June 18 Tuesday – At 4:50 p.m., Sam waited at the Holland House, an eleven-story marble hotel at 5th Ave. and 30th Street, for H.H. Rogers. Urban H. Broughton, Rogers’ son- in-law, came to advise Sam that Rogers was still in Fairhaven and would not return “for a day or two yet” [June 19 to Rogers].
At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote to Frank Fuller.
Your book arrived yesterday & I had a good time with it last night, & enjoyed it. It carried me back 50 years, to a time when I knew that life very well, away out West.
If you know of any nice person who wants to get rich by drawing “signed” ogres for nothing, enclosed is his chance. Maybe Aldrich would like to try the shaky hand of honorable age upon it [MTP].
Note: no mentions of a book by Fuller were found; it may be that this was a book that mentioned Fuller when he was acting governor of Utah as well as Mark Twain; JoDee Benussi suggests one possibility, the 1901 volume The Overland Stage to California: personal reminiscences etc. by Frank Albert Root: both Fuller and Twain are mentioned, Twain having to do with meeting the outlaw Jack Slade. Gribben p. 392 lists one other book sent to Sam by Fuller: Poems by Albert Laighton (1859) which doesn’t fit the bill for a tome that would carry him “back 50 years.”
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore enclosing a check to pay the taxes on the Farmington Ave. house. He closed with the advice that they would “leave for Saranac Friday morning, June 21st” [MTP].
Sam also inscribed a copy of HF to Frank Willard: “Mr. Frank Willard / with the kindest regards and / best wishes of / The Author. / June 18, 1901” [MTP].
Insert: Holland House Hotel.
Check # Payee Amount [Notes]
243 Mr.H. Applebaum 3.56
Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), American artist, naturalist and teacher who had spent two days in 1882 at the Clemens home drawing Mark Twain, wrote a several page letter to Sam.
“My Dear Mr. Clemens / During my six months just spent amidst the most glorious art of Italy, and this to a painter means immeasurable soul-food, my first most vital joy has been your, “‘To the Person Sitting in Darkness’” [MTP]. Note: Sam replied on June 27. Thayer focused on the issues in Sam’s paper and admonished Sam he didn’t need to write. He also recalled and prized the two days he spent drawing Mark Twain at the Hartford home (not yet dated but sometime after Feb. 24, 1882, the artwork to be used in the Sept. 1882 Century Magazine.