April 7 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to John Y. MacAlister in Leysin, Switzerland.
Your very delightful brother [Dr. Donald MacAlister] arrived a day or two ahead of your letter [See Apr. 3] in which you suggested a consultation between him & our doctor—a thing which could easily have been arranged, I am sure, if the letter had come in time. No, in the circumstances it couldn’t, for our doctor did not come that day, & it turned out that he was abed, with a temperature of 104. He is out & on his feet again, to-day, looking pretty well bleached.
What am I doing? The same I have been doing for 20 months: watching the madam. That and (these past 3 months) dictating my autobiography 2 hours a day. Part of the afternoon is put in with the pen, on one or the other of a couple of very lengthy novels (both begun 2 years ago & not liable to be finished this good while).
However, there is a friend of mine who told me last night about a company which he hopes to float in London in June or July—capital to be very large. There will be Founders shares. I will ask him if they are to be acquired by friends of mine for serviced rendered in the flotation, & will let you know. And I will ask if Mr. C. of New York, banker & millionaire, a very shrewd man, is in it. (Spends half of each year here, & is here now.) I know him. The idea is, to kill Great Britain’s coal trade with Italy, France, & Germany by furnishing a very cheap & competent & exhaustless fuel drawn from Tuscan sources. If you feel interested, I will post you further when I can.
I note your remark, “I will put aside for you 500 or 1000 shares (whichever you prefer), & if, at the end of a year, they are paying, or are worth their par value (in the market), you can pay for them with Plasmon Founders Shares—say at the rate of 3 P. F.’s for 1000 £s.”
Good—& very much obliged. Please devote 3 of the P. F.’s to that purpose.
Your brother should have stayed longer; the weather is heavenly now [MTP]. Note: Sam quotes from Macalister’s not extant Apr. 3; see entry.
Sam’s notebook: “To-morrow. Clara’s first appearance before the public tonight / [Horiz. Line separator] / Countess requires Giovanni banish Lyons. Our priest provides quarters / [Horiz. Line separator] / Countess notified the man to whom she pays a franc a day that she will stop his job if he accepts food for his family from our kitchen again” [NB 47 TS 9].
Two copies of the first American edition of Extracts of Adam’s Diary, Translated from the Original MS were deposited with the Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.27, Oxford ed. 1996]. The plates were in use until 1914. Frederick Strothman (1879-1958) illustrated. Eve’s Diary would follow in June 1906.