December 20 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote per Isabel Lyon to Laurence Hutton.
I don’t lecture any more, otherwise I should say yes to that proposition, with pleasure. I never intend to stand on a platform again until the sheriff requires it.
That photographer sent me a very fine picture of myself, and I wrote and asked him if he could furnish one half a dozen cabinet size. When you see him I wish you would ask him if he got my letter. I’m ever so sorry to hear that you are in such unsatisfactory case, and I do hope you will find somebody who can improve it.
Mrs. Clemens makes a little progress we think; it is unspeakably slight and slow, but Clara believes it is really progress, and she is with her mother four hours every day. In this she is more fortunate than Jean and I; we have not seen the Madame since summer. In one detail I can perceive progress myself; within the last month, certainly within the last fortnight. She has become able to read a little; this necessarily shreds away some of the clouds that shadow her atmosphere. She sent for your personal and Dog book two or three days ago, and it went to her room before breakfast this morning [MTP]. Note: Sam liked the photographs made of him at Woodrow Wilson’s Inauguration on Oct. 25. the Photographer is not named. A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs (1898) by Laurence Hutton.
Fatout [MT Speaking 672] lists a reading for Sam at Mrs. Bartholomew’s in N.Y.C. for this date, likely taken from the following NB entry:
Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Bartholomew 640 Madison ave? / At Mrs. Dimock’s house. Russian Passport & Was it Heaven? Or Hell? Mrs. D’s house 25 E 60th, cor. Madison ave. / Dine with James Goodwin 11 W 54th stay all night. / Reading said to begin 8.45” [NB 45 TS 35]. Note: Sam gave more than one reading for Mrs. Bartholomew’s charity, not specified; see May 1 entry.
William Digby wrote from London to Sam, complimenting him on his story “Was it Heaven? or Hell?” in the Dec. issue of Harper’s [MTP].
Sam’s remembrance of a good friend, “Thomas Brackett Reed” ran in Harper’s Weekly. It was later published in Europe and Elsewhere (1923). In full:
“Tom Reed was frank, sympathetic, affectionate, sturdy, logical, articulate, and humorous. He made a speech at the author’s birthday dinner and suddenly died a few days later. It seems incredible that he is gone. The author will not divulge here in reminiscence but will simply praise Reed and say farewell” [taken from Gale 1: 579].
James Montague’s article/interview ran in the New York Evening Journal , p. 5. Budd: “SLC comments on several subjects such as fossils and Monte Carlo; illustrated by Homer Davenport [Budd, “Supplement” ALR 16.1 (Spring 1983) 71]. Budd’s no. 188a. Also in MTCI 474-80.