Details
CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. Autograph letter signed ("Mark") to his close friend, the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell of Hartford, Conn.; Norwich, N.Y., 12 December [1868]. 3 pages, 8vo, purple ink on lined paper, left margin of one sheet and a quarter of the left margin of another frayed away, strips of brown paper glued to versos of two sheets visible along left margins on rectos of those two sheets.
"SHE [LIVY] DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BEATING THE DEVIL AROUND THE BUSH"
Written while Clemens was on a lecture tour; his formal engagement to Livy Langdon would take place on 4 February 1869. Livy's parents had consented to a provisional engagement on Thanksgiving Day, but insisted it remain secret until they learned more about Clemens' background, character, and prospects. "Hip-hip-Hurrah! She just goes on 'accepting the situation' in the most innocent, easy-going way in the world. She writes as if the whole thing was perfectly understood, & would no doubt be unpleasantly astonished if she only knew I had been regarding it differently & had been ass enough to worry about a cousin whom she merely gives the passing mention accorded to the humbliest guests. She don't know anything about beating the devil around the bush -- she has never been used to it. She simply calls things by their right names & goes straight at the appalling subject of matrimony with the most amazing effrontery. I am in honor bound to regard her grave philosophical dissertations as love letters, because they probe the very marrow of that passion, but there isn't a bit of romance in them, no poetical repining, no endearments, no adjectives, no flowers of speech, no nonsense, no bosh. Nothing but solid chunks of wisdom, my boy -- love letters gotten up on the square, flat-footed, cast-iron, inexorable plan of the most approved commercial correspondence, & signed with stately & exasperating decorum, 'Lovingly, Livy L. Langdon' -- in full, by the Ghost of Caesar!
"They are more precious to me than whole reams of affectionate superlatives would be coming from any other woman, but they are the darlingest funniest love letters that ever were written, I do suppose...Hip - hip - Hurrah! I have badgered them & persecuted them until they have yielded, & I am to stop there for one day & night, on Dec. 17! I am full of gratitude to God this day, & my prayers will be sincere. Now write me a letter which I can read to her..."
Published in Letters, ed. H.E. Smith, R. Bucci, and L. Salamo, vol. 2, pp. 331-332, and in The Love Letters of Mark Twain, ed. D. Wecter, pp. 33-34. This is the earliest dated Mark Twain letter in the Chester L. Davis collection offered by Christie's; other early letters, dating from 29 December 1868 to April 1869 and including three to Twichell, were sold in Christie's New York sale of 17 May 1991 (lots 82-87).
"SHE [LIVY] DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BEATING THE DEVIL AROUND THE BUSH"
Written while Clemens was on a lecture tour; his formal engagement to Livy Langdon would take place on 4 February 1869. Livy's parents had consented to a provisional engagement on Thanksgiving Day, but insisted it remain secret until they learned more about Clemens' background, character, and prospects. "Hip-hip-Hurrah! She just goes on 'accepting the situation' in the most innocent, easy-going way in the world. She writes as if the whole thing was perfectly understood, & would no doubt be unpleasantly astonished if she only knew I had been regarding it differently & had been ass enough to worry about a cousin whom she merely gives the passing mention accorded to the humbliest guests. She don't know anything about beating the devil around the bush -- she has never been used to it. She simply calls things by their right names & goes straight at the appalling subject of matrimony with the most amazing effrontery. I am in honor bound to regard her grave philosophical dissertations as love letters, because they probe the very marrow of that passion, but there isn't a bit of romance in them, no poetical repining, no endearments, no adjectives, no flowers of speech, no nonsense, no bosh. Nothing but solid chunks of wisdom, my boy -- love letters gotten up on the square, flat-footed, cast-iron, inexorable plan of the most approved commercial correspondence, & signed with stately & exasperating decorum, 'Lovingly, Livy L. Langdon' -- in full, by the Ghost of Caesar!
"They are more precious to me than whole reams of affectionate superlatives would be coming from any other woman, but they are the darlingest funniest love letters that ever were written, I do suppose...Hip - hip - Hurrah! I have badgered them & persecuted them until they have yielded, & I am to stop there for one day & night, on Dec. 17! I am full of gratitude to God this day, & my prayers will be sincere. Now write me a letter which I can read to her..."
Published in Letters, ed. H.E. Smith, R. Bucci, and L. Salamo, vol. 2, pp. 331-332, and in The Love Letters of Mark Twain, ed. D. Wecter, pp. 33-34. This is the earliest dated Mark Twain letter in the Chester L. Davis collection offered by Christie's; other early letters, dating from 29 December 1868 to April 1869 and including three to Twichell, were sold in Christie's New York sale of 17 May 1991 (lots 82-87).