July 25 Thursday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote a note on a small card to Dorothy Butes, who was sailing: “Miss Dorothy BUTES / Steamer CELTIC. / Goodbye you dear child, and a happy voyage.” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the verso, “The King was heart sick to have Dorothy sail away for England.” In her journal entry below, Lyon referred to the above message to Butes as a “wireless.” Likely this card survives but the telegram does not.
Upon reaching Tuxedo Park, Sam’s bronchitis hit him hard, and by the next night he had summoned Dr. Edward C. Rushmore of Tuxedo Park [July 29 to Rogers].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: The King has a little of the ship’s bronchitis hanging on and he has been so heart sick and disappointed because Dorothy Butes got away this morning on the Cedric, but he sent her a wireless message.
We called at the Kane’s and found Miss Dorothy Kane at home, and Miss Clinton. Out on the porch today the King asked if I had heard anything from Mrs. Johnson [Charlotte Teller]. No, I hadn’t, but I believed she was the cause of the report about the King’s marriage and the King said, he “knew it the instant the report reached him” and I think we shall hear more yet from that devil [MTP 86-87].
Isabel Lyon also wrote for Sam to Charles A. Hazlett.
Mr. Clemens directs me to write for him to say that he is very sorrythat he will be unable to act as one of the directors of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial, for the reason that he does not approve of public memorials that have to be paid for by subscription. This does not in any way indicate that Mr. Clemens’s warm friendship & love for Mr. Aldrich has in any way abated; but that for many years he has declined to be sponsor for such memorials, & has repeated expressed himself as being most unwilling to have any such distinction paid to himself either living or dead [MTP].
G. Bonham Bird wrote from Biltmore, N.C. to Sam: “As a little boy in Heidelburg (Summer of ’77) I used to meet you on the Anlage and you would condescend to chat to this small Englander.” Would Sam read his short story, “The Test” which “shows up the discomforts of Christian Science”? [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Answd. July 31 ‘07”
John Larkin wrote from NYC to Sam: “I have Miss Lyon’s letter of the 24th enclosing letter to you from a Miss E. Van Deusen regarding phonographic record made at the Actors Fund Fair. I have written to Miss Van Deusen to the effect as asked by Miss Lyon” [MTP].
Robert P. Porter wrote from Oxford, England to Sam, cherishing the memories of their time together in Oxford [MTP].
In Sam’s A.D. he recalled meeting George Bernard Shaw, “that brilliant Irishman…I lunched at Mr. Shaw’s house a week or two afterward, and expanded the acquaintanceship” [Gribben 638]. See Aug. 25.