Most Inappropriate Couple: Love at First Sight and 35 Years of Happiness for the Cynic Mark Twain

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Mark Twain fell in love with his chosen one Olivia Langdon at first sight and, as it turned out, for life. Although the moment they first saw each other, no one could have imagined a more unsuitable couple for starting a family. Markt Twain and Olivia Langdon were so different that the prospects of their love seemed very dubious. And yet they went through many difficulties and got married to live together for almost 35 happy years.

Love at first sight

They wish they would never meet, Samuel Langhorn Clemens (real name of the writer) and Olivia Langdon. They were too different, a young man from a poor family who learned too early to drink, smoke and use foul language, and a devout girl who received an excellent education.

Her parents were progressive people, advocated the availability of education for women and were opposed to slavery in all its forms. Olivia grew up as a very fragile and sickly girl, once she spent two years in bed after an unsuccessful fall on the ice. However, Olivia, after some serious home tutoring, attended Thurston Women's Seminary and then Elmira Women's College.

Samuel Clemens, born into a poor family, worked from an early age, providing himself with food. He was a typesetter and a miner, then he was a pilot and passionately dreamed of getting rich by finding a deposit of precious metals. But by the age of 30, he had already contracted the virus of writing, having managed to publish his early works in newspapers. And the first rays of fame touched Samuel Clemens after the publication of the story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865.

A voyage to Europe and the Middle East on the steamer Quaker City later led to the publication of the 19th century bestseller Simpletons Abroad and the writer's passionate feelings for Charles Langdon's sister, whom Mark Twain met and befriended during a five-month voyage.

Once Charles showed Clemens a photograph of Olivia and later the writer claimed that it was love at first sight and for life. Therefore, after returning to the United States, Mark Twain gladly accepted Charles's offer to meet his family.

Long way to happiness

Having met Olivia, Mark Twain made an offer to the girl a few days later, but received a decisive refusal. Olivia said that she could not and would not love him, but she set herself the task of making a respectable Christian out of a new acquaintance. To which the writer replied: she will succeed, but at the same time she will voluntarily dig a marital pit and fall into it.

Naturally, Olivia did not agree with this statement, but still invited him to correspond with her, as a brother and sister. The very next day after parting, Clemens wrote her first letter and then wrote daily for 17 months, having managed to send more than 180 messages.

In one of them, he wrote that he was happy to be able to send her letters whenever he liked and confessed his love to "the best girl in the world."He picked up beautiful words, and then reread them, recognized them as stupid, but did not dare to rewrite them, for Olivia took his word never to tear the letters written to her, but to send them in their original form.

The girl's parents were skeptical about the prospect of having a relative like Mark Twain, but asked his Western friends for recommendations. Unfortunately, Clemens's friends could not reassure the parents of his beloved in any way.

They said that he was a wild and unbelieving, unsettled vagabond who got drunk much more often than was allowed by decency. But Twain at one time himself confessed his vices, being an honest man. In addition, he struggled to improve, quitting alcohol for a while and even starting to attend church regularly.

And yet Samuel Clemens was able to destroy all obstacles to his happiness. He endeared himself to Olivia's father Jervis Langdon and won the heart of the girl herself. On the first date, he took his beloved to a lecture by Charles Dickens, and she began to send him copies of the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher.

Happy marriage

In February 1869, the lovers announced their engagement, and a year later they became husband and wife. To the surprise of Mark Twain, after the wedding, Jervis Langdon presented the newlyweds with a house in Buffalo, fully staffed with servants, and also provided his daughter's wife with a loan to purchase a stake in a local newspaper. Soon, the book "Simpletons Abroad" was published and Mark Twain immediately became famous and even rich.

The couple lived together for 34 happy years. True, during this time, fate has repeatedly tested them for strength. Soon after the wedding, Olivia's father died of cancer, and their firstborn was born prematurely and died of diphtheria at the age of one and a half years. Their daughter Susie died at 24 from meningitis, and Jean died of epilepsy at 29. Only Clara survived, married a musician and lived to be 88 years old.

Just as successful writer Mark Twain was, just as financially untenable was Samuel Clemens. He invested money in dubious projects and constantly lost it, not receiving even a tiny return on investment.

However, the relationship between spouses could be the envy of many couples. Mark Twain transferred the copyright to some of his works to his wife so that creditors could not claim them. Olivia was not only the wife and mother of the writer's children, she became an assistant, proofreader and editor of all his manuscripts. Mark Twain believed that without her, his most important works would never have been written. He admitted: before becoming Olivia's husband, he did not write serious works, and therefore the appearance of each new book is an undoubted merit of his wife.

Olivia read his own works aloud to her husband and wrapped a corner of every page she thought needed revision. Occasionally Mark Twain would deliberately insert passages into the manuscript that Olivia would not have approved of. He just really enjoyed watching her reaction.

Throughout the years of marriage, Mark Twain and Olivia Langdon have been devoted to each other. And they never once had a reason to regret that they once became husband and wife. Olivia passed away in 1904, Mark Twain survived her by six years. In the last years of his life, the writer worked on his own autobiography, and his emotional state can be found in one of Twain's works, where Adam, standing at the grave of Eve, says: "Wherever she was, there was Eden …"

While most people know Mark Twain primarily as the author of the famous novels about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, at one time the author gained his fame thanks to completely different works - his outstanding and witty notes from numerous travels.