[N.B. The following review was written by Kim Martin Long, on whose
behalf I am merely posting it. --T.R.]

BOOK REVIEW

     Harris, Susan K.  _The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain_.
     (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture.)  New York:
     Cambridge University Press, 1996.  Pp. xiii + 202.  Illustrations,
     notes, bibliography, index.  Paper.  $17.95.  ISBN 0-521-55650-3.
     Cloth, 6-1/4" x 9-1/4".  $59.95.  ISBN 0-521-55384-9.

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     Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

          Kim Martin Long <[log in to unmask]>
          Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

     Copyright (c) 1997 Mark Twain Forum.  This review may not be
     published or redistributed in any medium without permission.


My only real complaint about Susan K. Harris's _The Courtship of Olivia
Langdon and Mark Twain_ is that it is mistitled: the present title
trivializes the accomplishments of this book.  A more appropriate title
would be something like _Negotiating Differences in Victorian America:
Olivia Langdon, Sam Clemens, and Reading Relationships_ or _The Rhetoric
of Love: How Olivia Langdon and Sam Clemens Became Mr. and Mrs.
Clemens_.  I don't know.  It just seems that what the author has
accomplished in this small volume deserves a better title, at least one
with a colon.

In four out of five chapters at least, Harris examines carefully the
discourse of Olivia Langdon and Sam Clemens as they found ways to
reconcile their differing backgrounds, personalities, and world views
and to bridge the apparent gaps between them to form a lasting and, by
all standards, a successful marriage.  She looks carefully at their
letters and at other sources to write a very specific kind of biography,
one that not only documents the twenty-five months of their courtship,
but that also presents an interesting glimpse of the mid-nineteenth-
century culture of courtship and marriage.  More a biography of Langdon
perhaps than of Twain, the book shows a young woman creating herself to
be the kind of woman her culture expected; in the process the man of her
affections, Samuel Clemens, was himself in the process of creating two
selves: Sam Clemens, husband of Olivia, and Mark Twain, artist and
writer.

The introduction provides interesting background to Olivia Langdon's
family and to Langdon's health.  Olivia Louise Langdon was the first
child of Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon, an upstate New York couple
whose business ventures in coal finally prospered and caused them to
settle in Elmira.  They became a leading family in town, their mansion
splendid by standards of the time.  Jervis Langdon was connected to
Elmira College, the first U.S. college to grant baccalaureate degrees to
women, and the family also supported a branch of the Underground
Railroad that came through Elmira.  Olivia, however, suffered from a
debilitating illness that caused her to live away from the family for
years, end her formal schooling at 15, and be thought of as fragile her
entire life.  Harris points out, however, that despite Olivia's
weakness, she managed to "bear four children, run a complex household,
entertain lavishly, and do a considerable amount of journeying around
the world" (4).

Harris does provide a page-or-so biography of Twain, although, as she
admits, his "early biography is much better known than his wife's and
needs little recapitulation" in her book (4).  In this introduction is
stated the author's thesis: that Olivia Langdon and Samuel Clemens were
extremely different from each other, and that through their reading and
writing they were able to resolve their differences and forge a
meaningful relationship that would last a long time and weather many
difficulties.  The introduction also expresses Harris's desire to
correct misconceptions about Mrs. Mark Twain--that she has been "grossly
caricatured by her husband's biographers" as a "paragon of dull
propriety" (8).  Harris makes a good case throughout the book that
Olivia Langdon Clemens was actually a woman full of humor, fun, and
flexibility, and Harris hopes that "this book will contribute to [her]
reevaluation" (10).  As she says, any complete biography of Mark Twain
should contain a complete biography of the woman with whom he spent 34
years and who was such an important part of his life and career.

Chapter 1 analyzes the cultural context of Langdon's education and
reading before she meets Sam Clemens, quoting from Langdon's commonplace
book, a book of select passages from favorite pieces of literature and
other published materials, and from her letters to her good friend Alice
Hooker, providing an inside view of Langdon's mind and emotions.  The
chapter also gives a fairly comprehensive look at the various cultural
practices of nineteenth-century women of "good families" who were
preparing themselves for the high-pressured role of Victorian wife.
Although Langdon was ill much of the time that she was writing in her
commonplace book, she rarely complains; she was, according to Harris,
preparing "herself to deal with life crises, and her book is one index
to her search for frameworks that would aid and sustain her when these
came" (15).  One of these frameworks was a philosophy that combined
accepted nineteenth-century piety and femininity; numerous times in her
commonplace book, Langdon quotes religious poetry that seemed to direct
her in the ways of the good Christian.  Clearly, Langdon as an
adolescent wished to fit into accepted culture and become a proper woman
who could accept her place and endure whatever came along, "searching
for prescriptions for specifically gendered behavior," as were most of
her contemporaries (19).

