January 3 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote to William D’Alton Mann.
I supposed its intent was malicious, but if Fiske wrote it it wasn’t. I went to the Court for a very definite purpose; but as I have not spoken to any one about it, no one knows what it was but myself.
Well, well, well, Colonel dear, what a flurry you did make among the other sheep when you plunged into that gilded fold in your wolf-skin, with blood & slander in your eye! I have admired you for a whole generation; from away back in those London days which your letter lights up in the night of my memory & makes visible again , I have watched you move on from crime to crime, from glory to glory, ever victorious, ever exultant, ever beating the jail & the sheriff, strewing thick your splendid path with the rags and fragments of the raped, the bilked & the blackmailed—& always, always I was rejoicing, always I was proud of you; but never have I admired you as I admire you to-day, never have I been distinctly grateful to you until now— ‘ now that you have instituted & established a New Aristocracy, the Aristocracy of Fear, & named & catalogued its membership, & appointed for its escutcheon the trembling slave kneeling under the uplifted lash and buying mercy at fifteen hundred dollars & glad to get it at the price!
Let them call you harsh names—don’t you mind; you have done a splendid public service, & everybody knows it in his private heart: you have elected the timid ones to inextinguishable laughter; you have furnished them a sore which will never heal; you have sold them a Book which will outlast Homer & be worth to their posterity a hundred times the price that was paid you for it—& will not be purchasable even at that handsome rate—a Book which will still be illustrious centuries after Shakespeare & the Breeches Bible shall have faded from the world’s interest & become vague tradition. (Excuse these enthusiasms, they are wrong from me Colonel dear!) Also, you have done the imperial City another great & precious service; for you have proved that within its wide boundaries there does exist one whole man, one man, whom you couldn’t scare. I saw him in the Court, & when your pals were through I heard him testify — oh, but that was a refreshing breath in a mephitic atmosphere! Surely you admire that man, Colonel; why, you cannot help it, for he is your creation; that is to say, you are the Columbus that discovered him after all the New York world had believed he didn’t exist. Give yourself no concern about the world’s censures, dear Colonel. To be censured, maligned, traduced—it is the common lot. I have not even escaped it myself; & yet where I have committed one crime you have committed a hundred. Moreover, we are old, now, & nothing ‘ matters much for you & me, oh, friend of happier days, comrade of the unreturning past! in a little while—oh, such a little while!—you will be borrowing a fan & I a halo. And yet it may not be that way—oh, who can tell, in this uncertain world? But no matter; let happen what may, I am yours for now, & then, & always / Mark [MTP]. Note: see Dec. 28, 1905 entry; Clemens observed Mann’s libel suit proceedings against Norman Hapgood.
In the evening Twain dined at the Players Club which made him an honorary member. The New York Tribune, p.7 reported the event (as did the Times and other city papers):
PLAYERS WELCOME MARK TWAIN.
———
A dinner was given for Mark Twain at the Players, No. 16 Gramercy Park South, last night by his friends to welcome him as an honorary member of that club. He has belonged to the Players since its foundation, but now his associates have made him a member for life. Brander Matthews presided. The guest of the evening rose as ever to the occasion, in which his humor and pathos mixed the laughter and tears. The other speakers besides Mr. Clemens were Richard Watson Gilder, Dr. John H. Finley, Frank O. Millet, Daniel Frohman, Evart J. Wendell, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, William Bispham and Charles Genung.
Paine writes of the evening and of a suggestion by Charles Harvey Genung (b. ca. 1863), which later would become a reality:
The night of January 5, 1906, [see note below] remains a memory apart from other dinners. Brander Matthews presided, and Gilder was there, and Frank Millet and Willard Metcalf and Robert Reid, and a score of others; some of them are dead now, David Munro among them. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the guest of the evening, who, by custom of The Players, is placed at the side and not at the end of the long table. He was no longer frail and thin, as when I had first met him. He had a robust, rested look; his complexion had the tints of a miniature painting. Lit by the glow of the shaded candles, relieved against the dusk richness of the walls, he made a picture of striking beauty. One could not take his eyes from it, and to one guest at least it stirred the farthest memories. I suddenly saw the interior of a farm-house sitting-room in the Middle West, where I had first heard uttered the name of Mark Twain, and where night after night a group gathered around the evening lamp to hear the tale of the first pilgrimage, which, to a boy of eight, had seemed only a wonderful poem and fairy tale. To Charles Harvey Genung, who sat next to me, I whispered something of this, and how, during the thirty-six years since then, no other human being to me had meant quite what Mark Twain had meant—in literature, in life, in the ineffable thing which means more than either, and which we call “inspiration,” for lack of a truer word. Now here he was, just across the table. It was the fairy tale come true.
Genung said: “You should write his life.”
His remark seemed a pleasant courtesy, and was put aside as such. When he persisted I attributed it to the general bloom of the occasion, and a little to the wine, maybe, for the dinner was in its sweetest stage just then—that happy, early stage when the first glass of champagne, or the second, has proved its quality. He urged, in support of his idea, the word that Munro had brought concerning the Nast book, but nothing of what he said kindled any spark of hope. I could not but believe that some one with a larger equipment of experience, personal friendship, and abilities had already been selected for the task. By and by the speaking began—delightful, intimate speaking in that restricted circle—and the matter went out of my mind.
When the dinner had ended, and we were drifting about the table in general talk, I found an opportunity to say a word to the guest of the evening about his Joan of Arc, which I had recently re-read. To my happiness, he detained me while he told me the long-ago incident which had led to his interest, not only in the martyred girl, but in all literature. I think we broke up soon after, and descended to the lower rooms. At any rate, I presently found the faithful Charles Genung privately reasserting to me the proposition that I should undertake the biography of Mark Twain. Perhaps it was the brief sympathy established by the name of Joan of Arc, perhaps it was only Genung’s insistent purpose—his faith, if I may be permitted the word. Whatever it was, there came an impulse, in the instant of bidding good-by to our guest of honor, which prompted me to say:
“May I call to see you, Mr. Clemens, some day?”
And something—dating from the primal atom, I suppose—prompted him to answer:
This was on Wednesday night, or rather on Thursday morning, for it was past midnight, and a day later I made an appointment with his secretary to call on Saturday [MTB 1260-62] Note: Paine initially misdates this as Jan. 5, even though he correctly identifies it as Wed. night into Thurs. a.m. Later printings of MTB correct this error and makes it Jan. 3.
“Yes, come soon.”
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Sewenhaupt. 9-
Mr. Clemens has just come home at midnight from a dinner at “The Players” where he was made an honorary member. It was a great night for all the rest of them, because he had stayed away so long—he came up the stairs in happy mood & a japanese paper frog hanging from his coat lapel by its hind leg. This he handed to me as I went down the stairs to greet him. He knew I would be up and waiting to register his safe return.
Mr. Robert Reid had come in a cab and away they went in a gay mood, and Reid brought him home. This was in celebration of his return after his enraged resignation about 3 years back, when an ignorant book-keeper had posted “S.L. Clemens, for non-payment of dues.” He has mentioned it to me several times and of his happiness when club members sent him a winsome invitation:
“Will ye no come back again?
Better love ye canna know”
and tonight he went back.
This Morning Mr. Clemens read aloud to me Jose Rizal’s wonderful poem “My last thought” written the night before his execution as a traitor, and then he read the poem he wrote after reading Rizal’s beautiful work. It is equally moving.
Then he answered Col. Mann’s letter [MTP TS 3-4; Gribben 582 in part] Note: Jose y Alonso Rizal (1861-1896). This date is duplicated with slight variations on two different sheet. What is used here is a combination of both.
The New York Times, p18, “Patrick’s Fight for Life,” announced, “Mark Twain Signs His Petition for Clemency,” asking Governor Frank Wayland Higgins (1856-1907) to stay the Jan. 22 execution of Albert T. Patrick (ca.1866-1940) for the murder of William Marsh Rice (1816-1900), multimillionaire businessman who bequeathed his estate (some ten million) to Rice University, Houston. This was one of the first sensational murder trials of the 20 century; Patrick was Rice’s attorney; he forged a will and killed Rice with chloroform. Patrick’s death sentence was commuted by Higgins in 1906 and in 1912 he was pardoned by New York Governor John Dix, due to doubtful or unreliable medical evidence and contradictory testimony given by Rice’s valet, Charles F. Jones, a co-conspirator who turned state’s evidence.
