June 7 Monday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Amelia Dunne Hookway.
Dear Mrs, Hookway: / The photographs have come, & they were a charming surprise to me, they so far exceeded my expectations. Certainly the staging & costuming of the piece were beautiful; & little by little, & bit by bit, I gathered the piece itself from the 85 letters of the children, much as one patches one of these incoherent puzzle-things together & finds that it’s a picture—a picture that is graceful, & orderly, & full of life & color.
The letters arrived at the right time—at the beginning of the first free afternoon I’ve had this year; so I sat down & read them all. Once or twice in my life, no doubt, I have received 85 letters in one mail, but I haven’t received 85 interesting ones in one mail until now.
With many, many thanks / Sincerely Yours / ... [MTP]. Note: see prior to Hookway.
Sam also wrote to Frances Nunnally in Catonsville, Md.
Yes indeed, you dear Francesca, I shall be proud to be a member of the Epsilon theta Psi & wear the pin at Commencement—& thenceforth.
Albert Bigelow Paine & I will go to New York tomorrow morning, & to Baltimore the next afternoon. Maybe you will be at the hotel when we arrive. I hope so. And maybe the entire four of us can go down to Catonsville together next morning. What do you think, dear. / Lovingly / ... [MTP; MTAq 260].
Sam also wrote to Elizabeth Wallace.
Dear Betsy—
I’m leaving home for 5 days, & the article will arrive here after I am gone, but I can tell you now that I’m not afraid to have you print anything you have written with me for subject—I don’t need to see it first. I know all about it anyway, because Margaret’s mother told me how charming it is. I saw her only a few days ago, when I went down to Irvington to see that dear little rascal play Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, She did it well, & I was proud of her.
My present journey is to St. Timothy’s School, at Catonsville, 20 miles from Baltimore, where Francesca, another of my Fishes, will graduate next Thursday.
And thanks for the Kipling verses! / Affectionately / ...
P.S. The MS. has arrived, & I unseal my just-finished letter to say how grateful I am that you are able to say such beautiful things about me, & to feel them, I thank you out of my heart.
I can suggest a correction or two, of no importance:
1. The Oxford degree is Litt. D.
2. My recollection is that the life of Henri IV was attempted 18 times—once for each year of his reign— pretty striking coincidence, you see!
On page 30 it may be well, for Miss Lyon’ sake, to strike out her name.
The Ashcroft's have wrecked their life—& so foolishly! Where do you think you could find a poor, & obscure, & inconsequential pair so high & influentially & promisingly situated as they were? They are in disgrace—in irremediable disgrace—& nothing to blame for it but their own greed & treachery. She was borne from her house sick, yesterday. Will she ever be brave enough to return? It is not likely. Such a little while ago her balloon was sailing in the blue & drenched with the sun - - - & now!
Their designs were large, & daringly planned, but we think we have squelched them in time.
I want to keep your MS 6 days if I may [MTP]. Note: Margaret Blackmer was the “little rascal” Clemens referred to.
Sam noted in his after Sept. 25, 1909 letter that on this day, “Ashcroft recognizes that the expert’s figures are damning.”
Dr. George S. Brown wrote from Birmingham, Ala, to Sam.
My Dear Mr. Clemens; - /When you so kindly permitted me to call on you about a year ago, merely because I happened to be a native of Hannibal , you did not allow me to thank you as I wanted to, for the great amount of good your books have given me from the time you wrote the first one. Of course you knew I would not do it well and you had already heard all the varieties. Really tho, in giving you thanks, I did want to claim the small distinction of having been a boy in Hannibal. I was a poet too (albeit a dumb one) for I remember at that age of fourteen (thirty five years ago) discoursing to the effect that your books had the power to lift me from any depth of melancholy and that they helped me to be good because they showed that to be good was to be sensible. The meaning of every sentence you have ever written is so crystal clear that my egotism suffers a little with the thought that I have little advantage over your other lovers in knowing The Cave, Soap Hollow, Hollidays Hill, The ferry Landing and that “the river road is a rocky one” and that I had an Aunt who talked like “Aunt Polly”. Still never a week goes by that I do not read about Tom and Huck because they bring back to me the smell of the blue-grass woods and the tropical growth of the riverside until my heart swells and the tears start. Even though your picture of it is all so clear that your friends on the under side of the world can see it as I do, I have one small distinction yet to treasure in that it is all interwoven with the infinite tenderness, the faces of lost childhood friends and the yearning sadness of my lost youth.
In the centuries to come Stratford-on-Avon will be visited as the grave of the only man who knew who wrote the Shakespeare plays and bought them cheap. You have immortalized Hannibal and for all time it will be the Mecca of all men and women who would do homage to the one who taught the sanest morality since Christ. Dear Sir I have to thank you for about the only state of mind I have that is worth having. I am very grateful to you and—I love you more than one man could tell another. I tell it to you as tho doing my devotions. / Most gratefully, affectionately and respectfully... [MTP]. Note: on the env. Sam: “Send copy of What is Man”; and by Jean Clemens: A letter worth keeping / Don’t destroy it / After you have / Read it, Father!”’; IVL: “Yes, a good letter / 1909”