Death of Langdon (1872)
Chapter 46 of "Rebel With a Cause: Mark Twain's Hidden Memoirs"
Chapter 46
Death of Langdon (1872)Our joy over Susy’s birth only lasted for two-and-a-half months. Langdon, our firstborn—who would turn out to be the only son we would have—died on June 2nd, 1872, at one-and-a-half years of age.
Not since the death of Henry had I felt so much guilt. I always had to wonder if my mother blamed me for luring her baby Henry onto the river. Now I did not want Livy to ever have the notion that the death of our baby boy was as a result of my inexcusable inattention. I resolved to keep the guilt that I felt over that buried within my breast.
No, I never could tell Livy of my part in that tragedy. What would she think of me? She loved Langdon so. I was afraid that she would never forgive me if she knew what I had done. Livy and I were always so close, and so honest with each other, but that I could not bring myself to divulge. I had to live with the pain and guilt and shame buried deep within me.
It was not until after Livy died that I would once in a great while unburden myself of my secret to a close friend that I trusted, but for the most part I continued to keep it hidden away in the deepest recesses of my soul. Until now, when I expose my still-festering wound for all to see.
As terrible as it is to admit it, my attempt at raw truth in this my last journal requires that I say that I killed my son.
Just as I did not directly kill my brother Henry in 1858, I did not directly or deliberately kill my firstborn son, either. Nevertheless, it was my fault that Langdon died. Here is how that happened:
One cold winter’s day, I took Langdon out for an airing in the coach; starting out, he was well wrapped about with furs and, in the hands of a careful person, no harm would have come to him. But I soon dropped into a reverie and, before I knew it, the arctic blasts had blown the blanket partly off Langdon and exposed his flesh.
By and by the coachman noticed this and I arranged the wraps again, but it was too late. The child was almost frozen. I hurried home with him. I was aghast at what I had done and I feared the consequences.
I have always felt shame for that treacherous morning’s work and have not allowed myself to think of it when I could help it; and I will endeavor to never think of it again.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Langdon was known for holding a pencil almost all of the time; had he grown up to be a writer like his father, people would have said that penchant of his was a foreshadowing of his future, and that following a literary career was to be expected, due to his “toy” of choice as an infant.***As to Twain saying he was the cause of his son’s illness, that is manifestly not true. Langdon was sickly from birth. Whether the “airing” Twain gave his son made matters worse to the point where his son died, nobody would be able to say for certain, but it’s noteworthy that Langdon’s death did not occur until months after that incident. Twain, though, had a conscience set on a hair trigger. He himself recognized that both his memory and his conscience were over-developed. In 1876, he wrote a sketch (The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut) about the problems of possessing an overactive conscience, wherein the protagonist’s conscience is personified and the guilt-stricken one decides to literally kill off his conscience.In an 1888 condolence letter to his boyhood friend Will Bowen, Twain was still remembering the loss of Langdon, as he wrote: “To lose a part of one’s self—well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.”After Twain’s death, his official biographer and literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine—knowing about the incident with Langdon and Twain’s feelings of guilt over it—sought out Livy’s sister for her opinion on the matter. Susan Crane said, “We never thought of attributing Langdon’s death to that drive. Mr. Clemens was often inclined to blame himself unjustly.”***Roughing It was published in 1872. Following on the heels of the immensely popular Innocents Abroad, its initial sales were better than those of Tom Sawyer four years later.The amazon page for “Rebel With a Cause: Mark Twain's Hidden Memoirs” is here.
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Why did Twain write an amusing, absurd, and satirical piece where he personified his own conscience and tried to "kill" it, when he was secretly burdened by this intense level of guilt and self-blame over his son's death only a few years earlier?
While it may seem contradictory for Twain to write a satirical piece about killing off his conscience while privately burdened by guilt and self-blame, humor and satire can serve as coping mechanisms and outlets for exploring complex emotions.
Twain's use of satire and absurdity allowed him to approach sensitive topics indirectly, often providing a way to address deep emotions and personal experiences in a more manageable manner. Through humor and satire, he could tackle challenging subjects, such as guilt and self-blame, while maintaining a certain level of distance and creative exploration.
Is it possible that Twain's satirical piece served as a form of catharsis or a way to process his feelings of guilt in a less direct manner?