March 14 Sunday - In Redding, Conn, Sam finished his Mar. 11 to daughter Clara. Note the change in tone and Sam’s resignation derived from the investigation:
PS.
Sunday, Mch 14.
Nothing is as it was. Everything is changed. Sentiment has been wholly eliminated. All things in this house are now upon a strictly business basis. All duties are strictly defined, under several written contracts, signed before a notary. [bottom third of page torn away to cancel]
All services rendered me are paid for, henceforth.
But there is no vestige of ugly feeling, no hostility on either side. The comradeship remains, but it is paid for; also the friendship. Stormfield was a home; it is a tavern, now, & I am the landlord.
Duneka’s Report: He examined the box & made a list of its contents. After which, he asked for Ashcroft’s list & compared the two. They tallied exactly.
He examined the Mark Twain Co, & found that I am the Co in my own person, with full control.
Zoe Freeman becomes Vice Pres & Director, in place of Miss Lyon.
I sign all checks, in future.
Ashcroft assumes the remaining $1000 of money borrowed of me by Miss Lyon to renovate her house, & gives his notes (4) for $250 each.
Jesus, what a week!
Most lovingly / Father [MTP].
Note: The fact that Isabel Lyon was removed as director in the Mark Twain Co. and Ashcroft asked to give his notes for the money she owed, suggests that suspicion, at least, if not evidence of wrongdoing, remained. Hill writes:
“Since Isabel’s functions were now to be totally social, Clemens revoked her power of attorney to sign checks for him—a power she had possessed and exercised since May 7, 1907” [222].
Hill writes of a visit Sam and Albert Bigelow Paine made to Dr. Frederick Peterson:
On the fourteenth, Clemens and Paine called on the doctor to try to convince him that Jean’s presence at Stormfield would not upset either Jean or her father—‘he was reluctant to believe me. I fact didn’t believe either of us.” Peterson finally agreed, full of apprehension, to allow Jean to make a one-week trial visit to Redding, and Clemens” would write Jean she was now welcome [225]. Note: Sam did not write Jean this until Apr. 19. See letter in entry. Jean would log in at Stormfield on Apr. 26.
Pieter Bausch wrote a 26 page letter from Amsterdam to Sam, again thanking for the $50 that Sam had paid to use a letter from Bausch in his autobiography [MTP].
Alexander Ross MacMahon wrote from Norwalk, Conn. to invite Sam to a “Young men’s banquet some time during April” [MTP].
Thomas W. Saunders, a third generation tailor, wrote from Hartford, Conn. to Sam, horrified at all the black worn by American men, and wishing to promote silver-gray suits. He also complimented on FE [MTP].