Interestingly, the prosecutor in the case was William Travers Jerome, a man Clemens had openly supported for district attorney. Patrick was ultimately disbarred in 1930. See NY Times, Feb. 12, 1940, p.10 “A.T. Patrick Dies; Won Murder Fight.”
Other newspapers reported more of the 100 or so who signed the petition to stay Patrick’s execution, including The Macon Daily Telegraph (Georgia) of Jan. 6, p.1 “Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain Sign.”
John G. Carlisle, President of the Kentuckians wrote to invite Sam to a dinner at Delmonico’s on Jan. 27 at 7:30 p.m. [MTP]. Note: Sam did not go; he was in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 27.
Laura K. Hudson wrote to Sam, recalling an article her husband read some 20 years prior, about Sam telling the story of three men who came to a miner’s hut and gave their names as Longfellow, Holmes and Whittier. She wanted to know the whereabouts of “this delightful child” of Sam’s muse [MTP]. Note: Sam replied on Jan. 12. Of course this was Clemens’ embarrassing Whittier’s Birthday dinner toast in Boston, Dec. 17, 1877.
Azel Stevens Roe, Jr. replied to Sam’s of Dec. 29.
It was a great pleasure to get it & find that I was not forgotten. I have been away in the Far West for fifteen years, but am now living at the dear old home where in the little summer house at the foot of the garden. You wrote your name on the window at my Mother’s request. It is still there & recalls to my mind when I see it those past happy hours.
I can never forget the charm of that night at your house in Hartford, when you read aloud to me, “Tom Sawyer” in manuscript, & after it was finished, at midnight, we went to the Piano & I played the Russian Hymn at your request & you sang all the fourteen verses [MTP]. Note: Roe had been a voice and music teacher in Virginia City in 1867 and a tutor in San Francisco in 1863, likely when he met Clemens. See Vol. I.
George Thomson Wilson sent Sam an engraved invitation to meet Mr. Patrick Francis Murphy, at Delmonico’s on Jan. 3 at 7:30 p.m. [MTP]. Note: this likely sent before Jan. 3 as an RSVP was requested.
I supposed its intent was malicious, but if Fiske wrote it it wasn’t. I went to the Court for a very definite purpose; but as I have not spoken to any one about it, no one knows what it was but myself.
Well, well, well, Colonel dear, what a flurry you did make among the other sheep when you plunged into that gilded fold in your wolf-skin, with blood & slander in your eye! I have admired you for a whole generation; from away back in those London days which your letter lights up in the night of my memory & makes visible again , I have watched you move on from crime to crime, from glory to glory, ever victorious, ever exultant, ever beating the jail & the sheriff, strewing thick your splendid path with the rags and fragments of the raped, the bilked & the blackmailed—& always, always I was rejoicing, always I was proud of you; but never have I admired you as I admire you to-day, never have I been distinctly grateful to you until now— ‘ now that you have instituted & established a New Aristocracy, the Aristocracy of Fear, & named & catalogued its membership, & appointed for its escutcheon the trembling slave kneeling under the uplifted lash and buying mercy at fifteen hundred dollars & glad to get it at the price!
Let them call you harsh names—don’t you mind; you have done a splendid public service, & everybody knows it in his private heart: you have elected the timid ones to inextinguishable laughter; you have furnished them a sore which will never heal; you have sold them a Book which will outlast Homer & be worth to their posterity a hundred times the price that was paid you for it—& will not be purchasable even at that handsome rate—a Book which will still be illustrious centuries after Shakespeare & the Breeches Bible shall have faded from the world’s interest & become vague tradition. (Excuse these enthusiasms, they are wrong from me Colonel dear!) Also, you have done the imperial City another great & precious service; for you have proved that within its wide boundaries there does exist one whole man, one man, whom you couldn’t scare. I saw him in the Court, & when your pals were through I heard him testify — oh, but that was a refreshing breath in a mephitic atmosphere! Surely you admire that man, Colonel; why, you cannot help it, for he is your creation; that is to say, you are the Columbus that discovered him after all the New York world had believed he didn’t exist. Give yourself no concern about the world’s censures, dear Colonel. To be censured, maligned, traduced—it is the common lot. I have not even escaped it myself; & yet where I have committed one crime you have committed a hundred. Moreover, we are old, now, & nothing ‘ matters much for you & me, oh, friend of happier days, comrade of the unreturning past! in a little while—oh, such a little while!—you will be borrowing a fan & I a halo. And yet it may not be that way—oh, who can tell, in this uncertain world? But no matter; let happen what may, I am yours for now, & then, & always / Mark [MTP]. Note: see Dec. 28, 1905 entry; Clemens observed Mann’s libel suit proceedings against Norman Hapgood.
