This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as Icame through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young JamesGordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for theHerald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and aboutanybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must have the veryfullest possible swing, and he said, “All right.” I said, “It's acontract—” and that settled that matter.I'll make it a point to write one letter a week anyhow. But thebest thing that has happened is here. This great AmericanPublishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book tillI thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. Imet Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souledway of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when hegets a chance, he said: “Now, here, you are one of the talented menof the age—nobody is going to deny that—but in matters of businessI don't suppose you know more than enough to come in when it rains.I'll tell you what to do and how to do it.” And he did.And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendidcontract for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, withillustrations, the manuscript to be placed in the publisher's handsby the middle of July.—[The contract was not a formal one. Therewas an exchange of letters agreeing to the terms, but no jointdocument was drawn until October 16 (1868).]—My percentage is tobe a fourth more than they have ever paid any author except Greeley.Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this.These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their booksyou can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta everyweek, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week,occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupidarticle in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write tothis and that and the other paper any more.I have had a tiptop time here for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.Hooker's family—Beecher's relatives—in a general way of Mr. Blissalso, who is head of the publishing firm). Puritans are mightystraight-laced, and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but theAlmighty don't make any better people.I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th ofMay.
So the book, which would establish his claim to a peerage in the literary land, was arranged for, and it remained only to prepare the manuscript, a task which he regarded as not difficult. He had only to collate the Alta and Tribune letters, edit them, and write such new matter as would be required for completeness.
Returning to Washington, he plunged into work with his usual terrific energy, preparing the copy—in the mean time writing newspaper correspondence and sketches that would bring immediate return. In addition to his regular contributions, he entered into a syndicate arrangement with John Swinton (brother of William Swinton, the historian) to supply letters to a list of newspapers.
“I have written seven long newspaper letters and a short magazine article in less than two days,” he wrote home, and by the end of January he had also prepared several chapters of his book.
The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to him again, but he put the temptation behind him. He refers to this more than once in his home letters, and it is clear that he wavered.
Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me thePresident's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would guaranteeme the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but itwould render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had todrop the idea....And besides I did not want the office.
He made this final decision when he heard that the chief editor of the Alta wanted the place, and he now threw his influence in that quarter. “I would not take ten thousand dollars out of a friend's pocket,” he said.
But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that the Alta publishers had copyrighted his Quaker City letters and proposed getting them out in a book, to reimburse themselves still further on their investment. This was sharper than a serpent's tooth. Clemens got confirmation of the report by telegraph. By the same medium he protested, but to no purpose. Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He reported his troubles to Orion:
I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared thefirst ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it neversees the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. Thatthieving Alta copyrighted the letters, and now shows no dispositionto let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, and nowawait the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letterswhat (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousanddollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Easternpapers, and now they want to publish my letters in book formthemselves to get back that pitiful sum.
Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type in St. Louis. He was full of schemes, as usual, and his brother counsels him freely. Then he says:
We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if welearn wisdom even then, and save the other half.I am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I amdone with literature and all other bosh—that is, literaturewherewith to please the general public.I shall write to please myself then.
He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with Anson Burlingame on the Chinese embassy. Clearly he was pretty hopeless as to his book prospects.
His first meeting with General Grant occurred just at this time. In one of his home letters he mentions, rather airily, that he will drop in someday on the General for an interview; and at last, through Mrs. Grant, an appointment was made for a Sunday evening when the General would be at home. He was elated with the prospect of an interview; but when he looked into the imperturbable, square, smileless face of the soldier he found himself, for the first time in his life, without anything particular to say. Grant nodded slightly and waited. His caller wished something would happen. It did. His inspiration returned.
“General,” he said, “I seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you?”
That broke the ice. There were no further difficulties.—[Mark Twain has variously related this incident. It is given here in accordance with the letters of the period.]
Reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke rather vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities. Clemens gathered that under certain conditions he might share in the profits of the venture. There was but one thing to do; he knew those people—some of them—Colonel McComb and a Mr. McCrellish intimately. He must confer with them in person.
He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole pitiful machinery of politics disgusted him. In his notebook he wrote:
Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carriedout in demagogues.
And in a letter:
This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There aresome pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn't one man inWashington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame,and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents tothe world this government would have discarded him when his time wasup.—[Anson Burlingame had by this time become China's specialambassador to the nations.]
Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. He decided to go to San Francisco and see “those Alta thieves face to face.” Then, if a book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends. Also, he could lecture.
He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were too urgent to permit delay. He obtained from Bliss an advance of royalty and took passage, by way of Aspinwall, on the sidewheel steamer Henry Chauncey, a fine vessel for those days. The name of Mark Twain was already known on the isthmus, and when it was learned he had arrived on the Chauncey a delegation welcomed him on the wharf, and provided him with refreshments and entertainment. Mr. Tracy Robinson, a poet, long a resident of that southern land, was one of the group. Beyond the isthmus Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned Wakeman, who during the trip told him the amazing dream that in due time would become Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. He made the first draft of this story soon after his arrival in San Francisco, as a sort of travesty of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and later, had a high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman's dream, but his story of it would pass through several stages before finally reaching the light of publication.—[Mr. John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston, Idaho, a companion of that voyage, writes of a card game which took place beyond the isthmus. The notorious crippled gambler, “Smithy,” figured in it, and it would seem to have furnished the inspiration for the exciting story in Chapter XXXVI of the Mississippi book.]
In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped. Colonel McComb was his stanch friend; McCrellish and Woodward, the proprietors, presently conceded that they had already received good value for the money paid. The author agreed to make proper acknowledgments to the Alta in his preface, and the matter was settled with friendliness all around.
The way was now clear, the book assured. First, however, he must provide himself with funds. He delivered a lecture, with the Quaker City excursion as his subject. On the 5th of May he wrote to Bliss:
I lectured here on the trip the other night; over $1,600 in gold in the house; every seat taken and paid for before night.
He reports that he is steadily at work, and expects to start East with the completed manuscript about the middle of June.
But this was a miscalculation. Clemens found that the letters needed more preparation than he had thought. His literary vision and equipment had vastly altered since the beginning of that correspondence. Some of the chapters he rewrote; others he eliminated entirely. It required two months of fairly steady work to put the big manuscript together.
Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the Overland Monthly, then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a celebrity about this time. His “Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” published in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great stir in the East, arousing there a good deal more enthusiasm than in the magazine office or the city of their publication. That these two friends, each supreme in his own field, should have entered into their heritage so nearly at the same moment, is one of the many seemingly curious coincidences of literary history.
Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit of two years before. He was assured that it would be throwing away a precious opportunity not to give his new lecture to his old friends. The result justified that opinion. At Virginia, at Carson, and elsewhere he was received like a returned conqueror. He might have been accorded a Roman triumph had there been time and paraphernalia. Even the robbers had reformed, and entire safety was guaranteed him on the Divide between Virginia and Gold Hill. At Carson he called on Mrs. Curry, as in the old days, and among other things told her how snow from the Lebanon Mountains is brought to Damascus on the backs of camels.
“Sam,” she said, “that's just one of your yarns, and if you tell it in your lecture to-night I'll get right up and say so.”
But he did tell it, for it was a fact; and though Mrs. Curry did not rise to deny it she shook her finger at him in a way he knew.
He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture, the last he would ever give in California. His preparatory advertising for that occasion was wholly unique, characteristic of him to the last degree. It assumed the form of a handbill of protest, supposed to have been issued by the foremost citizens of San Francisco, urging him to return to the States without inflicting himself further upon them. As signatures he made free with the names of prominent individuals, followed by those of organizations, institutions, “Various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on Foot and Horseback, and fifteen hundred in the Steerage.”
Following this (on the same bill) was his reply, “To the fifteen hundred and others,” in which he insisted on another hearing:
I will torment the people if I want to.... It only costs the people$1 apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here for?...My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I havesubmitted this discourse to several able critics, and they havepronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?
He promised positively to sail on the 6th of July if they would let him talk just this once. Continuing, the handbill presented a second protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms; also others bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers, and the clergy, ending with the brief word:
You had better go. Yours, CHIEF OF POLICE.
All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a seismic cataclysm—an earthquake, in fact—could deter a San Francisco audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given at the Mercantile Library July 2 (1868), doubtless remains today the leading literary event in San Francisco's history.—[Copy of the lecture announcement, complete, will be found in Appendix H, at the end of last volume.]
He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana to Acapulco, caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached New York on the 28th, and a day or two later had delivered his manuscript at Hartford.
