April 7 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam cabled John Y. MacAlister in London, receipt of £35 “in full payment for article entitled ‘Amended Obituaries,’ sold …to Lloyd’s Weekly” [MTP].
Sam also wrote a letter to John Y. MacAlister that he forgot to post and finished on May 8.
Yours [of Mar. 27] arrived last night, & God knows I was glad to get it, for I was afraid I had blundered into an offence in some way & forfeited your friendship—a kind of blunder I have made so many times in my life that I am always standing in a waiting & morbid dread of its occurrence.
Three days ago I was in condition—during one horribly long night—to sympathetically roast with you in your “hell of troubles.” During that night I was back again where I was in the black days when I was buried under a mountain of debt. I called the daughters to me in private council & paralyzed them with the announcement, “Our outgo has increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent greater than our income.”
It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning a gray & aged wreck, & went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way (unaccountable to a business man but not to me,) I had multiplied the totals by‘ 2. By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood!
Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a hideous dream & finds that it was only a dream. It was a great comfort & satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the Board again & say “You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of her bed & on her feet again—then we shall drop back to normal & be all right.”
Certainly there is a blistering & awful reality about a well-arranged unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide. He could refuse to re-examine the figures, they would revolt him so, & he could go to his death unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly. In any other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple: go where you can cut your cloth to fit your income. You can’t do that when your wife can’t be moved, even from one room to the next.
Clara spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs. Clemens 20 minutes twice a day & write her two letters a day provided I put no news in them. No other person ever sees her except the physician & now & then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw there was something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of me. But that is nothing—she hasn’t had anything but lies for 8 months. A fact would give her a relapse.
The doctor & a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, & in their belief she will by & by come out of this as good as new, substantially. They ordered her to Italy for next winter—which seems to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So Clara is writing a Florence friend to take a look around among the villas for us in the regions near that city. It seems early to do this, but John Bergheim thought it would be wise.
He & his wife lunched with us here yesterday. They have been abroad in Havana 4 months, & they sailed for England this morning. He said I would get back my original £5,000, & 10,000 shares in the International, he thought it would be business common-sense to sell 5,000 of them if ever their value rose to double what they cost me‘, & hold on to the other 5,000.
I am enclosing an order for half of my (your) Founders shares. You are not to refuse them this time, though you have done it twice before. They are yours, not mine, & for your family’s sake if not your own you cannot in these cloudy days renounce this property which is so clearly yours & theirs. You have been generous long enough; be just, now—to yourself. Mr. Rogers is off yachting for 5 or 6 weeks, & the shares are in his safe—I’ll get them when he returns.
The head of the house joins me in warmest greetings & remembrances to you & Mrs. Mac Alister [MTP]. Note: for some reason Sam forgot to post this letter, and did not discover it until May 8. He then made updates.
Sam also wrote to The Plasmon Syndicate. “Sir: Please transfer to J. Y. W. Mac Alister, Esq half of my Founders Shares, this authorization to be returned to me as soon as I can get & forward to you the certificates” [MTP]. Note: see NB entry below.
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
By George, if I had known! For this good while I have been afraid to go near you lest I shed a blue cloud over you. I had a pretty large one on hand. I supposed our expenses were away beyond what we could stand.
It was a mistake. I have examined the check-books several times, & it always come disastrously out the same way. It was because, for some reason not known to me,—I always multiplied the totals by 2. I have got it right, at last, & am not blue anymore, now. I find that since Mrs. Clemens was taken sick our expenses are only $8000 or $9000 a year more than we can afford. I do not mind that—at least I don’t mind it enough to be blue about it. If you were back now, I wouldn’t be afraid to infect you. We had a conspiracy of physicians the day you sailed, & they decided that Mrs. Clemens must spend next winter in a moderate climate—Italy. That looks as if they expect her to be able to stand the voyage by fall. I believe she is making actual progress at last. The idea of going abroad has cheered her up & is good for her, for she is not deceived about our expenses here, in spite of all our lying. She says I will not be satisfied unless I can take you along, but I have told her the same doctors that send her can send you, & I will attend to it. Clara is writing to a friend in Florence to find a villa for us 3 miles outside the city, & I will tell her to get two—one for you. A whole restful winter there will set you up & restore your youth; & we can dine together back & forth, lumber around & lampoon the Old Masters & have a time. I’ll have it all arranged pretty soon.
I have been attending one of the exhibitions of Hutchison’s electrical invention for making the deaf hear,
I wished I could pull up Mary Stover out of my long-vanished boyhood & have her tested. She had the reputation among us schoolmates of being very “deef”—as we called it. But John Buckner, who was well enough, may be, in the commonplaces of fact, but didn’t know any more about auricular science than God knows about astronomy, came to me excited over a wonderful discovery, one day, & said Mary Stover could hear as well as anybody. I dissembled my astonishment & said it was a lie—(This to encourage him to explain)—& he said:
“I was standing by the window with her at recess, & a bee stung me & slipped a little small fart—the weeniest teeniest little small fart, only just a kind of a chirp, you know—& said to myself ‘I’m thankful to God she’s deaf,’ but felt pretty sick & uncertain, just the same, & held my breath & watched her. She stood solid as much as a minute, then she sort of gasped, & turned her head away & said to herself very soft like a whisper, ‘Phe-e-w’—so then I knew she’d heard it. She ain’t any deafer’n you are.”
Oh, give my love to the boys & have a good time! I wish I was there, buried under apple dumplings & nobody to help dig me out [MTHHR 521-3]. Note: Miller Reese Hutchinson (1876-1944), American inventor. He was later involved with Thomas A. Edison and is considered the father of the hearing aid, the “Acousticon” which he developed in 1902.
Sam’s notebook : “Sent MacAlister an order for ‘half of my Founders shares’ the order to be returned to me when I send him the certificates—which I can do with Mr. R. [Rogers] returns. Mailed it May 9” [NB 46 TS 14]. Note: See July 1 NB about Founders shares.
W. Haldane wrote from Detroit Michigan to Sam. “Similarity of sentiment re Eddyism makes me bold, tho’ doubtful whether that gives me any right to approach you. I have been studying the ‘bowells of hell’ for two years.” Haldane wanted Sam to give “the enemy another black orb!” [MTP].
Frederick W. Peabody wrote from Boston to Sam, thanking him for putting him on the waiting list for a Christian Science book when it came out (which would not be until 1907). He enclosed a note from Henry Lincoln Case, NYC, commenting favorably on Sam’s North American Review article and observing: “‘Mother’ seems to be in a box.” Case had been a member of the Christian Science church in Boston [MTP].