September 22 Wednesday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Mrs. Augusta M.D. Ogden in Tuxedo Park, N.Y.
Dear Mrs, Ogden: / It is very pleasant to have a note from you. It is in a sense resuming relations with Tuxedo, where I have had the ill fortune to offend Mrs. Kane—unintentionally, but it grieves me just the same. It is quite natural for you to suppose it troubles me to be ailing & confined to the house these latter months, but it isn’t really so. There are compensating advantages about it. I don’t have to go to banquets & make speeches, & I don’t have to do anything—not a thing. Not a thing except be prudent & not fatigue myself. It is an ideal life for a lazy person, & I was born lazy. When I found that Dr. Quintard was curing me, I discharged him. During 23 hours out of the 24 I am as comfortable as anybody. Not many ostensibly healthy people can say as much.
But I made a mistake yesterday afternoon. We had a concert here for the benefit of the village library. Team: Gabrilowitsch, David Bispham & Clara Clemens; I to introduce them. I ought to have done as commanded: done my introducing & gone back to my room. But there were 525 people in the house & I wanted to remain & get acquainted with them—which I did. It took several hours, & I am having the results to-day. But I had a good time!
All my tribe are packing off to New York to-morrow & next day, to be gone a week & see the great show. The whole family except the dog. It seems to me it isn’t any way to treat an orphan. My, but I would like to see that show!
Would you mind called [sic calling] Margery up on the telephone & saying to her—not profanely, but gently, softly, kindly—that the plumbing in this house is getting into a perfectly Clintonian condition of wreck & rupture & comminuted disrepair?
With kindest regards to all your house—& thereto I beg to be remembered to any friends in Tuxedo that have not forgotten me— / Most sincerely yours / ... [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Elizabeth Wallace.
Dear Betsy: / It is a lovely little book, & as rich in sumptuous imagery as is Shelley himself. The reading so moved me & charmed me that I read some Shelley under the inspiration of it. Thank you ever so much for sending it.
But the angel-fishes are not “company.” They are part of the family. They come, & dear me, how welcome they are! That little rascal will come, I think, when she gets located at Greenwich,—near by—where her next school is.
We got shut of those frauds & all settled up, finally & for good, on the anniversary of the day those other burglars raided the house. They got jail, poor devils; these didn’t, but deserved it.
We had a grand time here yesterday. Concert in aid of the little library. Team.
Gabrilowitsch, pianist.
David Bispham, vocalist,
Clara Clemens, ditto,
Mark Twain, Introducer of Team.
Detachments, & squads, & groups, & singles came from everywhere—Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield, & even from New York; some in 60 motor cars, some in buggies & carriages, & a swarm of farmer-young-folk on foot from miles around: 525 altogether. If we hadn’t stopped the sale of tickets a day & a half before the performance we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the library (not quite all had seats); we filled the loggia, the dining-room, the hall, clear to the billiard room, the stairs, & the brick-paved square outside the dining room door.
The artists were received with a great welcome, & it woke them up & I tell you they performed to the queen’s taste! The program was an hour & three-quarters long, & the encores added a half hour to it. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed an hour after the close, to shake hands & congratulate,
We had no dollar-seats except in the library, but we accumulated $372 for the Building Fund.
We had a tea at half past 6 for a dozen—the Hawthornes, Jeanette Gilder & her niece, etc.; & after 8 o’clock dinner we had a private concert & a ball in the bare-stripped library, until 10: nobody present but the team, & Mr. & Mrs, Paine, & Jean & her dog. And me. Bispham did Danny Deever & the Erlkönig in his majestic great organ-tones & artillery, & Gabrilowitsch played the accompaniments as they were never played before, I do suppose.
It having been decided that smoking is in no way responsible for my malady, I’m smoking as much as ever, now. / Affectionately / ... [MTP].