The author demonstrates through this first chapter her ability to read
texts closely and to interpret a great deal from them about the person
who copied them down.  As Harris says about several passages in
Langdon's commonplace book about the submission of women, seen
collectively, "these three groups of quotations construct a
reader/transcriber who is struggling to create a self open to experience
and change while remaining well within the culture's definition of
femininity and Christianity" (20).  Harris also reads letters written by
Langdon to her friend Alice Hooker, and the letters Hooker wrote to her
mother, to uncover a personality for Olivia Langdon, a "young woman
quietly determined to educate herself according to her society's notions
of what constituted culture and literacy" (27).  The author traces
various texts Olivia Langdon and Alice Hooker read and concludes that
class was more important than gender in Langdon's creation of self.
Literature was to be consumed, to be read for moral edification,
information, and inspiration, rather than for pleasure.  The chapter
ends with a discussion of the cultural significance of Elmira, as a
college town connected to larger cities by a complex network of
railroads.  There is also provides a brief discussion of Twain at this
time, single and traveling on the lecture circuit that took him through
Elmira and in the path of a young woman who would steal his heart.

Devoted to a discussion of science in Elmira in the 1860s, Chapter 2 is
more exciting that its title suggests.  Using their differences about
the role of science in people's lives, Harris shows that Langdon's
reliance on scientific methodology, and Clemens's skepticism for
discourses that propose to know the answers, provided the first real
obstacle for them to overcome together.  She asserts that Clemens used
the rhetoric of science to win Olivia as he substituted his own
"penchant for cosmic laws" for her belief in scientific study and
experimentation.  In other words, he appropriates the discourse of
science--something in which he does not really have faith--for his own
language of love.  As the author indicates, letters from Clemens to
Langdon use a cosmic language "to reinforce his courtship demands,"
saying, for instance, that they would be together through "time and
eternity."

Throughout this and other chapters, Harris carefully explicates letters
and documents pertinent to the Clemenses' courtship linguistically and
rhetorically to reveal motivations and strategies.  Because he is "an
expert in the rhetorical construction of realities, Clemens senses that
the authority of scientific discourse might be played for power ends,"
and Harris calls him a "clever con who can appropriate" whatever he
wants for his purposes (66-67).  Characterizing him as deliberate and
clever, Harris paints a portrait of Samuel Clemens that is possibly
unflattering but accurate: "Setting aside his role as skeptic and
assuming his role as arch manipulator of discursive modes, Clemens drew
on all of his literary experiences to negotiate his way into the Langdon
family" (69).

Continuing with a careful reading of Clemens's letters to Langdon,
Chapter 3 turns to Clemens's appropriation of the language of religion.
Because of their high status in Elmira, the Langdons at first rejected
Sam Clemens as a suitable mate for their daughter.  Although he proved
to be an interesting houseguest traveling through on the lecture
circuit, he was not what Jervis and Olivia Langdon had in mind for a
son-in-law.  Clemens, in his letters to both Olivia and to her father,
appeals to their sense of propriety and piety as he takes on the guise
of the spiritual quester, one who needs their support and prayers in
order to clean up his life.  As Harris says, by "appealing to the
Langdons' bourgeois piety . . . Clemens maneuvered the lover's parents
into feeling responsible for helping him become the man they wanted him
to be" (74-75).

Clemens fairly frankly addresses his past (he was, by this time--in his
early thirties and having recently returned from the West--the man of
_Roughing It_) and turns the focus of his letters to Langdon's faith in
him rather than his own shortcomings morally, putting her on trial as it
seems: "By your two later letters I saw that you had faith in me . . .
but what I yearned for at this particular moment was the evidence that
your faith remained at its post when the storm swept over your heart.  I
believed I should find that evidence, for I did not think that your
faith was the child of a passing fancy. . . .  The belief was well
grounded, & I am satisfied" (76).  Clemens even agrees to becoming a
Christian; he says to his mother after their engagement: "My prophecy
was correct. . . .  [Livy] said she never could or would love me--but
she set herself the task of making a Christian of me.  I said she would
succeed, but that in the meantime she would unwittingly dig a
matrimonial pit & end by tumbling in it--& lo! the prophecy is
fulfilled" (77).  The author outlines Clemens's appropriation of the
traditional Protestant conversion narrative in his correspondence with
his fiancee; certainly "not the first lover to fuse sexual and spiritual
yearning, Clemens brilliantly appropriated the rhetoric of the
conversion narrative in order to manipulate Langdon's religious
beliefs" (78).

