September 20 Sunday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Livy at Quarry Farm.
Dear, dear sweetheart, I have been thinking, & examining, & searching & analysing, for many days, & am vexed to find that I more believe in the immortality of the soul than disbelieve in it. Is this inborn, instinctive, ineradicable, indestructible? Perhaps so. I will put it out of my mind. Not that I object to being immortal, but that I do not know how to accommodate the thought, nor how to give it welcome. As to what to do with it—well, that I will not bother about, it must take care of itself. It at least cannot appal me, for I will not allow myself to believe that there is disaster connected with it. In fact, no one, at bottom, believes that; not even the priests that preach it.
I could not telephone you from the station before leaving, or I would have sent you my love & another good-bye; then I wrote a note on a card, & found that that would not go, at least for about a day. So I had to put in my half-hour unprofitably.
I shall hunt up Ben. Don’t you wish you could see her? I wish you could. But you have Jean & aunt Sue, & that’s a plenty.
Livy darling, I love you dearly & worship you.
I opened a newspaper of Jean’s to see what it was, but I have remailed [LLMT 344-5]. Note: Livy received the letter on Sept. 22 and answered it on Sept 23.
Sam’s notebook: “At Century Club a Mr. Derby. Was dining with the Secretary of State last week & started to quote a remark of mine made at Knickerbocker dinner 30 yrs ago about gouging out an eye & John Hay said ‘Wait, I can quote that remark’ —& did it” [NB 46 TS 24].
In Florence, Italy, George Gregory Smith wrote to Sam about possible Villas for lease, and added it to his Sept. 18 on the same subject. “I have now a fairly comprehensive idea of such Villas in and near Florence as may be acquired…” Smith hoped to find a Villa near Prof. Fiske on the Collina di Fiesole. He He then wrote of the Villa Quarto, which was the one Sam would lease, but thought the rent “out of all proportion to its real value” [MTP].
Smith then wrote to his mother:
“Mark Twain will not have the Papiniano as the Barlows after offering it by letter for 11 months from the 1st Decr. for 6000 lire deliberately went back on their word & refused it except for 6 mos at 4500 lire. They are very dishonest. However there are other villas—several of them” [Orth 30].