April 6 Friday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Mary E. Bell: “When Mr. C. came home from the theatre he wrote this sentence hoping it might be made useful among her other testimonials Re—Mrs. Bell” [MTP]. Note: evidently Bell had performed on stage.
Sam also replied to John Greenall in Leeds, England who had written Mar. 27:
How things do get mixed in this world! I wrote the extravagant chapter you speak of in ’97 or ’98 in Vienna at a time when Christian Science was so new to me that I had not studied it at all, & was only interested to play around in the shallows with it & get a moment’s fun out of it. This is my dim recollection of the time, the circumstances & the article. Three or four years later here at home, I took up the matter again & actually studied the history of Christian Science, its claims & pretensions, & its bible; with the result that if I had had any hostility toward Christian Science itself previously, I lost that & in its place conceived a vast admiration for & detestation of M . Eddy. M . Eddy stole “Science & Health.” She is an ignorant twaddler. She can’t write English; she can’t write anything above nursery grade, she hasn’t a vestige of reasoning power. But she has extraordinary courage. She has on her shoulders the best business head in Christendom—bar none. While obscure, & without money or influence, she stole Quimby’s book & upon it she built her Science, organized its ancient & powerful forces compacted the whole into a religion, & hitched the religion & Christianity & herself to the Holy Family; & she has moved successfully forward from that day to this toward her chosen goal—recognition as a god, & founder of a religion which may last 3000 years & probably will. She has accomplished more in 30 years than any other founder achieved in a century.
I have said all this in detail, & it was ready for publication three years ago. My publishers have always been doubtful about the judacity of publishing the book. My interest in books perishes when I have finished writing them. My publishers may take their time, the matter has no interest for me. I have never tried Christian Science myself, but it is not because I am prejudiced against it. I have no prejudices. I am quite willing to experiment with anything that comes along, if I have occasion & there is opportunity. I have often tried hard to persuade my family of invalids to try Christian Science, but their prejudices were too strong for me.
I have not taken back anything I have said about Christian Science; my unpublished chapters are not hostile to it, but only to M . Eddy who is a great & shining & impressive fraud. /Yours Sincerely … [MTP].
Clemens’ A.D. for the day: Mr. Clemens’s present house unsatisfactory because of no sunshine—Mr. Clemens meets Etta in Washington Sq.—Recalls ball-room in Virginia City 44 years ago—Orion resumed; he invents wood-sawing machine; invents steam canal-boat; his funny experience in bath-tub. Bill Nye’s story—Orion’s autobiography—His death [MTP Autodict2].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
On my knees before the fireplace in Mr. Clemens’s room, I cleaned his pipe while he talked to me of Joan of Arc & Peterson pipes & Mrs. Johnson [Teller] & her Mirabeau play as he nestled enthroned in his bed, and then after hasty tea I went up to see Maude Adams—a darling with her frank lovely eyes. She wore a short, brown corduroy suit, a pale green silk necktie, and she loves Mr. Clemens. She loved his reason for wanting to see Peter Pan, “because it breaks all the rules of drama” & she was happy because he likes Peter. I went up to ask her just what she does think of Mrs. Johnson’s Joan of Arc play, & she likes it. She thinks it the best Joan of Arc play written so far, but it isn’t entirely actable yet—it has got to be changed a little [MTP TS 62]. Note: see also Gribben 690.
In the evening, Sam went with Miss Lyon and Jean to the Gilders, where H.G. Wells was being entertained [IVL Apr. 7].
NOTE: Ralph W. Ashcroft sent several letters to Isabel Lyon during this year concerning Koy-Lo business or Plasmon business and developments. Most of these letters are not included here; likewise for nearly all other letters between persons outside the immediate Clemens family. DHF.
Poultney Bigelow typed a letter from Colon, Panama to Sam.
Thank God this is my last week of the Isthmus—at lease on this time ! The place stinks of cess pools, swamp and political graft and , for my sake I am happy in having abundant evidence to sustain all the charges I made against the Administration on December 1st. 1905.
Today the scoundrels are here pumping brackish water from the Chagres into the water mains—brackish water taken less than two miles from the sea! Pumping it into the mains and mixing it with swamp water, and this TAFT proudly proclaims as a FINE WATER SUPPLY for COLON. And the poor women and babies spewing it out and begging tank water from private people who have some still stored up!
This makes me an anarchist, socialist anything you please—
By the way there’s a flourishing Mark TWAIN Club down here and two of them are member[s] of the “ENDS of the EARTH”.
