December – Sometime during the month Sam attended a private dinner hosted by Daniel Frohman. At that dinner he met Elinor Sutherlin Glyn (Mrs. Clayton Glyn) (1864-1943), British novelist and scriptwriter, the sister of Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon. She led the way in erotic fiction for women, marketed to the masses, and had arrived that fall after the release of her first successful novel, Three Weeks (1907) which had been a hit in England. The book (she worked “fast” completing the book in six days) dealt with adultery, and had shocked sensibilities on both sides of the Atlantic; it was banned in Canada. Glyn called herself “a high priestess of the God of love.” (So much for humility.) Glyn’s prior books had been for a younger audience. She arrived in New York on Friday, Oct. 4.

Shelden writes of the evening of the dinner and their supposedly first meeting, not yet pinned down to a specific date:

Twain’s first encounter with this remarkable woman was suitably dramatic. It took place at the end of 1907 while he and Isabel Lyon were attending a private dinner hosted by the producer Dan Frohman in the luxurious upstairs ballroom at Delmonico’s Restaurant on Fifth Avenue. At the beginning of the event everyone’s attention was focused on Frohman’s young wife, the popular actress Margaret Illington, who made a grand entrance wearing a new gown that accentuated her statuesque figure. “But, suddenly,” Lyon would recall, “she was eclipsed by a woman with milk-white skin, tawny red hair & green eyes; her gown a sea-green soft silk & she wore a strange oriental chain, as her only ornament” [189].

Note: Shelden cites a 1937 account given by Lyon, and it should be remembered that accounts made decades later (as many of Lyon’s were) are suspect in at least a few respects. In his notes (p.451n20), Shelden interprets Anthony Glyn’s remarks to suggest that that his sister and Mark Twain had met previously. But as I read Elinor Glyn by Anthony Glyn (p.143-4) it seems the Frohman dinner of December was mistakenly placed after Clemens’ Jan. 24 to Elinor; no meeting prior to her trip to America is suggested. Glyn puts John Barrymore at the dinner and claims “Mark Twain made a kind and most entertaining speech about Elinor,” hard to believe if he had just met her. Perhaps Anthony Glyn refers to a meeting later than Jan. 24, though no record was found. Elinor, feeling that the British public had misunderstood Three Weeks, and so wrote a preface for the American publication by Duffield publishers. Glyn had friends in New York and Newport, R.I. Her trip was thus a kind of quest to kick of publication of an American edition of her notorious book; she would solicit Sam’s help in doing so.

“Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” first appeared in two installments in Harper’s Monthly this month and for January, 1908. It was published by Harper as a book in Oct. 1909 as Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.  Budd points out that Twain worked on various versions of the story at multiple times—in 1869, 1870, 1873, 1878, 1881, 1883, and 1893 [Budd Collected 2: 1013]. Note: the tale was inspired by Captain Edgar (Ned) Wakeman, and supposedly the earnings from the story finished paying for the new house at Redding, which was called, ultimately, Stormfield.

Bookman published a brief comment on Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven p. 323. Tenney: “If MT has grown didactic in his later years, there is no evidence in his style: ‘The manner is exactly that of’” CY, “even of” IA [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Second Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1978 p. 175]. In the same issue, Christmas Supplement, ran an anonymous and brief review of A Horse’s Tale. “A pretty story of a charming child and a lovable horse…a beautiful little tale.” And “It is not a book of humour, but it is a book written by a humorist who knows the natures of children and horses” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 191].

Sam’s article, “The Story of a Speech” ran in the North American Review [Camfield, bibliog.].  

Sam inscribed his copy of Favorite Fairy Tales; The Childhood Choice of Representative Men and Women (1907): “S.L. Clemens, 21 Fifth Avenue, Dec./07.” Sam was one of the “representative men” who nominated the standard tales, which included “Jack the Giant-Killer” and “The Ugly Duckling” [Gribben 227].

Robert Reid wrote from NYC to invite Sam to join him and a few old friends on New Years Day [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Can’t go anywhere New Years Day, for people are coming here.”

Chapters from “My Autobiography—XXV” ran in the N.A.R. p.481-94. Note: excerpt from this segment often has been reprinted as “The Story of a Speech.”