Letters Vol. 2 [24]
of their overland journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment:
To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:
BUF., 1870. DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000 miles at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for the use of the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure in forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the forthcoming work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they will both be in the first quarterly statement of account from the publisher. In great haste, Yr Obliged Bro. SAM.
Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well.
Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief letters that follow clearly show.
To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:
BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70. MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but I have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is a comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient over it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for it-but I suppose I neglected it.
We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and Miss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give her a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I can be-- am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the "Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days, and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher. ----In a hurry Affectionately SAM
To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis:
BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870. MY DEAR BRO,--O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn. I don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is for you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my advice, opinion or consent about that hated property. If it was because I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made.
Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it.
It is only a bid for a somnambulist.
I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's) is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina) and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged out. Yrs. SAM.
Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition. This was at the end of September. A little more than a month later, November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely born. To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark Twain characteristically announced the new arrival.
To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford,
To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:
BUF., 1870. DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000 miles at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for the use of the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure in forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the forthcoming work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they will both be in the first quarterly statement of account from the publisher. In great haste, Yr Obliged Bro. SAM.
Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well.
Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief letters that follow clearly show.
To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:
BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70. MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but I have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is a comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient over it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for it-but I suppose I neglected it.
We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and Miss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give her a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I can be-- am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the "Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days, and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher. ----In a hurry Affectionately SAM
To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis:
BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870. MY DEAR BRO,--O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn. I don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is for you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my advice, opinion or consent about that hated property. If it was because I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made.
Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it.
It is only a bid for a somnambulist.
I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's) is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina) and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged out. Yrs. SAM.
Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition. This was at the end of September. A little more than a month later, November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely born. To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark Twain characteristically announced the new arrival.
To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford,