March 15 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The Yoke—Hubert Wales. / We lunched with Mrs. Peck today and had some wonderful Bermudian Pepperpot. The heart of it was a chicken and it had strange spices and pepper corns. It came on the table in what is called a buck kettle— a big black heavy old kettle, full of the flavor of many pepperpots. Bur first of all we drove up to Prospect to hear the Sunday morning band play, and to see the charming English people, and the pretty Americans under the trees, and the brilliant red coated bands and scatteringly few soldiers making a lovely picture. We went up with young Mr. and Mrs. Graham and Mr. Trumbull. The close of the day was the best—for we went to the King’s room and he lay on his white bed and read Kipling to us [MTP: IVL TS 33-34]. Note: The Yoke (1907), by Hubert Wales, about a mother who seduces her son in order to keep him from a wicked woman, brought civil charges. Not in Gribben. This may have been Lyon’s book. There’s no evidence Sam read or was aware of it. Mary Allen Hulbert Peck.

D. Hoffman gives us an account of this day’s activities, adding from Elizabeth Wallace’s diary:

On March 15, after another Sunday morning drive to Prospect for the band concert, Clemens and his party rode to Shoreby, where Mrs. Peck entertained them with her favorite dish, West Indian pepper pot. It was brought to the table in a “big black heavy old kettle,” Miss Lyon said.

Typically, pepper pot took three or four days to prepare, with strips of pork, beef, and poultry cooked with cassareep, peppers, thyme, and salt. Mrs. Peck said it was a heathen dish, best enjoyed on Sundays. Although mild at first taste, Miss Wallace wrote, it soon began to burn insidiously. Clemens approved, but said a little more pepper was needed. The day ended in his hotel room with more readings from Kipling’s poems [119].