Heart and Soul Twain : Author’s Secret Letters to His Sweetheart Will Soon Be Published

Some of Mark Twain’s most important writing never went to a publisher, but to his sweetheart.

Persuading the strong-minded Olivia Langdon and her family that his rootless, flamboyant past was no argument against marriage was not something the author of “Huckleberry Finn” took lightly, said Victor Fischer, a co-editor of a new collection of Twain letters.

In daily love letters to her, Twain “really tries to explain himself in a way that is not simply getting business done, but revealing himself to her,” Fischer said. “He had so much at stake.”

Fischer, a member of the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley, edited the upcoming “Mark Twain’s Letters: Volume 3” with colleague Michael Frank.

Twain, who was born Samuel Clemens, met Olivia Langdon’s brother, Charles Langdon, on an ocean cruise in 1867.

“Before Charlie had left on the cruise, he and his sister had exchanged miniatures of one another and--this everyone swears is a true story--Clemens saw the miniature of Charles’ sister aboard the ship and was struck by her beauty, sensitivity, whatever, and fell in love,” Fischer said.

Back in New York, Twain got his first look at the miniature’s original and later wrote that he had all he could do “not to declare himself on the spot,” Frank said.

He popped the question in September, 1868, but was promptly turned down by Langdon, who took a dim view of his rovings. She did, however, give him permission to write--as a brother.

“He set about through his letters essentially winning her by persuading her that he was upright and serious and . . . wanted her to help him better himself,” Frank said.

By November, 1868, they had an informal understanding that their relationship was deepening, but he continued to make his case.

“It is my strong conviction that, married to you, I would never desire to roam again while I lived,” he wrote to Langdon, who at 23 was 10 years his junior.

Triumph came with an engagement two months into 1869.

“She said she never could or would love me--but she set herself the task of making a Christian of me,” Twain wrote triumphantly to his sister after the engagement. “I said she would succeed, but that in the meantime she would unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit & end by tumbling into it--& lo! the prophecy is fulfilled.”

Separated by Twain’s heavy speaking schedule, the two continued to write on a near-daily basis until marriage in February, 1870.

The new anthology, which covers 1869, is the latest production of the Mark Twain Project, which is working on a vast collection of papers willed to the university in 1962. Editors hope to complete 73 volumes by 2009, but currently face funding cuts.

“We’ve spent the past 25 years on a year-to-year basis, but this is the most precarious situation we’ve ever had,” Frank said.

The courtship was conducted in secret, well away from gossip columns, and the letters were sent covertly to Charles Langdon.

Cousin Harriet Lewis helped out by pretending to be the object of Twain’s affections, a family joke that led to Twain’s writing a funny “Dear John” letter in January, 1869, that trenchantly assured Lewis that “a broken heart won’t set you back any.”

But to his “dearest Livy,” Twain was all tenderness.

The Twains stayed in love until Olivia’s death in 1904, a loss that was a source of bitterness for the remaining six years of Twain’s life, Frank and Fischer said.