July 26 Wednesday – Jean Clemens’ 25th birthday.
In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Muriel M. Pears.
With great pleasure I inclose letter to Mr. Carnegie, & shall hope it will accomplish my desire. I was very glad to see your hand, for I was afraid you had got lost on your way home. We like it here beyond measure, & shall be sorry to go back to New York in November. That home there is all torn up again, from roof to cellar & from front to rear, to put in new heating-arrangements, & poor old Katy is staying there superintending—& roasting. Miss Lyon went down last week to drive her up here, but she wouldn’t come. You won’t freeze, next time, when you come—which we hope will be soon.
It is not so well with Clara. We get no letters any more, except from the trained nurse. It is one of those intervals that come in nervous prostration when a whole year’s progress vanishes in a week & the patient work must all be done over again.
Jean is prospering & sends you her best love. She spends half of her day in the saddle, the other half at my type-writing, & drives me about the country to suppers in the evenings—there are no dinners, & I don’t go to lunches, because I don’t eat in the daytime.
Come back soon! [MTP].
Sam also began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he added a PS to on July 27.
I ought to be clear our of patience with Clara, but I’m not, for I find she is sick & cannot attend to things. I sent her the letters which came from Joe & Harmony Twichell, telling her to return them immediately—oh, many days ago! I wanted her to see what a generous father she’s got, & what grateful praises people whom he has saved from dire distress can pour out on him. I didn’t tell her it was you, but by & by I want to tell her, when I have your consent, then I shall want her to remember the letters. I want a record there, as she is to prepare my Life & Letters when I am dead, & must be able to furnish the facts about the Relief-of-Lucknow-Twichell, in case I fall suddenly, before I get those facts with your consent before the Twichells themselves.
I read those letters with immense pride! I recognized that I had scored one good deed for sure on my halo-account. I hope the letters will come very soon, for I want to send them to you. I haven’t had anything that tasted so good, since stolen water melon [MTHHR 591-2]. Note: Sam had sent Clara the thank you letters from the Twichells for the $1,500 contribution that Rogers made secretly through Sam.
Paine writes of the “philanthropical ruse on Twichell”: Twichell, through his own prodigal charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew.
Rogers was a man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many of them of which the world will never know. In this case he said: “Clemens, I want to help Twichell out of his financial difficulty. I will supply the money and you will do the giving. Twichell must think it comes from you.
Clemens agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a record of the matter for his children, so that he would not appear in a false light to them, and that Twichell should learn the truth of the gift, sooner or later. So the deed was done, and Twichell and his wife lavished their thanks upon Clemens, who, with his wife, had more than once been their benefactors, making the deception easy enough now. Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude, and forwarded them to Clara in Norfolk, and later to Rogers himself [MTB 1241].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens isn’t working these days. He’s tired. He’s lying fallow. He has found the secret upon which to hang a lecture, and make everything he wants to say bear a relation to the anecdote just given—and that is the memory caprice, all the kinds of memory that there are—memory of touch, sight, sound, taste or smell and it makes a fine theme upon which to work [MTP TS 82].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Sent check today to Mrs. J.S. Coply Green, for rent of Dublin house for May, June, & July—$600” [MTP TS 24].
Thomas Nelson Page wrote from York Harbor, Maine to Sam that an old friend of his, Jeffrey Parsons, was one of Sam’s Dublin neighbors and “naturally he and I want him to know you.”Parson’s “foible” was prints and old books [MTP].
In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Muriel M. Pears.
With great pleasure I inclose letter to Mr. Carnegie, & shall hope it will accomplish my desire. I was very glad to see your hand, for I was afraid you had got lost on your way home. We like it here beyond measure, & shall be sorry to go back to New York in November. That home there is all torn up again, from roof to cellar & from front to rear, to put in new heating-arrangements, & poor old Katy is staying there superintending—& roasting. Miss Lyon went down last week to drive her up here, but she wouldn’t come. You won’t freeze, next time, when you come—which we hope will be soon.
It is not so well with Clara. We get no letters any more, except from the trained nurse. It is one of those intervals that come in nervous prostration when a whole year’s progress vanishes in a week & the patient work must all be done over again.
Jean is prospering & sends you her best love. She spends half of her day in the saddle, the other half at my type-writing, & drives me about the country to suppers in the evenings—there are no dinners, & I don’t go to lunches, because I don’t eat in the daytime.
Come back soon! [MTP].
Sam also began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he added a PS to on July 27.
I ought to be clear our of patience with Clara, but I’m not, for I find she is sick & cannot attend to things. I sent her the letters which came from Joe & Harmony Twichell, telling her to return them immediately—oh, many days ago! I wanted her to see what a generous father she’s got, & what grateful praises people whom he has saved from dire distress can pour out on him. I didn’t tell her it was you, but by & by I want to tell her, when I have your consent, then I shall want her to remember the letters. I want a record there, as she is to prepare my Life & Letters when I am dead, & must be able to furnish the facts about the Relief-of-Lucknow-Twichell, in case I fall suddenly, before I get those facts with your consent before the Twichells themselves.
I read those letters with immense pride! I recognized that I had scored one good deed for sure on my halo-account. I hope the letters will come very soon, for I want to send them to you. I haven’t had anything that tasted so good, since stolen water melon [MTHHR 591-2]. Note: Sam had sent Clara the thank you letters from the Twichells for the $1,500 contribution that Rogers made secretly through Sam.
Paine writes of the “philanthropical ruse on Twichell”: Twichell, through his own prodigal charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew.
Rogers was a man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many of them of which the world will never know. In this case he said: “Clemens, I want to help Twichell out of his financial difficulty. I will supply the money and you will do the giving. Twichell must think it comes from you.
Clemens agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a record of the matter for his children, so that he would not appear in a false light to them, and that Twichell should learn the truth of the gift, sooner or later. So the deed was done, and Twichell and his wife lavished their thanks upon Clemens, who, with his wife, had more than once been their benefactors, making the deception easy enough now. Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude, and forwarded them to Clara in Norfolk, and later to Rogers himself [MTB 1241].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens isn’t working these days. He’s tired. He’s lying fallow. He has found the secret upon which to hang a lecture, and make everything he wants to say bear a relation to the anecdote just given—and that is the memory caprice, all the kinds of memory that there are—memory of touch, sight, sound, taste or smell and it makes a fine theme upon which to work [MTP TS 82].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Sent check today to Mrs. J.S. Coply Green, for rent of Dublin house for May, June, & July—$600” [MTP TS 24].
Thomas Nelson Page wrote from York Harbor, Maine to Sam that an old friend of his, Jeffrey Parsons, was one of Sam’s Dublin neighbors and “naturally he and I want him to know you.”Parson’s “foible” was prints and old books [MTP].
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