17 November 1871 • Portland, Maine (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00676)
Livy darling—this is one of my pet places. A wretched, rainy, stormy night, but one of the most packed & crowded audiences ever seen in Portland. Lecture went off magnificently.1explanatory note Been receiving congratulations till now— 1 A.M.
Goodnight my darling.
Send Sackett’s letter to Redpath.2explanatory note
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens Cor Forest & Hawthorne Ⓐemendation Hartford Conn.postmarked: portland me. Ⓐemendationnov 17
The Portland Eastern Argus concurred:
Mark Twain must have a wonderful hold upon the people. It was dismal, uncomfortable, and stormy last night, but nevertheless an immense audience turned out to listen to Mr. Samuel L. Clemens. Over two thousand people crowded into City Hall to see the man who wrote “The Innocents Abroad.” . . .
We never saw an audience enjoy itself more heartily than did Mark Twain’s last evening. (“Artemus Ward,” 17 Nov 71, 3)
Clemens had previously enjoyed a tremendous success in Portland, with “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” on 22 December 1869 (“M. L. A.”: Portland Advertiser, 23 Dec 69, 4; Portland Eastern Argus, 23 Dec 69, 3; Portland Press, 23 Dec 69, 3; L3 , 485).
Possibly the Reverend H. A. Sackett, of Auburn, New York, had written regarding Clemens’s 5 December lecture there. Sackett and his wife had been influential in the establishment of Elmira Female College, which Olivia attended as a preparatory student in 1859–60, and which Jervis Langdon served as a trustee from 1862 until 1870 (Towner, 300; Wisbey 1979, 7–8).
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- Wecter, Dixon. The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1949
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
- Towner, Ausburn [Ishmael, pseud.]. Our County and Its People: A History of the Valley and County of Chemung from the Closing Years of the Eighteenth Century. Syracuse, N.Y.: D. Mason and Co. 1892
- Wisbey, Herbert A., Jr. “Olivia Clemens Studied at Elmira College.” Mark Twain Society Bulletin 2 (June): 7–8. 1979
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 494–495; LLMT , 362, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.