January 18 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “King is really ill today” [MTP: IVL TS 10]. Note: bronchitis.
In the afternoon Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) died of a heart attack in his NYC apartment. He was 74 [NY Times Jan 19, 1908, p. 1, “E.C. Stedman Dies of Heart Disease.”]
At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to a reporter from the N.Y. Times, who solicited his response to the news of Stedman’s death. Sam’s dictated response ran in the Jan. 19 paper.
MARK TWAIN STUNNED.
———
His Loss Unfits Me to Speak, He Says—Mr. Gilder Mourns Him.
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) dictated the following last night from a sick bed, to which he has been confined with a heavy cold since last Thursday, on learning of the death of Mr. [Edmund Clarence] Stedman:
“I do not wish to talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that date back thirty-five years, His loss stuns me and unfits me to speak.”
Asked by a TIMES reporter for a tribute to his dead friend, Richard Watson Gilder said:
“Mr. Stedman was for a lifetime like an elder brother to me, and it is difficult to respond to your request for a work about him to-night. As poet, critic, leader in all matters pertaining to the interests and honor of literature, and as a helpful, loyal and generous friend of men of letters, his position was unique. He will be greatly missed and widely mourned [MTP]. Note: in Sam’s dictated draft he struck out after the above sentences, “I’m sick myself”, evidently thinking the line was unseemly.
D. Hoffman writes of Stedman’s death and of the two men’s respective opinions of each other:
In dictating more of his autobiography on the following July 3, he said Stedman was a good fellow but “believed that the sun merely rose to admire his poetry & was so reluctant to set at the end of the day & lose sight of it, that it lingered & lingered & lost many minutes diurnally & was never able to keep correct time during his stay in the earth.” Stedman, in turn, had complained twenty years earlier that so far as an author making a decent income, “not every one can be, like Mr. Clemens, his own Harper & Brothers, and his own Edwin Booth” [88].
Sam also sent a telegram and an inscribed photograph of himself with a note to Dorothy Quick.
You are ill in bed so am I. With Bronchitis. But I am sending you a very nice picture. / SL Clemens [MTP; MTAq 98]. Note: on the photograph, Sam inscribed: I think this is the best of the Tuxedo pictures save one, Dorothy dear. Mrs.Ogden made it. I have the bronchitis, & am barking at you affectionately.
To Miss Dorothy Quick
Sam also wrote to an unidentified person, referring to the Jan. 18 death of Edmund Clarence Stedman: “I am grieved to the heart, for we were close friends for more than a generation.
Lord grant me his good fortune: to slip suddenly out of the tragedy of life unwarned!” [MTP].
Harper’s Weekly, p. 13 ran a full page photograph and short anonymous article about the Dec. 28, 1907 luncheon at Lakewood, N.J., “Four Distinguished Americans. From a Photogragh Taken at Lakewood, N.J. , Where a Luncheon was Given to Mr. Howells to Bid Him Godspeed on his Journey to Europe.” Tenney: “Full-page photograph of Howells, MT, Henry M. Alden, and Mayo W. Hazeltine” [45].
Frederick S. Dellenbaugh wrote from NYC to invite Sam to a dinner given by the Author’s Club on Feb. 11 in favor of Andrew Carnegie [MTP]. Note: on the letter, “Ans Jan 19, Inst H” (likely Josephine Hobby)
Julia Langdon Loomis wrote to Sam. “Well, dear Uncle Sam, I can without embellishment say that I could swear or cry, that it is impossible for me to go to you February eleventh” [MTP].
Frances Nunnally wrote to Sam.
Dear Mr. Clemens,— / That certainly is a lovely invitation you have given me, and I only wish I could say “yes”. Miss Carter never allows us girls to go away from the school, so I can’t possibly come to see you, though I surely wish I could. As I cannot persuade Miss Carter to let me come, I wish you would come down to Baltimore so I could see you. I know you don’t like traveling on the train, but if you should come to Washington or any where in this direction, do stop by here.
I came back to school on the ninth after a perfectly fine holiday at home. I had had such a lovely time and I did not want to come back to work a bit. I might as well get used to it, though, as I will have to study hard now until Easter, when we have about a week or ten days holiday.
I would give anything if I could come up to see you some time soon, but as I can’t, I hope I will see you down here. / I am / With Love, / Francesca [MTP; MTAq 98-9].
Clyde Potts wrote from Morristown, N.J. to Sam. “Dear Sir: / Have just finished my first reading of ‘The Jumping Frog.’ I bought the copy at one dollar net. I consider that I beat you on the deal and enclose herewith my ck for fifty cents. / Respky / Clyde Potts” [MTP]. Note: likely a ploy to gain a signature from Sam’s endorsement. Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Feb. 5, 08”