January 22 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
The King dined at the Coes & will stay the night.
But today he told me more about the Collier dinner than he did last night. Mr. Collier had an unpublished Kipling poem which is to appear soon in Collier’s Weekly, & he asked Mr. Clemens to translate it, but he couldn’t do it, because he said that if almost anyone but Kipling had written it, it would be a satire, but Kipling is so orthodox in his beliefs & this poem is about Mary and Martha—so the King thinks it will have to go with “They” “They” was never a mystery to me, & now that the story has appeared in book-form, Kipling who wouldn’t ever enter an explanation of a story of his, has prefaced it with a beautiful poem which must forever wipe [a]way any doubt as to the meaning of the story. In so subtle a way he has clarified & beautified that little gem. When I said that I couldn’t see why Kipling with his breadth of intellect should still be orthodox, the King explained how it is his training that makes him cling to his early beliefs; then he loves power & authority & Kingship—& that has to show itself in his religion. All the time he was talking he walked round the billiard table knocking 4 pool balls & making such good shots—& scoring such good runs—& he went on to say that the time could easily come that if his mind became enfeebled from an enfeebled body, that on a lingering death bed, he could probably call for Joe Twichell & a bible & do a lot of repenting [TS 19-20]. Note: a short newspaper clipping, datelined Stockholm, Aug. 19 is pasted here, “Nobel Prize for Kipling; Mark Twain Was, It Is Said, Suggested for the Honor This Year.”
Charles Hopkins Clark wrote from Hartford to invite Sam to a “dinner call” on Mar. 6 [MTP]. Note: see after Jan. 22 for his reply.
W.W. Denslow wrote from NYC to Sam, desirous of seeing him and talking about Bermuda, and his island in particular, “as Dr. Herring of the Bermudian tells me you are interested and intend to return to the Sunlit islands” [MTP].
Charles J. Langdon wrote from Elmira, NY to Sam, having just rec’d a property tax bill on the Buffalo property. Sam’s one-third would be $43.99. Also, he wrote that Jervis “had a delightful time with you. He thinks it is much more fun to do business with you than it is to work at anything else” [MTP].
John Trotwood Moore wrote to Sam on Taylor-Trotwood Publishing Co., Nashville, Tenn. letterhead.
I inclose a clipping about you & I am sending you this by mail a copy of my magazine containing the story Rumany Riss which I thought ou might like to read.
I should love to have a line from you telling me just how much rest and sleep you take. It is not impertinence but my drive to know how much a man of your great brain work needs after hard creation or other brain work. / with personal regard… [MTP]. Note: no clipping is in the file. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter: “Have to keep these secrets to myself. If they re likely to get into print—for Harpers wont have it— / Harpers is not my address for 2 class mail—All such mail sent there never gets any further. For the express & extra postage charges in the summertime would bankrupt me”
S.F. Battarns for West Point Military Academy wrote to Sam: “It gives me pleasure to inform you that the privileges of the West Point Army Mess are extended to you for the ensuing year” [MTP].
In Sam’s A.D. he explained about not being able to identify the author, Robert Richardson (d.1901), of the lines which had been chosen for Susy Clemens’ headstone: “We had found them in a book in India, but had lost the book and with it the author’s name. But in time an application to the editor of ‘Notes and Queries [NY Times] furnished me the author’s name…and it has been added to the verses upon the gravestone” [Gribben 508].
January 22 after – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote on the Jan. 22 invite from Charles Hopkins Clark (of the Hartford Courant), declining a “dinner call” in Hartford. “Can’t go have no sufficient good excuse except that I have retired—never again accept a banquet invitation that in my heart I do not feel obliged to attend from a sense of duty or for some higher reason” [MTP].
Sam replied with thanks to S.F. Battarns, for “the honor you confer in extending to me the privileges of the West Point Army Mess for the coming year. I accept them with pleasure & hope I may be able to use them” [MTP].