Clemens and his wife traveled to Boston for one of those happy fore-gatherings with the Howellses, which continued, at one end of the journey or another, for so many years. There was a luncheon with Longfellow at Craigie House, and, on the return to Hartford, Clemens reported to Howells how Mrs. Clemens had thrived on the happiness of the visit. Also he confesses his punishment for the usual crimes:
I “caught it” for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her
coffee, when it was a “good deal better than we get at home.” I
“caught it” for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing
her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS.
when the printers are done with it. I “caught it” once more for
personating that drunken Colonel James. I “caught it” for
mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and
when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I
had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that
if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the
madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she
said:
“How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er—”
“Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a
man who—”
She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I am glad of that, because
it saved the babies.
Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not advance by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and it used to give him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when that sweet presence had gone out of his life, to tell the way of it, to confess over-fully, perhaps, what a responsibility he had been to her.
He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between their bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving, accompanying these trying things with language intended only for the strictest privacy; how presently, when he discovered a button off the shirt he intended to put on, he hurled it through the window into the yard with appropriate remarks, followed it with another shirt that was in the same condition, and added certain collars and neckties and bath-room requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people were going by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a slight cough and turned to find that the door was open! There was only one door to the bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her. He felt pale and sick, and sat down for a few moments to consider. He decided to assume that she was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if he had nothing on his conscience. He attempted it, but without success. Half-way across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last terrific remark. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul. The humor of it struck him.
“Livy,” he said, “did it sound like that?”
“Of course it did,” she said, “only worse. I wanted you to hear just how it sounded.”
“Livy,” he said, “it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don't know the tune.”
Yet he never willingly gave her pain, and he adored her and gloried in her dominion, his life long. Howells speaks of his beautiful and tender loyalty to her as the “most moving quality of his most faithful soul.”
It was a greater part of him than the love of most men for their wives, and she merited all the worship he could give her, all the devotion, all the implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and beauty of character.
She guarded his work sacredly; and reviewing the manuscripts which he was induced to discard, and certain edited manuscripts, one gets a partial idea of what the reading world owes to Olivia Clemens. Of the discarded manuscripts (he seems seldom to have destroyed them) there are a multitude, and among them all scarcely one that is not a proof of her sanity and high regard for his literary honor. They are amusing—some of them; they are interesting—some of them; they are strong and virile—some of them; but they are unworthy—most of them, though a number remain unfinished because theme or interest failed.