In the evening Twain dined at the Players Club which made him an honorary member. The New York Tribune, p.7 reported the event (as did the Times and other city papers):
PLAYERS WELCOME MARK TWAIN.
———
A dinner was given for Mark Twain at the Players, No. 16 Gramercy Park South, last night by his friends to welcome him as an honorary member of that club. He has belonged to the Players since its foundation, but now his associates have made him a member for life. Brander Matthews presided. The guest of the evening rose as ever to the occasion, in which his humor and pathos mixed the laughter and tears. The other speakers besides Mr. Clemens were Richard Watson Gilder, Dr. John H. Finley, Frank O. Millet, Daniel Frohman, Evart J. Wendell, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, William Bispham and Charles Genung.
Paine writes of the evening and of a suggestion by Charles Harvey Genung (b. ca. 1863), which later would become a reality:
The night of January 5, 1906, [see note below] remains a memory apart from other dinners. Brander Matthews presided, and Gilder was there, and Frank Millet and Willard Metcalf and Robert Reid, and a score of others; some of them are dead now, David Munro among them. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the guest of the evening, who, by custom of The Players, is placed at the side and not at the end of the long table. He was no longer frail and thin, as when I had first met him. He had a robust, rested look; his complexion had the tints of a miniature painting. Lit by the glow of the shaded candles, relieved against the dusk richness of the walls, he made a picture of striking beauty. One could not take his eyes from it, and to one guest at least it stirred the farthest memories. I suddenly saw the interior of a farm-house sitting-room in the Middle West, where I had first heard uttered the name of Mark Twain, and where night after night a group gathered around the evening lamp to hear the tale of the first pilgrimage, which, to a boy of eight, had seemed only a wonderful poem and fairy tale. To Charles Harvey Genung, who sat next to me, I whispered something of this, and how, during the thirty-six years since then, no other human being to me had meant quite what Mark Twain had meant—in literature, in life, in the ineffable thing which means more than either, and which we call “inspiration,” for lack of a truer word. Now here he was, just across the table. It was the fairy tale come true.
Genung said: “You should write his life.”
His remark seemed a pleasant courtesy, and was put aside as such. When he persisted I attributed it to the general bloom of the occasion, and a little to the wine, maybe, for the dinner was in its sweetest stage just then—that happy, early stage when the first glass of champagne, or the second, has proved its quality. He urged, in support of his idea, the word that Munro had brought concerning the Nast book, but nothing of what he said kindled any spark of hope. I could not but believe that some one with a larger equipment of experience, personal friendship, and abilities had already been selected for the task. By and by the speaking began—delightful, intimate speaking in that restricted circle—and the matter went out of my mind.
When the dinner had ended, and we were drifting about the table in general talk, I found an opportunity to say a word to the guest of the evening about his Joan of Arc, which I had recently re-read. To my happiness, he detained me while he told me the long-ago incident which had led to his interest, not only in the martyred girl, but in all literature. I think we broke up soon after, and descended to the lower rooms. At any rate, I presently found the faithful Charles Genung privately reasserting to me the proposition that I should undertake the biography of Mark Twain. Perhaps it was the brief sympathy established by the name of Joan of Arc, perhaps it was only Genung’s insistent purpose—his faith, if I may be permitted the word. Whatever it was, there came an impulse, in the instant of bidding good-by to our guest of honor, which prompted me to say:
“May I call to see you, Mr. Clemens, some day?”
And something—dating from the primal atom, I suppose—prompted him to answer:
This was on Wednesday night, or rather on Thursday morning, for it was past midnight, and a day later I made an appointment with his secretary to call on Saturday [MTB 1260-62] Note: Paine initially misdates this as Jan. 5, even though he correctly identifies it as Wed. night into Thurs. a.m. Later printings of MTB correct this error and makes it Jan. 3.