Tracy ROBINSON, remembers you indelibly from your visit here in 1867-8? was it and spins your yarns about the Quaker City—maybe it was a year or two later…
Tracy ROBINSON is the oldest and most respectable man of the place—he was here in 1860 and has been here ever since, now he is 74 years old , one of the sweetest gentlest and honestest of men. He has published a volume of poems called “Under the Palm” or some such title.
Then there is J.S. GILBERT who quotes you by the yard, he has been here some 20 years and published a volume of verse called “Panama Patchwork”—with good stuff in it—as good as some of Kipling. Shall try and get a copy for you.
He is one of your Club and then there is W. ANDREWS—a Briton who has been here some 25 years—and spouts Tom Sawyer and Joan of Arc by the yard ! … [MTP]. Note: Bigelow signed off by saying he hoped to reach NY toward the end of the month to retire to his farm at MALDEN on the Hudson. He was forced to turn to the Hearst Syndicate to get the truth told about Panama. Sam wrote on the bottom of the letter in black ink:
“MAXIM / It isn’t your conduct that makes you respectable or the reverse, but people’s opinion of it.”
William Dean Howells wrote on Hotel Regent N.Y.C. letterhead to Sam. “If this finds you awake, get out of bed, no matter if it is as early as twelve o’clock, and say over the phone that you will come here to lunch on Sunday at one o’clock, to meet H.G. Wells, the man from Mars and other malign planets, and an awfully nice little Englishman” [MTHL 2: 803]. Note: Sam accepted; see Apr. 8 to Clara.
Charles J. Langdon replied to Sam that he had his “letter of inquiry in reference to a Mrs Lee, and as to whether” he remembered her as a passenger on the Quaker City. “I have a vague recollection of such a party and how she looked, but as I recall it she was not a passenger for the whole trip.” He suggested Sam contact the Severances of Cleveland for confirmation. Edward Loomis had lost his mother and he and Julie were on their way to Watertown NY for the funeral [MTP].
David Warfield, actor, wrote to Sam, “delighted to know that you are to attend our play on Saturday—and should you care to come ‘in back’ for a few moments after the performance, I should deem it an honor. As for the seals which I offered you—it still goes—any date you may name” [MTP].
The New York Times ran an excerpt from Sam’s comments in Harper’s Weekly:
MARK TWAIN ON J. W. FOLEY.
———
Says the “Schoolboy” is a Public Pet and a Pioneer of Spelling Reform.
Mark Twain in Harper’s Weekly.
A year and a quarter ago Mr. Foley began to do schoolboy poems in a fire-new and blood- curdling and criminal fashion of spelling which no self-respecting eye could endure at first. It was phonetics carried to the uttermost limit of exactness in the reproduction of sound effects.
The public felt deeply outraged, and there was a smell of insurrection in the air—a quite justifiable condition of things, too, for the poems looked like the alphabet hiccupping home in disorderly squads, a most painful and irritating spectacle—but I ask you, what has become of that insurrection? No man knows. It disappeared and left no sign. For the public had done the fatal thing; it kept on reading the poems in order to curse the spelling, and of course the natural thing happened; familiarity with the spelling modified the reader’s hostility to it, then reconciled him to it, and at last made him fall in love with it; and now—well, now Mr. Foley’s schoolboy is a pet.
[Note: James William Foley (1874-1939), poet, was both praised (compared favorably to Eugene Field) and criticized for his “inconsistent” spelling. His Songs of School-days was published later in the year by Doubleday; he was at this time a private secretary to Governor Searles of N. Dakota.]
Gribben cites Isabel Lyon’s journal that Sam discussed Miss Charlotte Teller Johnson’s play on this day, probably an unperformed work she co-authored with Martha S. Bensley, “Sociological Maid. A Play in One Act” [690].
April 6 ca. – Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to E.W. Halifax’s Mar. 27 request from London. Written on Halifax’s letter in pencil: “Mr. Clemens wishes he could but he is talking & writing & dictating all day & has to decline a number of things every day that he ought to be strongly interested in” [MTP]. Note: MTP catalogues this reply as ca. Mar. 29, but this does not allow adequate time for the cross-Atlantic mail. Estimated time for reply here is ca. Apr. 6. or ten days.
Lyon also responded to J.P. Lewis’ Apr. 4 requests: “The whole thing is in the book called a tramp abroad. Merely outlining it from memory [at the Apr. 3 talk for the Women’s University Club.] This will beat both of his games–He’s not invited to call & he wont get an autograph letter” [MTP].
Lyon also took instruction from Sam to thank F.A. Solomons for his Apr. 4 “pleasant note” and hoped that he might “have the pleasure of meeting him again some day in Washington” [MTP].