January 8 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The King walked up to the Irish exhibition at Madison Square Garden this morning and saw Miss Yeates [sic Yeats], the poet’s sister.
Santa sang again today. A great crimson rose nestled close to her heart and she was like a wonderful flower nestling in the ether of the world. The very air must love to caress her as she passes through it [MTP: IVL TS 5]. Note: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet, dramatist. His two sisters, Elizabeth and Susan Mary, were known as Lolie and Lily. Which sister Sam met is unclear.
Booker T. Washington wrote to Sam.
I had a talk with Mr. H.H. Rogers yesterday, and told him that Col. Henry Watterson is coming here to speak at a meeting for us in Carnegie Hall on the 17th. Mr. Rogers expressed the wish, in which I heartily join, that you be present at the meeting. Also I very much wish that you would consent to sit on the platform with Col. Watterson. It would help our cause greatly [MTP]. Note: see also Rogers’ letter of Jan. 16 about this event.
After Jan. 8 Sam wrote the following reply on Washington’s letter:
Ah, I’d just as soon sit on the platform & be looked at, as not. But it would mean a speech—& I don’t want to make one. But I could sit there & be a target for bouquets. It might be a chance to heave in a word for the durned blue laws. But I don’t decline & I don’t accept. I leave it open [MTP; MTHHR 644n2 (&’s replaced in latter)].
Clemens acquired another case of Queen Anne whisky [L-A MS]. Note: see June 8, 1907 for the full list of acquisition dates of whisky, intended as ammunition against Isabel Lyon.
Eulabee Dix wrote to Miss Lyon asking her to phone “in regard to a desire of Mr Clemens,” which she would explain [MTP].
Henry W. Lucy wrote from Kent, England to Sam, advising him that he’d replied to Edward Verrall Lucas, the biographer of Charles Lamb, addressing him as “My dear lady…I trust Lucas in his acknowledgement of your letter, lived up to the distinction inadvertently conferred upon him. / And how are you? How are the burglars? I hope that when they looked in they did not take your breath away” [MTP]. Note: Clemens to Lucas is not extant.
George Thomson Wilson for Pilgrims of the U.S. sent a printed notice of their annual business meeting on Jan. 22 in the Lawyers Club, NYC at 3 p.m. [MTP].