October 24 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Emilie R. Rogers.
Dear Mrs. Rogers, it is lovely of you! Yes, Mr. Coe is the very man. He will know the exact size of the Fairhaven table, & can duplicate it. When he examines this room I think he will say it is large enough: it is 15 feet wide by 18 long, & the 18 can be increased to 18.6 if necessary, by removing a bookcase.
The long railway journey from Dublin last Wednesday destroyed me for 7 whole days!—both mentally & physically; & there’s been heart-burn enough to almost move me to take out a fire- policy. Indeed, to use Uncle Henry’s phrase, I’ve had a hell of a week. At last, the week culminated last night with an assault of a disease I am not much subject to—depression of spirits. But I am all right, this morning, in all ways, & your letter comes at a happy time, & I thank you sincerely.
I played billiards with Mr. Broughton last Sunday & had a quite high & holy time.
Clara has been in here to shake her engagements in my face & prove to me that her time is already worth a thousand dollars a month. That doesn’t disgruntle me. I am tired working, anyway, & will knock off & be supported. Her illustrious master, Leschititzki, is dying in Vienna, & her conscience is urging her to go over & be at the funeral, but I am persuading her that she would feel very funny if she attended his & missed mine. I guess that that settled it & she won’t go; for naturally she wouldn’t miss mine for anything.
I did not know Miss Lyon was going to write you, but if I had known it I would have said “go right ahead, Mrs. Rogers will not be offended.”
I was at 26 B’way yesterday & learned that you are expected to-day. When you are rested I will come & gamble-off that quarter I won of you. / With love to you both … [MTHHR 618-19].
It was time for Jean Clemens to leave the family for her new sanitarium in Katonah, New York, about an hour to an hour and a half from N.Y.C.
Trombley writes:
Jean’s diary: It was desperately hard to leave Father and Clara in order to come out to a totally strange place. I tried my hardest not to cry before them, but as the time of departure began to approach I found it growing more and more difficult to restrain myself, especially when Clara began to cry, too, then it was really hopeless. Poor little Father seemed to feel badly, too, and the whole business was perfectly horrible to me. I wanted to cry hard whenever I spoke to anyone and yet at the same time I wanted to refrain from showing my feelings too plainly [MTP: Huntington Library].
Isabel accompanied a weeping, despondent Jean to the train station, and with Jean’s personal maid, Anna Sterritt, in tow, secured their luggage and saw them off safely on the 11:40 a.m. train. The sadness of the scene deeply affected Isabel, who called it “heart stretching to have her so & to see her go.” Father and sister did not accompany Jean and Isabel to the station, choosing instead to remain at home [21 Fifth Ave.]. Despite her hysterics before Jean’s departure and her tears that afternoon, Clara quickly recovered and performed that evening for an audience in Irvington, New York. Her little sister would be a resident at Hillbourne Farms for fifteen months [MT Other Woman 119-20]. Editorial emphasis.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Miss Edison, a sweet young violinist who is to play a violin obligato with C.C. lunched here” [MTP TS 139].
Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog, Mass. to ask Sam if he’d returned to NY and would he be there on the 9 or 10 of Nov.? If so there would be a chance to give him “a night’s shelter under your expensive roof.” Aldrich had a bit of business to transact and would go with Sam to Alden’s birthday reception if he was going [MTP].
Dorothy Butes wrote from the Hotel Majestic, NYC to Sam. I am writing you this little note to tell you how very very much I have enjoyed reading your books. I first read Tom Sawyer last September, then Huckleberry Finn, and sat in some out of the way corner where I could chuckle over them to my heart’s content. I read “A Tramp Abroad,” at boarding-school in Switzerland last year and so preyed upon my mind that I looked upon myself as the “Tramp,” and why much to be pitied. As soon as we returned, in August, I flew to the Library for “The Innocents Abroad,” and for several weeks afterwards, when ever the librarian saw me approaching, she assumed a most lugubrious aspect, I think I must have hurt her feelings by always going to Mark Twain’s bookcase!” She professed love for the US and only wanted to live in NYC or Bar Harbor Maine in the summer. She signed the letter “Your deeply interested little reader” [MTP]. Note: not in Cooley. Butes became an Angel Fish.
J.M. Goggin wrote from El Paso, Tex. to Sam asking whether the Pamela Goggin who married Samuel Clemens was Twain’s grand or great grandmother [MTP]. Note: on the back in pencil: “Could be your G.G. M. & probably was—doesn’t know which.” Pamela Goggin (1775-1844) married Samuel B. Clemens (ca. 1770-1805) in 1797. These were Sam’s paternal grandparents.
Charlotte Teller Johnson wrote a note (delivered, not mailed) to Sam.
My dear Mr. Clemens— I went at once to Mr Sears so that he might destroy at once any copy of that letter. He asked me why you had withdrawn it, and I said that you did not wish to be involved in the gossip which was concerned with me. He is, of course, under the impression that you believe the gossip. That gives the final bit of logic to the situation—a sort of finale that I had not foreseen when I went to his office. It takes a great deal to make me see things / Very sincerely… [MTP]. Note: Joseph Hamblen Sears.