3 October 1872 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00817)
Livy darling, it is indeed pleasant to learn that Orion is happy & progressing. Now if he can only keep the place, & continue to give satisfaction, all the better. It is no trouble for a man to get any situation he wants—by working at first for nothing—but of course to hold it firmly against all comers—after the wages begin—is the trick.1explanatory note
Somebody has sent me some Philadelphia papers whereby I see that poor old faithful Riley is dead. It seems too bad.2explanatory note
Mrs. Hooker’s solemn retirement from public life is news which is as grateful as it is humorous—but her the tremendousness of her reason for retiring (because “her work is done” & her great lesson end accomplished,) surpasses the mere humanly humorous—it is the awful humor of the gods. For all these long months, this pleasant lady, under the impression that she was helping along a great & good cause, has been blandly pulling down the temple of Woman’s Emancipation & shying the bricks at the builders; for all these long months she has moved sublimely among the conventions & congresses of the sex like the a very Spirit of Calamity; & whatsoever principle she breathed upon oratorically, perished; & whatsoever convert she took by the hand, that convert returned unto his sin again; & upo unto Ⓐemendationwhatsoever political thing she lavished her love upon, there came sickness, & suffering, & speedy death; after all these long months, wherein she never rested from making enemies to her cause save when she was asleep, she retires serenely from her slaughter-house & says, in effect, Let the nations sing hosannah, el Ⓐemendationlet the spinning Ⓐemendationspheres applaud—I have My—my work is done!
She is a good woman—she is a good woman—but it s is so like her to ad Ⓐemendationdo these things—she does derive such a satisfaction from everything her tangled brain conceives & her relentless hand demolishes. Well, anyway, I am glad she is out of “public life,” ( & I have no doubt that all of her best friends are, also.3explanatory note
Livy darling, I have been shopping & bought you a cloak, & if I don’t lose it I will fetch it home to you. I shall probably buy no other present while here—they are too troublesome—but after hunting London over for a present for you, I found this thing & I liked it.
Been to Oxford for a day & a half—& if you could only see that piece of landscape (between here & Oxford) in its summer garb, you would have to confess that there is nothing even in New England that equals it for pure loveliness, & nothing outside of New England that even remotely approaches it. And if you could see the turf in the quadrangles of some of the colleges, & the Virginian creeper that pours its cataract of green & golden & crimson leaves down a quaint old gothic tower of Magdalen College—clear from the topmost pinnacle it comes flooding down over pointed windows, & battered statues, & grotesque stone faces projecting from the wall—a wasteful, graceful little Niagara graceful, gorgeous little NiagaraⒶemendation 4explanatory note —& whosoever looks upon it will miss his train sure. That was the darlingest, loveliest Ⓐemendationpicture I ever saw.
Good-bye Sweetheart, good-bye. Good-bye Sweetheart, good-bye.5explanatory note I love you.
P.S. Mr. Tyler of Hatch & Tyler, promised to send you your winter supply of coal—at $7 I think. Send to him when you need it.6explanatory note
in ink: Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: U.S. of America Ⓐemendation | rule on flap: slc postmarked: london • w 3 oc 3 72
Clemens’s correspondent has not been identified. John Henry Riley died of cancer on 17 September in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Inquirer: “Died,” 18 Sept 72 and 19 Sept 72, 4; “Obituary,” 23 Sept 72, 2). According to the San Francisco Alta California, Riley’s death “was the result of a cancer that started from a slight wound inflicted on the inside of his cheek by a fork while eating, the impulse being given accidentally by a stranger striking his elbow in a restaurant” (“Death of J. H. Riley,” 18 Sept 72, 1).
No public announcement of Isabella Beecher Hooker’s intended retirement has been found, so presumably Olivia learned of it from Hooker herself, or from a mutual friend in the Nook Farm community. (John Hooker was in London in September 1872, but there is no evidence that he and Clemens had any contact with each other.) In any event, Clemens’s pleasure was premature: Hooker continued her efforts on behalf of women’s suffrage throughout her lifetime. His disapproval probably resulted from her association, since January 1871, with Victoria Claflin Woodhull (see 26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAM, n. 3click to open letter). Woodhull’s advocacy of “free love” and women’s right to equality in sexual matters had shocked Hooker’s family and associates, “who considered this new alliance to be a dangerous one for both the movement and a ‘respectable’ member of the Beecher and Hooker families” (Margolis, 29–31; Hartford Courant: “Hartford Personals,” 14 Sept 72, 2; “Brief Mention,” 30 Sept 72, 2; for an extended discussion of Hooker’s record as a feminist, see Andrews, 134–43). Clemens’s later remarks about Hooker were highly complimentary. In 1907, shortly after her death, he recalled:
Isabella Beecher Hooker threw herself into the woman’s rights movement among the earliest, some sixty years ago, and she labored with all her splendid energies in that great cause all the rest of her life; as an able and efficient worker she ranks immediately after those great chiefs, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mrs. Liver-more. When these powerful sisters entered the field in 1848 woman was what she had always been in all countries and under all religions, all savageries, all civilizations—a slave, and under contempt. The laws affecting women were a disgrace to our statute-book. Those brave women besieged the legislatures of the land, year after year, suffering and enduring all manner of reproach, rebuke, scorn and obloquy, yet never surrendering, never sounding a retreat; their wonderful campaign lasted a great many years, and is the most wonderful in history, for it achieved a revolution—the only one achieved in human history for the emancipation of half a nation that cost not a drop of blood. They broke the chains of their sex and set it free. (AD, 1 Mar 1907, CU-MARK)
Magdalen College, founded in 1458, is noted for its 145-foot tower, completed in 1505 (Murray, 304). Clemens used nearly identical wording to describe the college in his English journal (see Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journalsclick to open letter).
Clemens quoted the refrain from a popular love song of the same title, composed in the 1850s by John Liptrot Hatton (1809–86), with words by Folkestone Williams (Edmondstoune Duncan, 298–99).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 183–188; LLMT , 178–79.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.