But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles himself, this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark Twain's new book had been traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared it was to be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone. The title selected, The New Pilgrim's Progress, was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a conservative place; the American Publishing Company directors were of orthodox persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this impending disaster of heresy. When the author arrived one or more of them labored with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss, he was stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly, from every standpoint. He declared if the company refused to print it he would resign the management and publish the book himself. This was an alarming suggestion to the stockholders. Bliss had returned dividends—a boon altogether too rare in the company's former history. The objectors retired and were heard of no more. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox, illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures.
Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the well-known illustrators of that day. Williams was a man of great talent—of fine imagination and sweetness of spirit—but it was necessary to lock him in a room when industry was required, with nothing more exciting than cold water as a beverage. Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by obtaining of Moses S. Beach photographs from the large collection he had brought home.
Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the invitation to spend a week in the Langdon home.
He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his natural gift for misunderstanding time-tables, of course took a slow one, telegraphing his approach from different stations along the road. Young Langdon concluded to go down the line as far as Waverly to meet him. When the New York train reached there the young man found his guest in the smoking-car, travel-stained and distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always scrupulously neat and correct of dress in later years, but in that earlier day neatness and style had not become habitual and did not give him comfort. Langdon greeted him warmly but with doubt. Finally he summoned courage to say, hesitatingly—“You've got some other clothes, haven't you?”
The arriving guest was not in the least disturbed.
“Oh yes,” he said with enthusiasm, “I've got a fine brand-new outfit in this bag, all but a hat. It will be late when we get in, and I won't see any one to-night. You won't know me in the morning. We'll go out early and get a hat.”
This was a large relief to the younger man, and the rest of the journey was happy enough. True to promise, the guest appeared at daylight correctly, even elegantly clad, and an early trip to the shops secured the hat. A gay and happy week followed—a week during which Samuel Clemens realized more fully than ever that in his heart there was room for only one woman in all the world: Olivia Langdon—“Livy,” as they all called her—and as the day of departure drew near it may be that the gentle girl had made some discoveries, too.
No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens had the old-fashioned Southern respect for courtship conventions, and for what, in that day at least, was regarded as honor. On the morning of the final day he said to young Langdon:
“Charley, my week is up, and I must go home.”
The young man expressed a regret which was genuine enough, though not wholly unqualified. His older sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving just then for a trip to the White Mountains, had said:
“Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our Livy. You mustn't let him carry her off before our return.”
The idea was a disturbing one. The young man did not urge his guest to prolong his-visit. He said:
“We'll have to stand it, I guess, but you mustn't leave before to-night.”
“I ought to go by the first train,” Clemens said, gloomily. “I am in love.”
“In what!”
“In love-with your sister, and I ought to get away from here.”
The young man was now very genuinely alarmed. To him Mark Twain was a highly gifted, fearless, robust man—a man's man—and as such altogether admirable—lovable. But Olivia—Livy—she was to him little short of a saint. No man was good enough for her, certainly not this adventurous soldier of letters from the West. Delightful he was beyond doubt, adorable as a companion, but not a companion for Livy.
“Look here, Clemens,” he said, when he could get his voice. “There's a train in half an hour. I'll help you catch it. Don't wait till to-night. Go now.”
Clemens shook his head.
“No, Charley,” he said, in his gentle drawl, “I want to enjoy your hospitality a little longer. I promise to be circumspect, and I'll go to-night.”
That night, after dinner, when it was time to take the New York train, a light two-seated wagon was at the gate. The coachman was in front, and young Langdon and his guest took the back seat. For some reason the seat had not been locked in its place, and when, after the good-bys, the coachman touched the horse it made a quick spring forward, and the back seat, with both passengers, described a half-circle and came down with force on the cobbled street. Neither passenger was seriously hurt; Clemens not at all—only dazed a little for a moment. Then came an inspiration; here was a chance to prolong his visit. Evidently it was not intended that he should take that train. When the Langdon household gathered around with restoratives he did not recover too quickly. He allowed them to support or carry him into the house and place him in an arm-chair and apply remedies. The young daughter of the house especially showed anxiety and attention. This was pure happiness. He was perjuring himself, of course, but they say Jove laughs at such things.
He recovered in a day or two, but the wide hospitality of the handsome Langdon home was not only offered now; it was enforced. He was still there two weeks later, after which he made a trip to Cleveland to confide in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win Livy Langdon for his wife.
He returned to Hartford to look after the progress of his book. Some of it was being put into type, and with his mechanical knowledge of such things he was naturally interested in the process.
He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living at 821 Asylum Avenue, and read proof in a little upper room, where the lamp was likely to be burning most of the time, where the atmosphere was nearly always blue with smoke, and the window-sill full of cigar butts. Mrs. Bliss took him into the quiet social life of the neighborhood—to small church receptions, society gatherings and the like—all of which he seemed to enjoy. Most of the dwellers in that neighborhood were members of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, then recently completed; all but the spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off in the world's goods, its male members, for the most part, concerned in various commercial ventures.
The church stood almost across the way from the Bliss home, and Mark Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as the “stub-tailed church,” on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the “Church of the Holy Speculators.” He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its members when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building framed and hanging on the wall.
“Why, yes,” he commented, in his slow fashion, “this is the 'Church of the Holy Speculators.'”
“Sh,” cautioned Mrs. Bliss. “Its pastor is just behind you. He knows your work and wants to meet you.” Turning, she said: “Mr. Twichell, this is Mr. Clemens. Most people know him as Mark Twain.”
And so, in this casual fashion, he met the man who was presently to become his closest personal friend and counselor, and would remain so for more than forty years.
Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age, athletic and handsome, a student and a devout Christian, yet a man familiar with the world, fond of sports, with an exuberant sense of humor and a wide understanding of the frailties of humankind. He had been “port waist oar” at Yale, and had left college to serve with General “Dan” Sickles as a chaplain who had followed his duties not only in the camp, but on the field.
Mention has already been made of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox—rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say it was because he could meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy with mankind. Mark Twain's creed, then and always, may be put into three words, “liberty, justice, humanity.” It may be put into one word, “humanity.”
Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not always approve of him, but they adored him: The Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock, was an early example of his ministerial friendships, and we have seen that Henry Ward Beecher cultivated his company. In a San Francisco letter of two years before, Mark Twain wrote his mother, thinking it would please her:
I am as thick as thieves with the Reverend Stebbins. I am laying for the Reverend Scudder and the Reverend Doctor Stone. I am running on preachers now altogether, and I find them gay.
So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph Twichell was due to the fact that he was a young member of that army whose mission is to comfort and uplift mankind. But it was only a little time till the impulse had grown into a friendship that went beyond any profession or doctrine, a friendship that ripened into a permanent admiration and love for “Joe” Twichell himself, as one of the noblest specimens of his race.
He was invited to the Twichell home, where he met the young wife and got a glimpse of the happiness of that sweet and peaceful household. He had a neglected, lonely look, and he loved to gather with them at their fireside. He expressed his envy of their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell asked him why, since his affairs were growing prosperous, he did not establish a household of his own. Long afterward Mr. Twichell wrote:
Mark made no answer for a little, but, with his eyes bent on thefloor, appeared to be deeply pondering. Then he looked up, and saidslowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with what sympathy hewas heard may be imagined): “I am taking thought of it. I am inlove beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in the wholeworld. I don't suppose she will marry me. I can't think itpossible. She ought not to. But if she doesn't I shall be surethat the best thing I ever did was to fall in love with her, andproud to have it known that I tried to win her!”
It was only a brief time until the Twichell fireside was home to him. He came and went, and presently it was “Mark” and “Joe,” as by and by it would be “Livy” and “Harmony,” and in a few years “Uncle Joe” and “Uncle Mark,” “Aunt Livy” and “Aunt Harmony,” and so would remain until the end.
James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, was the leading lecture agent of those days, and controlled all, or nearly all, of the platform celebrities. Mark Twain's success at the Cooper Union the year before had interested Redpath. He had offered engagements then and later, but Clemens had not been free for the regular circuit. Now there was no longer a reason for postponement of a contract. Redpath was eager for the new celebrity, and Clemens closed with him for the season of 1868-9. With his new lecture, “The Vandal Abroad,” he was presently earning a hundred dollars and more a night, and making most of the nights count.
This was affluence indeed. He had become suddenly a person of substance-an associate of men of consequence, with a commensurate income. He could help his mother lavishly now, and he did.
