June 1 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Dictating: Mr. Clemens will never learn to be prudent about himself. Early this morning—at 7 —I heard sneezes & then coughings & he told me when I went to his room to administer Coryza tablets & premonitory whiskey, that this time he had gone into the study to close the window, had found some papers there that interested him & he had stayed there in the cold until the chilliness came, when he went to bed and piled on all the blankets he could get hold of. When I deplored it, he was sweet & gentle as always & said he “hadn’t ever done it before”.
Exactly—It is the things he hasn’t done before that you can’t plan for [MTP TS 76].
The Hartford Courant, p.17, reprinted Sam’s article on Carl Schurz from Harper’s Weekly of May 26. Schurz died May 14, the day Clemens arrived in Dublin N.H.
Richard Lloyd Jones for the Lincoln Farm Assoc. wrote to advise Sam of the first annual meeting of the Board of Trustees for the Assoc. on June 7 in the offices of Clarence H. Mackay, 253 Broadway, NYC [MTP].
Elizabeth Jordan for Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam. “Miss Lyon’s note has reached me this morning, and I am delighted to know that you will write the small boy’s chapter” [MTP]. Note: Jordan was getting up a collaborative story from well known authors for publication in Harper’s Bazaar. Sam would find no inspiration for the work.
Clemens’ A.D. this day included: Gen. Grant wishes Clemens’s opinion of the literary quality of his Memoirs. Clemens places them side by side with Caesar’s “Commentaries.” Chauncey Depew’s best speech. Ex-Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner’s visit to Gen. Grant. General Grant’s death. Webster suspects his bookkeeper, Frank M. Scott [MTP: Autodict2].
June 1 ca. – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Edward E. Clarke.
M . Clemens requests me to write for him & thank you for the journals & letters you have sent him; but he wishes me to say that he is sorry Monsieur Dropeau [sic Drapeau] asks him to do anything for his son, for M . Clemens is too heavily burdened in these days to be able to grant r such requests, and this one is one of a thousand appeals from strangers to all of which he is obliged to say no [MTP].
Pierre C. Drapeau wrote in a very small hand, and in part French, a picture postcard of Joan of Arc to Sam. He thanked Sam in advance for meeting his son, who wrote Sam on June 24 to ask for an interview [MTP].