March 3 Wednesday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Helen Kerr Blackmer (Mrs. Henry Myron Blackmer) in N.Y.C.
Dear Mrs. Blackmer:
I thank you ever so much for the promise conveyed through Ashcroft Bishop of Benares, to give us your presence during one-half of Margaret’s Easter vacation, & to fetch that little rascal along with you. I haven’t any more sense than to keep her pictures where I can’t help seeing them wherever I go: in the billiard room, in the library, in my bedroom; & so I am kept afflictedly reminded all the time that I haven’t seen her for centuries.
Miss Lyon has gone away for a rest, by the doctor’s command. She is in Hartford, & her mother is close by.
We have been having a rather wet summer this winter, but it has been very pleasant, just the same.
Thanking you again, I am / Sincerely Yours / ... [MTP].
Sam also wrote to daughter Jean, c/o Miss Edith Clapp in Montclair, N.J.
Jean dear, I think you will gain a large weather-advantage by the change, for I have always heard that Montclatr justifies its name, being on elevated ground & having a finer and wholesomer quality of air than is usually findable in the Atlantic regions South of Maine. I have visited several wealthy country-seats on Long Island, & was not attracted by any of them. Their water-glimpses were inane and interestless, & their land-surroundings were poor when natural, & a trifle poorer when artificialized. I am furnishing only my opinion, not other people’s. However, I don’t attach value to other people’s opinions about anything. I am glad I am not other people. They are ignorant & stupid, & I couldn’t bear to be that.
Why, dear heart, Wahnfried [cottage name in Montclair, N,J.] strikes me most pleasantly. It suggests healing rest & refuge & peace for tired & worried & over-worked brains; ships at anchor after hard & stormy voyages; heaven for poor scared folk who never went to church, nor contributed money to convert & degrade the heathen, & consequently were fully expecting to go where the rest of the Christians go.
Oh no, dear, that name is all right. I think it is beautiful.
Miss Lyon went away a week ago to Hartford to have several weeks’ rest near her mother, & try to beat a threatened breakdown. She thinks she is improving. She had been sick abed several weeks when she left here.
I am having a good time all by myself dictating to the stenographer (Autobiography) a long day-after-day scoff at everybody who is ignorant enough & stupid enough to go on believing Shakespeare ever wrote a play or a poem in his life, or even so much as a single line of literature of any kind, I am the only member of the human race I have ever much admired; & I have always been privately ashamed of the other members; but now that I’ve been reading half a dozen Shakespeare-Bacon controversy-books, I am more ashameder than ever. That is, ashamed of so-called great intellects that still believe in Shakespeare & employ their alleged large powers in trying to keep that convicted sham on his pedestal. As a transparent sham he can give Mary Baker G. Eddy the odds of the game & beat her.
With lots of love, dear heart,
Father [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Quick.
Well, dear, so you are going abroad in June. It’s the very best month for it, & you will have a good time. If I were 60 years younger I would pack my grip & go along with you. Louise Paine, M. A., went abroad a fortnight ago—her first trip, & she was wild with delight. She went with her father, who is my biographer, & they will go over the ground I traveled in the “Innocents Abroad” 42 years ago, & make notes.
Dorothy Butes, M. A., is coming abroad (to visit me—she’s a Londoner) next August. Francesca M. A., is going abroad in June, Hellen Martin, M. A., will go abroad in May; Dorothy Harvey, M. A. has already gone abroad. It’s a frisk-about lot, my angel-fishes. I can’t keep enough of them in the Tank to make a show.
Miss Lyon has been sick abed several weeks, & has gone to Hartford to have a good long uninterrupted rest with her kin, Indeed she needs it. We have had guests all the time & she has overworked herself.
Good-bye & good times to you dear. / With lots of love ... [IMTP; MTAq 251-2].
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.
Dear Annieanlouise:
Of course I would have answered your invitation immediately, one way or the other, as courtesy & custom require, but there wasn’t time, because your dance was to take place the evening of the 19, and I didn’t get your letter until 6 p.m., the 19th, so I knew you would not be expecting me. But I couldn’t have gone anyway, because railway travel kills me dead, & I have to avoid it; & indeed always do avoid it when it isn’t a life-&-death matter. I had a life-&-death matter on hand in New York at that time—an old, old, mouldy, & long-forgotten stand-over engagement for Feb. 20th which I wasn’t ever expecting to be called upon to fulfill. So I went down on the 20th & got stranded & didn’t get back for 8 days.
I was greatly interested in what you said about those wonderful little foreigners whose schools you & your father visited, for I have had friendly pleasant contact & acquaintanceship with a good many of their blood on the East Side, through being President of the Children’s Educational Theatre the past two or three years, & I have a vast admiration of them. I think we turn out some excellent little actors & musicians there—little folk whose English is faultless, yet I don’t suppose they can spell their own names without wrecking the alphabet, & of course neither they nor anybody else can pronounce them, Certainly not without prayer for strength & guidance, beforehand.
You must not forget to let me know when you are starting South in the Spring, for we want a visit out of you then. I am housekeeper, these past 2 weeks, & am winning credit for my work in that line. I have had 3 young-lady guests, & can get a recommendation from them. Also, I had my daughter here 4 days, & can get one from her, A good one, too—the best kind: that is to say, she is coming back day after tomorrow to endure it again. Benares helps me over the week-ends, & is learning,
Miss Lyon went to Hartford a fortnight ago, by the doctor’s orders, to be with her kin & have an extended & uninterrupted rest. She had been sick, abed several weeks, & was near to a nervous breakdown. She is improving, now.
Nein, ich fahre nicht nack Bermuda; | prefer Stormfield, in all weathers. / Very affectionately / … [MTP; MTAg 252-3]. Note: Sturgis’ invitation which Clemens received on Feb. 19 is not extant. During these stays by Clara Clemens, she investigated the household books, gathering “evidence” of Lyon’s pilfering of funds, by which Lyon was disrnissed.
David C. Sanford wrote from Redding, Conn. to Sam. A Civil Engineer and Surveyor he asked if Clemens ever had work in his line to write him. He gave a brief summary of his experience [MTP].