His new lecture was immensely popular. It was a resume of the 'Quaker City' letters—a foretaste of the book which would presently follow. Wherever he went, he was hailed with eager greetings. He caught such drifting exclamations as, “There he is! There goes Mark Twain!” People came out on the street to see him pass. That marvelous miracle which we variously call “notoriety,” “popularity,” “fame,” had come to him. In his notebook he wrote, “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only, earthly certainty oblivion.”
The newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as to his matter and method. His delivery was described as a “long, monotonous drawl, with the fun invariably coming in at the end of a sentence—after a pause.” His appearance at this time is thus set down:
Mark Twain is a man of medium height, about five feet ten, sparselybuilt, with dark reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features arefair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He dresses in scrupulous eveningattire. In lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it orflirting around the corners of it, then marching and countermarchingin the rear of it. He seldom casts a glance at his manuscript.
No doubt this fairly presents Mark Twain, the lecturer of that day. It was a new figure on the platform, a man with a new method. As to his manuscript, the item might have said that he never consulted it at all. He learned his lecture; what he consulted was merely a series of hieroglyphics, a set of crude pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of the subject-matter underneath new head. Certain columns represented the Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript lay there in case of accident, but the accident did not happen.
A number of his engagements were in the central part of New York, at points not far distant from Elmira. He had a standing invitation to visit the Langdon home, and he made it convenient to avail himself of that happiness.
His was not an unruffled courtship. When at last he reached the point of proposing for the daughter of the house, neither the daughter nor the household offered any noticeable encouragement to his suit. Many absurd anecdotes have been told of his first interview with Mr. Langdon on the subject, but they are altogether without foundation. It was a proper and dignified discussion of a very serious matter. Mr. Langdon expressed deep regard for him and friendship but he was not inclined to add him to the family; the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded with these views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but he could not remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast success, and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira. He was referred to by Cleveland papers as a “lion” and “the coming man of the age.” Two days later, in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he “played” against Fanny Kemble, the favorite actress of that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had an audience of two hundred against nearly ten times the number who gathered to hear Mark Twain. The news of this went to Elmira, too. It was in the papers there next morning; surely this was a conquering hero—a gay Lochinvar from out of the West—and the daughter of the house must be guarded closely, that he did not bear her away. It was on the second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when the Langdon family were gathered at breakfast, that a bushy auburn head poked fearfully in at the door, and a low, humble voice said:
“The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?”
No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or any of those unfriendly things with a person like that; certainly not Jervis Langdon, who delighted in the humor and the tricks and turns and oddities of this eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him was another matter, but even that thought was less disturbing than it had been at the start. In truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown to feel that he belonged to them. The elder sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully. He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had traveled eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in the crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's mother and sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart went theirs went also, and it would appear that her heart, in spite of herself, had found its rightful keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually set out for a voyage around the world to escape the situation.
There was only a provisional engagement at first. Jervis Langdon suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with him, that it was proper to know something of his past, as well as of his present, before the official parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon inquired as to the names of persons of standing to whom he might write for credentials, Clemens pretty confidently gave him the name of the Reverend Stebbins and others of San Francisco, adding that he might write also to Joe Goodman if he wanted to, but that he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and Goodman would lie for him if necessary, so his testimony would be of no value. The letters to the clergy were written, and Mr. Langdon also wrote one on his own account.
It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those days. It might be two months before replies would come from those ministers. The lecturer set out again on his travels, and was radiantly and happily busy. He went as far west as Illinois, had crowded houses in Chicago, visited friends and kindred in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the great news, and lecturing in old familiar haunts.
He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January (1869), and in a letter to Bliss states that he will be in Elmira two days later, and asks that proofs of the book be sent there. He arrived at the Langdon home, anxious to hear the reports that would make him, as the novels might say, “the happiest or the most miserable of men.” Jervis Langdon had a rather solemn look when they were alone together. Clemens asked:
“You've heard from those gentlemen out there?”
“Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning you.”
“They don't appear to have been very enthusiastic, from your manner.”
“Well, yes, some of them were.”
“I suppose I may ask what particular form their emotion took?”
“Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you are a brilliant, able man, a man with a future, and that you would make about the worst husband on record.”
The applicant for favor had a forlorn look.
“There's nothing very evasive about that,” he said:
There was a period of reflective silence. It was probably no more than a few seconds, but it seemed longer.
