October 22 Monday – At the Hotel Earlington in N.Y.C., Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich: “It is lovely of you to welcome us. And it would be lovelier still to see you, which we hope to do tomorrow at poor Warner’s funeral” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to John Kendrick Bangs that after Wednesday he expected some free time from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. “Do you think Mr. Nicholson could do me up in one sitting, or two on a squeeze?” [MTP].
Notes: Bangs was editor of the Departments of Humor for all three Harper’s magazines and from 1899-1901 served as active editor of Harper’s Weekly. Sir William Nicholson (1872 -1949) English illustrator for the magazine, and one of the most influential British artists of his time, best known for his poster design and print making. Harper’s wanted a portrait of Mark Twain by Nicholson. In Twelve Portraits. Second Series (1902) Sam inscribed his own portrait, a colored woodcut: “Wm. Nicholson 1902,” suggesting this was done later [Gribben 507]. See portrait insert (which does not do the art justice).
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, that he expected to see him the next day (Oct. 23) at Charles Dudley Warner’s funeral; they would only be in Hartford “but an hour or two” and so could not accept his “kind invitation” [MTP]. Note: in his Oct. 26 to Sylvester Baxter, Sam wrote that he’d seen Baxter and the Farmington Ave. house. See entry.
Sam also wrote to an unidentified man on Hotel Earlington stationery.
“I would gladly comply, but I have not the article. I have intended to have one these many years, but have neglected to materialize the purpose” [Live Auctioneers / Swann galleries, Nov.22, 2005, Sale 2058, Lot 2058306, ].
Sam also wrote to Henry Joseph Haskell (1874-1952) of the Kansas City Star, which he would be editor of (1928-1952).
I suppose we are all poets when we are under the stress of deep feeling, and that when the stress comes often we devote ourselves to poetry instead of prose….I am proud of your recognition and am happy in it, but I realize that my intervals are of the wildest and that consequently I am distinctly condemned to prose. Still, I am well satisfied, for I was born indolent, and even the indolent can dig prose and get recreation and entertainment out of it [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote from NY on Star letterhead, provided by Haskell, who won the Pulitzer in 1944. At Oberlin College, Haskell was a classmate of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
As per the NY Times of Oct. 21 (above), a meeting took place between Charles Frohman, Sydney Rosenfeld, and Mark Twain, relative to collaboration on a play, The End of the World, which had been agreed to in Vienna on Apr. 22, 1898. The play, about a strugging astronomer, was not produced in Sam’s lifetime.
William F. Dowell for Author’s Press Clipping sent a form letter from N.Y.C. to solicit Sam’s business [MTP].