Harris continues in Chapter 3 to discuss the ways Clemens used rhetoric
to court Olivia Langdon and her family.  She examines his use of
capitalist rhetoric in referring to Olivia as a treasure to be valued,
for, as Harris reminds us, "women's value lay in their sexual purity,
mental chastity, moral rectitude, and good sense" (87).  As he writes to
her a few months before their marriage, "I always feel proud . . . a
year ago, I _was_ so proud to get a letter from you in Cleveland . . . &
_now_, why I can hardly comprehend that it is actually _I_ that get a
letter _every day_ from Livy--& she is _mine_--my own Livy for time &
eternity--never to be taken from me by any hand but that of the arch
Destroyer. . . .  You are unspeakably precious to me . . . a blessing
before which all other earthly treasures are dross & worthless" (87).
As Harris says, Clemens felt as though his winning of Livy was like
triumphing in a foreign marketplace.

Also in this chapter appears one of the better examples of what the
author describes as a game the lovers played of "my text, your text":
Clemens and Langdon would read common texts, "marking" them for the
other with marginal comments.  From these notes, we can see how they
each interpreted the texts according to their own personalities and
world views; we can also see that Sam Clemens wanted a wife who would
remain pure in thought: "he wanted a woman who conformed to his
culture's idea of modesty and chastity, in mind, as well as body" (101).
Possibly reading Sam Clemens a little negatively, Harris says that
"Clemens wanted Langdon to avoid reading corrupting material not because
it would hurt her but because it would damage her and thus hurt _him_ by
decreasing her value . . . in his and the world's eyes" (102).  She
claims that "becoming, as he wrote, religious aspirant, prospective son-
in-law, businessman, book lover, admirer, preacher, sympathetic brother,
and eager lover, Clemens literally _wrote_ his way into the Langdon home
and into Olivia Langdon's affections" (105).

The next chapter resumes with the heart of the book: an examination of
the joint reading of Clemens and Langdon, especially concerning the
issues of duty and control.  As Harris claims, "Langdon's search
suggests that she was trying to subordinate her own desires to her
perception of what other people wanted of her" (113), but that Clemens
was capable of existing "in two spheres at once" (as we have heard
before--in Justin Kaplan's _Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain_, for
example) (116).  While Langdon strove for conformity to her culture and
its expectations, Clemens enjoyed exploring the Other; a clear example
of this tendency is provided in a discussion of the lovers' reading of
_The Merchant of Venice_.  While Langdon identifies with Portia, a
character "who can fuse desire with duty," Clemens focuses on Shylock,
"from the Christian point of view a deviant, even a madman, a figure
living outside the moral and behavioral norm" (124; 125).

The end of this chapter restates Harris's thesis and sums up what this
book demonstrates: "Gender, class, and personality shaped the
differences between Olivia Langdon and Samuel Clemens as readers, as
they shaped them in most other spheres. . . .  [Langdon and Clemens]
created a viable marriage out of a host of apparent dissimilarities.  In
their responses to texts, as in their responses to much of the rest of
the world, we perceive a continuous and bilateral juggling of intellect
and emotion that may well have been one of the cementing activities of
their relationship" (134).

Chapter 5, "Marriage," is really the conclusion.  It summarizes the
first three years of their life together, from their wedding on
2 February 1870, to their sailing to Europe on 17 May 1873--the trials,
disappointments, moves, and deaths.  No longer needing to prove anything
in letters, Clemens begins the real creation of Mark Twain; Langdon
matures, gives up religion herself, and settles into a comfortable
although challenging life as Victorian wife and mother.  This last
chapter reads more like a conventional biography rather than a
rhetorical analysis of the couple's correspondence.  Although
interesting and maybe necessary for a satisfactory closure to the game-
playing going on during the courtship, this chapter somewhat departs
from the insightful reading of text that the earlier chapters provide;
it focuses more on their life together and their commonalities rather
than their differences--their "fiscal irresponsibility," for example.
The chapter does afford readers a glimpse of the life together that
these two very different people forged.

_The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain_ offers a rare look at
how literacy shapes personality and psychology and vice versa.  In her
rhetorical deconstruction of Langdon's and Clemens's texts, the author
reveals true rhetoric on Clemens's part: writing for a purpose.  In his
letters to his future wife and her family, Sam Clemens, according to
Susan K. Harris, may have written his "best" literature, as he created a
self that was acceptable to Victorian culture and to this very Victorian
family.  In this biography of literacy, Harris has contributed to Twain
scholarship by more fully characterizing Olivia Langdon Clemens, the
woman who would have great influence on both the man Mark Twain and his
work, and by showing us a side of Mark Twain often overlooked--that of
his incredible need for love and acceptance.