“Haven't you any other friend that you could suggest?” Langdon said.
“Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable.”
Jervis Langdon held out his hand. “You have at least one,” he said. “I believe in you. I know you better than they do.”
And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next day, February 4, 1869.
But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of the marriage with scant favor, the friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with genuine alarm. Elmira was a conservative place—a place of pedigree and family tradition; that a stranger, a former printer, pilot, miner, wandering journalist and lecturer, was to carry off the daughter of one of the oldest and wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly permitted. The fact that he had achieved a national fame did not count against other considerations. The social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but it was not availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of a different sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place as the wife of this intellectual giant, whom they felt that the world was preparing to honor. That this delicate, sheltered girl could have the strength of mind and body for her position seemed hard to believe. Their faith overbore such questionings, and the future years proved how fully it was justified.
To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:
She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom.I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashionimperatively demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told herit was typical of her future life-namely, that she would have toflourish on substance, rather than luxuries (but you see I know thegirl—she don't care anything about luxuries).... She spends nomoney but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every centof that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife,without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for herbeforehand, and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use inthat—you couldn't help it if you were to try. I warn you thatwhoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature isher willing slave forevermore.
To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:
DEAR SUE,—I received your letter yesterday with a great deal ofpleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannothave a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of thelittle incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share it,so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes yourletter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it isimpossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain aninspiration in writing you...
Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid went immediately to Elmira. He had lectured between fifty and sixty times, with a return of something more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a first season on the circuit. He had planned to make a spring tour to California, but the attraction at Elmira was of a sort that discouraged distant travel. Furthermore, he disliked the platform, then and always. It was always a temptation to him because of its quick and abundant return, but it was none the less distasteful. In a letter of that spring he wrote:
I most cordially hate the lecture field. And after all, I shudderto think I may never get out of it. In all conversation with Gough,and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips,and the other old stagers, I could not observe that they everexpected or hoped to get out of the business. I don't want to getwedded to it as they are.
He declined further engagements on the excuse that he must attend to getting out his book. The revised proofs were coming now, and he and gentle Livy Langdon read them together. He realized presently that with her sensitive nature she had also a keen literary perception. What he lacked in delicacy—and his lack was likely to be large enough in that direction—she detected, and together they pruned it away. She became his editor during those happy courtship days—a position which she held to her death. The world owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain's wife, who from the very beginning—and always, so far as in her strength she was able—inspired him to give only his worthiest to the world, whether in written or spoken word, in counsel or in deed. Those early days of their close companionship, spiritual and mental, were full of revelation to Samuel Clemens, a revelation that continued from day to day, and from year to year, even to the very end.
The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of suggested changes that would refine and beautify the text. In one of them he settles the question of title, which he says is to be:
THE INNOCENTS ABROADorTHE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's voice that gave the deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which would take any suggestion of irreverence out of the remaining words.
The book was to have been issued in the spring, but during his wanderings proofs had been delayed, and there was now considerable anxiety about it, as the agencies had become impatient for the canvass. At the end of April Clemens wrote: “Your printers are doing well. I will hurry the proofs”; but it was not until the early part of June that the last chapters were revised and returned. Then the big book, at last completed, went to press on an edition of twenty thousand, a large number for any new book, even to-day.
In later years, through some confusion of circumstance, Mark Twain was led to believe that the publication of The Innocents Abroad was long and unnecessarily delayed. But this was manifestly a mistake. The book went to press in June. It was a big book and a large edition. The first copy was delivered July 20 (1869), and four hundred and seventeen bound volumes were shipped that month. Even with the quicker mechanical processes of to-day a month or more is allowed for a large book between the final return of proofs and the date of publication. So it is only another instance of his remembering, as he once quaintly put it, “the thing that didn't happen.”—[In an article in the North American Review (September 21, 1906) Mr. Clemens stated that he found it necessary to telegraph notice that he would bring suit if the book was not immediately issued. In none of the letters covering this period is there any suggestion of delay on the part of the publishers, and the date of the final return of proofs, together with the date of publication, preclude the possibility of such a circumstance. At some period of his life he doubtless sent, or contemplated sending, such a message, and this fact, through some curious psychology, became confused in his mind with the first edition of The Innocents Abroad.]