July 1909

July — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Charlotte Teller.

My dear Charlotte Teller— / Your news is interesting, & if I were not a prisoner I would go to New York & see you & hear all about it, but that will have to be postponed a few months. I developed the “tobacco heart” last August by an over-fatiguing trip to New York in the hot weather, & I brought on another & severer attack six weeks ago by a trip to Baltimore. Since then I am a prisoner in the house, & do no work, & see nobody, & avoid matters of interest to me. Under these restrictions |I am getting along promisingly; at least endurably, & fairly comfortably, for a person 74 years old & not used to being subjected to constraint. But when the cold weather comes I suppose I shall have my liberty again; then I shall go & see you & hear the details of your good news, / Sincerely Yours / ... [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Elizabeth Wallace.

Dear Betsy, it was a difficult letter to write, but you did it well. You are silent where I also ought to have been silent, & not wounded you with harsh words about your friends where you had not asked for any confidences.

To change the subject: will you come? And bring or send Mr, Salisbury? For you & he are of the sort that can entertain themselves and be entertained by the household, counting me out—mainly. I can’t ask any other kind, for I went to Baltimore early in June, & the fatigue & the raw weather brought a return of what happened in August last. So I can stand but little fatigue, & am not down stairs much. I was warned to stop smoking; which I did, for two or three days, but it was too lonesome, & I have resumed—in a modified way: 4 smokes a day instead of 40. This will have a good effect. On the bank balance.

I have delayed scandalously in the matter of returning the MS, but I will have it mailed today or tomorrow sure. / Affectionately / ... [MTP].

Sam’s new guestbook:

The July issue of Harper’s Monthly contained William Dean Howells’ “The Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 313-16 about Twain: Tenney; “On the debate over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays; praises MT’s knowledge of the details, and his “Is Shakespeare Dead?” as ‘his humorous exposition of the mock combat,’ in which ‘the controversy is forever destroyed, and only the miracle of Shakespeare remains’” [47].

The July issue of Housekeeper Magazine contained an article titled, “Mark Twain ‘At Home’ at Stormfield.” The article included six photographs of Stormfield and Mark Twain [ebay #370164224823, Aug. 21, 2009].

The July issue of American Medicine included an article titled, “The Psychology of the Tobacco Habit,” p. 359-72. Tenney: “Focusing on the disregard of smokers for the comfort of others, takes as one example MT (who went off with Rudyard Kipling to an isolated area), smoking while waiting for the conferring of an honorary Oxford degree (366-7). ‘The psychological question is what was in the mind of Mark Twain which caused him to so forget, or disregard the etiquette of common decency as to force his habit, where he says he knew it was contrary to established custom’ (366). Moreover, ‘His tobacco conduct in that particular instance, is not however peculiar to him, not because of his peculiar characteristics; but, in his obdurate forcing of the tobacco habit upon defenseless Oxford, he was following the usual custom of the tobacco conduct which, apparently without so much as the suggestion of a thought of care as to the wishes of others, brazenly obtrudes upon the defenseless’ (367)” [MTJ Bibliographic Issue No. 4, Spring 2004 p. 9-10].