Many people have heard of Samuel Clemens, the Missouri boatman-turned-author who published countless newspaper articles, short stories, and novels under the name “Mark Twain,” a reference to the second mark on the line which measured the depth of the water beneath a vessel at two fathoms (approximately twelve feet in layman’s terms). Fewer people know about his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, who was, in many ways, just as worthy of recognition as he was.
Olivia Langdon, born in Elmira, New York in 1845, was the daughter of a businessman in the coal industry. Though she was often ill, she was highly educated, independent, strong in her beliefs, and active in her community. Langdon was a staunch abolitionist, a feminist, and a founder of Hartford Art School, which is today the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Langdon met Clemens in 1867, and he quickly began his attempts to court her, largely through written letters, but also by taking her on such prestigious outings as a reading by famous English author Charles Dickens. However, Langdon was not interested at first, and turned down Clemens’s first proposal for marriage. Nevertheless, the two continued their correspondence, and were engaged by November 1868 and married fifteen months later in February 1870. The couple had four children and traveled together across the United States and Europe for Clemens’s work as a writer. Ill for much of her life, Olivia Langdon Clemens died in 1904 at the age of just fifty-eight while living in Florence, Italy, leading Clemens to move back to the United States to see her buried in her hometown of Elmira.
Clemens lived only a few years after his wife’s passing, dying in 1910 at the age of seventy-four, but in the last few years of his life, he composed what many scholars believe was a final love letter to Olivia Langdon: The Diaries of Adam and Eve (originally published separately as Extracts from Adam’s Diary, and Eve’s Diary in 1904 and 1906 respectively).
These “diaries” appear to be autobiographical. Not only do they reflect Clemens’s own views on religion, nature, and the geography of the American northeast, they also highlight Clemens’s relationship with his wife and the impact she had on his worldview. The story is something of a slow burn romantic comedy, with Adam initially finding Eve annoying and wishing she would leave him alone—seemingly more reflective of Langdon’s early perceptions of Clemens than of Clemens’s views of Langdon. Adam is perturbed by the way he finds his own worldview changing; Eve’s mere presence alters his views on nature, community, and sex, which he initially tries to rail against. Eventually, Adam grows to love Eve, too, and to love her children (though, initially, he was not sure what they were until they began to grow, and he saw that they were also humans), and to view Eve as his intellectual and communal equal, an apparent reference to Langdon’s support of the women’s equality movement and the impact that had on Clemens’s own views of women.
Eve’s diaries make vague references to God, particularly at the time of their “fall” from Eden, saying that it was Adam who “told on” her. Adam’s diaries never take God into consideration. Instead, he focuses on his experiences as an individual and his relationships with the beautiful new world around him, and with Eve and their growing family. This omission of the creator on Adam’s part reflects Clemens’s disregard for religion, yet he grants Eve the liberty to make her references. Langdon had come from a religious family and remained a believer in God despite her husband’s rejection of religious institutions; and despite this rejection, Clemens respected his wife’s beliefs. In the end, however, after Eve’s part in the story has ended, it is Adam who makes the final biblical reference, writing, “Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”
Historical context and biographical analyses aside, Mark Twain’s Diaries are a beautiful story of love and loss. They are a celebration of these things, and of overcoming our differences as human beings, learning from one another how to become more compassionate and understanding, and finding happiness and fulfillment through our connections with one another.
The $30,000 Bequest by