May 23 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Rogers” [NB 44 TS 11].

At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote a postcard to Channing H. Cook of the American Plasmon Co., N.Y.C. “You were quite right, Dr. Cook. It was Dr. Lockwood“ [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Rudyard Kipling, apologetic he hadn’t been much help in Kipling’s suit against Putnam & Co.

After waiting in the Court room an hour & a half for my turn on the witness stand, nothing was accomplished but my identification. I believe it was proven, to every one’s satisfaction, that I was really the person I professed to be—but there all progress ended. Our lawyers were never able, afterward, to so frame the next question as to get the court to allow it. It was asked in four different ways, & consisted, each time, of a sentence with 5 parentheses & 7 subjects in it & not a comma; & it was ruled out, every time. Then the lawyers gave it up, & called me down.

I was hoping they would make [Will] Clemens’s idiotic article a prime feature of the complaint & allow me to read that impertinence to the jury. A great pity the chance was lost. That thing, judiciously read, would have gotten Clemens hanged (& the Putnam edition damned, maybe.)

Sam related the three volumes Will M. Clemens had prepared and asked him to edit. He wrote he’d warned Clemens “not to let a line of that rubbish get into print.” Between Jan. 3 and May 1 Sam claimed three gout attacks, “& spent 21 days in bed,” but the time was not lost as he’d read Kipling stories and poems “over & over again, & read but 3 books by other people” [MTP].

Note: Kipling was summering in England between trips to S. Africa. Carrington writes of the Putnam lawsuit:

The legal proceedings were not completed until 1901, when the United States Court of Appeal gave judgment, with costs, for the defendant (Putnam). The case, which cost Kipling over £1000, hardened his prejudice against the publishing trade, even though Putnam decided not to proceed with the Brushwood edition [223 note].

Sam also sent seven postcard orders dated from Oct. 22, 1900 to May 23, 1901 for Plasmon to the Plasmon Co. .Evidently these were orders placed directly to Sam

Franklin G. Whitmore wrote a long letter to Sam—he’d rec’d Sam’s of May 21 about the 1890 Pratt & Whitney bill. He had interviewed John Robinson on the matter, son of the late Henry Robinson (Sam’s old Hartford attorney), but they could not find a letter from Henry stating that Clemens did not owe the amount. However, Whitmore could find nothing making Sam personally liable for the amount, though he was also certain it had never been paid. He would try to look up Charley Davis (assistant to James W. Paige) on the issue [MTP]. Note: discussed in MTHHR 461-2n2.