever, ever so much, mother dear, for the pretty fork & the charming napkin-ring (for it is just as charming as it can [be.]) & I will try to deserve your loving kindness to [me. The] fork & the ring are in keeping with everything else about our home—which is the daintiest, & the most exquisite & enchanting that can be found in all America—& the longer we know it the more fascinating it grows & the firmer the hold it fastens upon each fettered [sense. It] is perfect. Perfect in all its dimensions, proportions & appointments. It is filled with that nameless grace which faultless harmony gives. The colors are all rich, & all beautiful, & all blended with & interchanged & interwoven without a single marring discord. Our home is a ‸ceaseless, unsurfeiting‸ feast for the eye & for & the soul, & the whole being. It is a constant delight. It is a poem, it is music—[& &] it speaks & it sings, ‸to us,‸ all the day long. I think we are thankful to our loved father, our precious father.

Livy gets along better & better with her housekeeping, & indeed she astonishes me sometimes by the insight she shows into things one wouldn’t suppose she knew anything about. But while she surprises me with her ability to followe the old beaten paths of [housekwifery], her [achev achievements] when she branches out of those beaten paths surprise me still more. Now this morning she had a mackerel [fricaseed] with pork & oysters (False), & I tell you it was a dish to stir the very depths of one’s benevolence. We saved every single bit of it for the poor.

I never saw anybody look as so unearthly wise as Livy does when she is ordering dinner; & I never saw anybody look so relieved as she does when she has completed her order, poor child —(This is false too, mother dear, prettie nearly). [{]So you see she has come down from her roost for the afternoon & is prepared to look after me.}

You can’t think what a carver I have become. I hardly ever have to take hold of a chicken by the leg, now. And I look mighty imposing, too, at the head of my table, with my big fork, & my carving-knife & my glove-stretcher about me. {I use the glove-stretcher to hold the chicken open while I get out the stuffing—Livy is keeping her eyes shut till I tell her she may look & see what I am to do with the glove-stretcher.}

Isn’t he a funny Youth?

The other day I went into the drawing room with Mr Clemens to see Mr Lock (Nasby)1 and a Mr Bishop who entertained Mr Clemens in Jamestown,2 and what should I see on entering [lon] the room, but the covers to two of the chairs turned up to show the satin covers underneath—he is as delighted with that room as a boy with a top or his first pair of boots—Mr C. said something the other day about having the covers off, but finally did not want it done because he had had an experience with one friend3 that he uncovered it for that taught him a lesson, the gentleman sat on the sofa, and long lounged about in the chairs till Mr Clemens was as nervous as he could well be and was very much relieved when he got him out of there up into his study—He has grown wonderfully care taking, the other evening the bell rang, and he told Harriet to bring who ever came into the Library, I could not think why, but that night when we went to bed, he said he thought while this snow lasted we better bring people into the Library, so that they would not carry the snow into in onto that [carpet,—]he made Mr Lock go out after he had entered the room and wipe the snow off his feet—It does amuse me who would have ever dreamed of seeing Mr Clemens so carefull— Livy—

{Thank you, Livy darling.}

With all duty & affection, Mother,
Your loving son

Samuel.

Mrs. J. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. [postmarked:] buffalo n.y. feb 21

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1Clemens had met Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke) in March 1869 (L3, 158–60). Olivia was meeting him for the first time, but she was familiar with his writing, known as much for its bizarre spelling as for its political satire. In a letter of 1 November 1869 to Alice Hooker Day, she reported telling Clemens that “if Naseby had my talent for misspelling he would not have to make any effort in that direction” (CtHSD). Nasby was in Buffalo on 18 February to lecture for the Woman’s Suffrage Association on “The Struggles of a Conservative with the Woman Question” (“Amusements,” Buffalo Express, 15 Feb 70, 4). Clemens wrote the review of the lecture that appeared in the Buffalo Express the following day (SLC 1870).

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2 Coleman E. Bishop (1838–96) was the contentious editor of the Jamestown (N.Y.) Journal. If Clemens was not yet aware of that paper’s treatment of his 21 January lecture there, he probably learned something about it during this visit from Nasby and Bishop. Bishop’s review on 22 January was part of an ongoing attack on the local Y.M.C.A.’s lecture course. It was sarcastic about the lecture committee and about those in the audience who were disappointed by, or unappreciative of, a humorous lecture. Bishop himself professed to be satisfied and appreciative, but his praise was backhanded and condescending, particularly in his characterization of the lecture as “nothing and intended as such.”

Our advice to Mr. Clemens is to settle down on the conviction that his forte is not that of a missionary, a preacher, a philosopher, a reformer, a teacher nor any of these solemn callings. Every time he tries to do these things he will be out of his element. (Coleman E. Bishop 1870 [bib11674])

Two days later the Journal published a letter to the editor, signed “Many Citizens,” denouncing both Clemens and his lecture. It was possibly tongue in cheek, although Clemens was not amused. In 1886, his rancor at the “Many Citizens” letter found vent in an “Unmailed Answer” addressed to its author, whom he knew but did not name: “You wrote that thing about my lecture, sixteen years ago, in the Jamestown, N.Y., Journal—property of that ostentatiously pious half-human polecat, Bishop! Nasby told me it was you, at the time; & he got it from Bishop himself” (SLC 1886; “Editorial Small Talk,” Elmira Advertiser, 25 Jan 70, 1; Chautauqua County, 2:114–15; Rowell, 696; Coleman E. Bishop 1870 [bib11674]; Many Citizens; Lorch 1953, 1954; Jones).

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3Unidentified.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH).

Previous publication:L4, 74–77; LLMT, 142–43, excerpt.

Provenance:Donated to CtHMTH in 1963 by Ida Langdon.

Emendations and textual notes:

A • [possibly ‘O’]

be. • [deletion implied]

me. The • me.—|The

sense. It • sense.—|It

& & • & | &

housekwifery • [‘k’ partly formed; possibly ‘h’]

achev achievements • achevievements

fricaseed • [sic]

{ • { { [rewritten for clarity]

long • [possibly ‘loug’]

carpet,— • [dash over comma]