December 11 Tuesday – Sam sat for photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) in her Washington, D.C. studio. He wore his white suit [Madsen 53]. Note: Johnston was a well-established professional who had photographed some of America’s prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, John Philip Sousa and others; She was the first official White House photographer. See p. 54 or print LC-J601-1305 or 1305A on Library of Congress website.
The New York Times, Dec. 12, p.1, “Twain’s Plan to Beat The Copyright Law,” datelined Dec. 11 from Washington, D.C. announced Mark Twain’s progress and activities:
He finished his legislative work in behalf of the Copyright bill to-day and will return to New York to-morrow morning.
“My duties as an occasional, unsalaried, professional lobbyist are at an end for the present,” he said.
He spent the day seeing Senators, Mr. Lodge having turned over his committee room for the purpose, as Mr. Cannon had turned over his own room yesterday. In the afternoon he and Albert Bigelow Paine, his secretary, went out to Rock Creek Cemetery for a drive.
Strangers Paw Him.
His stay here has been a sort of triumph. Wherever he has gone crowds of people have hurled themselves upon him to shake his hand. He cannot appear in the lobby of the Willard without becoming instantly the centre of a swarm of men and women, strangers to him, who fairly paw him in the exuberance of their joy.
This morning he registered his opinion of the elaborate thingumbobs out of which one has to pour cream in high-toned hotels.
“Paine,” he said, after he had tried to pour some cream into his cup and had landed it in the saucer, “Damn this—damn—Paine, I am frightfully short of adequate profanity.”
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Conflicting telegrams arrive, but a final one says that the King will arrive tomorrow” [MTP TS 149].
R.G. Casey wrote on R.G. Casey, Safes, Prague, Okla. Letterhead to Sam. “Dear Doctor—It has been handed down to me for generations that I am related to you by blood. Now, if this is true, I am not ashamed of it, if you are not. I have it this way. Your Mother’s name, was Jane Lampton, her mother’s name was Peggy Casey, daughter of Col. Wm. Casey of Kentucky. If that is true, your grand Mother Peggy Casey, and my grand father Green Casey, were brother and sister…. He would like to have a picture of the Clemens family and invited Sam to make his home in “sunny Oklahoma” [MTP]. Note: if correct, this would make R.G. Casey Sam’s second cousin.