No longer drowsy, I peered up at the window. No opening was evident. How had it gotten in? I played with the idea that it had come for me. A silly and yet compelling notion. Maybe the bird had been lonely and sought company. Its flight had looked almost purposeful. Maybe it was a message. Was I to follow, along the tracks?
A wheezing, asthmatic porter lugged my bag through the narrow aisles of the sleeping cars. He stopped at my berth—a fold-down shelf with two blankets behind a thin curtain. I fished through my pockets for a tip. Coins spilled to the floor. I handed him a dime and bent to retrieve the others. In doing so I glimpsed a corner of what appeared to be a letter lying against the baseboard, concealed by folds of drapery. I pulled it out. It was a thick packet tied with lavender ribbon and scented like the sachets I remembered in Grandma’s dresser.
I slipped the ribbon free. Enfolded in half a dozen sheets of stationery was a clipping from the previous week’s Plymouth Pulpit, of Brooklyn. It was the text of a Henry Ward Beecher sermon entitled “Heaven’s Golden Promise.” I set it aside and unfolded the letter. Each sheet was crested with a circular monogram of leafy twigs forming the intertwined letters O and L. The handwriting, in purple ink, was small and neat.
My Dear Youth, I read, and felt a remote memory stir.
You entreated me so mercelessly (you are wicked, though I know you never intend it) not to ‘send you away empty in heart and hand,’ as you put it (as if I were capabel of sending you away!) and so I am staying up to write this.
The salutation, the misspellings, the ink—a preposterous suspicion began to form in me.
I have realized, as perhaps you have not, that Father has of late come to tolerate your bold glances in my direction, or is perhaps mearly resigned to them. I say this not to scold you, as you are wont to accuse me of in your ‘wicked’ moods, but to indicate how much Father has come to accept you since the beginning of our engagement. In your absense he speaks most proudly of you. Already he has subscribed fifty copies of the book for his friends the moment it is published. Speaking of that, you must not become to critical of Mr. Blish. You have labored so hard, my darling, I know that you will reap the harvest of your effort. Remember, ‘The poet and the beetle, each his task to perform.'
Succeeding paragraphs dealt with family members, friends, and a cousin marrying in Hartford the following month. I scanned them impatiently, looking for the proof I wanted. At the end of the letter I found it.
You mustn’t carry out your silly promise! Becoming ill cannot hasten my throat to recover. I scarce know when you are develling me. The idea of you not sleeping in underclothes and going without socks is enough to worry my poor throat sicker! Is that your purpose? You will only succeed in bringing back the cold you had last month—and then you will be low-spirited again! That is more than I could bear. Please carry my loving cautions with you—and write in great detail all that you think of Reverend B’s sermon. (I believe it his finest this year.)
Your loving Livy
My hand trembled as I stared at the signature and realized for certain that I held a letter to my namesake from the woman he would marry, Olivia Langdon. What was it doing here? Could Twain himself have dropped it? I felt a giddy rush of excitement. He might have passed through this aisle, stood in exactly this spot.
Chapter 7
Frail daughter of a millionaire coal magnate, apotheosis of gentility and respectability—everything, in short, that to Twain meant “making it”. . . .
I was surprised at the details that flooded back. Livy would become his censor, his respectability filter. I’d argued in my J school thesis that she symbolized Twain’s great sellout; that in settling for bourgeois security, he forever cashed in his bohemian credentials, sold short his creative freedom. Never again to be an independent satiric visionary—an artist—he fittingly became the superstar crony of plutocrats.
Well, hurling thunderbolts at Livy Langdon from grad school was one thing. Holding her letter now was quite another. I felt a feverish-ness beyond anything research was likely to evoke. Livy, only twenty-three if I had calculated correctly, was very much alive and being courted by Twain. I remembered that he was some ten years older, which would make him about . . . my age.
I pushed through the cars till I caught the porter. He knew of no passenger list, but suggested I stop by the saloon car, where some gentlemen still held forth. I retraced my steps and found the car near the end of the train. At a counter along one wall several forlorn men were drinking; another slumped facedown, his hat mashed on the counter. Card games were in progress at two tables, the players low-voiced, intent.
I stood in the doorway peering through clouds of smoke. In my mind was an