“Yes, come soon.”
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Sewenhaupt. 9-
Mr. Clemens has just come home at midnight from a dinner at “The Players” where he was made an honorary member. It was a great night for all the rest of them, because he had stayed away so long—he came up the stairs in happy mood & a japanese paper frog hanging from his coat lapel by its hind leg. This he handed to me as I went down the stairs to greet him. He knew I would be up and waiting to register his safe return.
Mr. Robert Reid had come in a cab and away they went in a gay mood, and Reid brought him home. This was in celebration of his return after his enraged resignation about 3 years back, when an ignorant book-keeper had posted “S.L. Clemens, for non-payment of dues.” He has mentioned it to me several times and of his happiness when club members sent him a winsome invitation:
“Will ye no come back again?
Better love ye canna know”
and tonight he went back.
This Morning Mr. Clemens read aloud to me Jose Rizal’s wonderful poem “My last thought” written the night before his execution as a traitor, and then he read the poem he wrote after reading Rizal’s beautiful work. It is equally moving.
Then he answered Col. Mann’s letter [MTP TS 3-4; Gribben 582 in part] Note: Jose y Alonso Rizal (1861-1896). This date is duplicated with slight variations on two different sheet. What is used here is a combination of both.
The New York Times, p18, “Patrick’s Fight for Life,” announced, “Mark Twain Signs His Petition for Clemency,” asking Governor Frank Wayland Higgins (1856-1907) to stay the Jan. 22 execution of Albert T. Patrick (ca.1866-1940) for the murder of William Marsh Rice (1816-1900), multimillionaire businessman who bequeathed his estate (some ten million) to Rice University, Houston. This was one of the first sensational murder trials of the 20 century; Patrick was Rice’s attorney; he forged a will and killed Rice with chloroform. Patrick’s death sentence was commuted by Higgins in 1906 and in 1912 he was pardoned by New York Governor John Dix, due to doubtful or unreliable medical evidence and contradictory testimony given by Rice’s valet, Charles F. Jones, a co-conspirator who turned state’s evidence.
Interestingly, the prosecutor in the case was William Travers Jerome, a man Clemens had openly supported for district attorney. Patrick was ultimately disbarred in 1930. See NY Times, Feb. 12, 1940, p.10 “A.T. Patrick Dies; Won Murder Fight.”
Other newspapers reported more of the 100 or so who signed the petition to stay Patrick’s execution, including The Macon Daily Telegraph (Georgia) of Jan. 6, p.1 “Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain Sign.”
John G. Carlisle, President of the Kentuckians wrote to invite Sam to a dinner at Delmonico’s on Jan. 27 at 7:30 p.m. [MTP]. Note: Sam did not go; he was in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 27.
Laura K. Hudson wrote to Sam, recalling an article her husband read some 20 years prior, about Sam telling the story of three men who came to a miner’s hut and gave their names as Longfellow, Holmes and Whittier. She wanted to know the whereabouts of “this delightful child” of Sam’s muse [MTP]. Note: Sam replied on Jan. 12. Of course this was Clemens’ embarrassing Whittier’s Birthday dinner toast in Boston, Dec. 17, 1877.
Azel Stevens Roe, Jr. replied to Sam’s of Dec. 29.
It was a great pleasure to get it & find that I was not forgotten. I have been away in the Far West for fifteen years, but am now living at the dear old home where in the little summer house at the foot of the garden. You wrote your name on the window at my Mother’s request. It is still there & recalls to my mind when I see it those past happy hours.
I can never forget the charm of that night at your house in Hartford, when you read aloud to me, “Tom Sawyer” in manuscript, & after it was finished, at midnight, we went to the Piano & I played the Russian Hymn at your request & you sang all the fourteen verses [MTP]. Note: Roe had been a voice and music teacher in Virginia City in 1867 and a tutor in San Francisco in 1863, likely when he met Clemens. See Vol. I.
George Thomson Wilson sent Sam an engraved invitation to meet Mr. Patrick Francis Murphy, at Delmonico’s on Jan. 3 at 7:30 p.m. [MTP]. Note: this likely sent before Jan. 3 as an RSVP was requested.
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