I am in love beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in the world. I don’t suppose she will marry me. I can’t think it possible. She ought not to. But if she doesn’t I shall still be sure that the best thing I ever did was to fall in love with her, and be proud to have it known that I tried to win her.

There were tremendous obstacles in the way. Although now so admired as a leading American writer and humorist, Clemens had had a rough life working and tramping in the Mississippi region, and traces of it survived in his manner ever after. He was casual and irreverent; he didn’t give a fig for parlour protocol, and would make himself a terror to maiden ladies by putting his feet up on their tables and draping his loose-jointed legs over their chairs. He was also an incorrigible prankster, and nothing was safe from his sense of the ridiculous. More seriously, he had no position and poor prospects. Stern Mr Langdon was not about to entrust his daisy-flower to such an unpromising reprobate.

But Clemens was a smart man. As soon as his feelings for Olivia were noticed on a visit, he was asked to leave. But someone had removed the bolts from the back seat of the family station wagon — so when the horse moved off, the passenger was tumbled out of the back. His resulting `concussion’ meant that he had to be carried back into the house, and nursed back to health — by Olivia!

Olivia herself was soon won. But her father was unconvinced. Finally he proposed that Clemens should provide some character references to establish his suitability as a husband. Clemens wrote at once to half a dozen worthy citizens who had been on good terms with him earlier in his life.

Naturally any friend of Clemens‘ would share his roistering sense of humour. All his referees obliged with outrageous replies stressing his rambunctious history and claiming that he would make about the worst husband since Bluebeard. Clemens was summoned to the Langdon house to hear the verdict passed on him by his ’supporters’. In his own words:

`I couldn’t think of anything to say. Mr Langdon was apparently in the same condition. Finally he raised his handsome head, fixed his clear and candid eye upon me, and said: “What kind of people are these? Haven’t you a friend in the world?”

I said, “Apparently not.”

Then he said, “I’ll be your friend myself. Take the girl. I know you better than they do.” ‘

And so the day was won. Mr Langdon never had cause to regret his act of faith in the disreputable Clemens, who as Mark Twain went on to carve out a great literary career for himself with the same humour and dash that he had used to win the woman he loved, and whom he never ceased to love.

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