May 20 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean, now under the care of Dr. Harlands and Dr. Peterson, in a house taken for the summer at Eastern Point, Gloucester, Mass. Two hired nurses, Edith and Mildred Cowles, and friend Marguerite Schmidt, looked after her there. Insert: Eastern Point Lighthouse, erected and first lit, 1832.
Jean dear, welcome to your new home, & happiness therein! In earlier days I would not have expected you to be otherwise than unhappy in a new & strange home, but your spirit & your philosophy have undergone great & beneficent improvement in these latter days, along with your improved physical health. I am aware that you are sweet, & forgiving, & helpful, & now, & not fretful & not given to complaining, & fault-finding. In a word, that the fine & fortunate disposition you were born with is again in the ascendant—& long may it keep its supremacy!
I hope your house will turn out to be a pleasant one, & satisfactory to you & all your excellent household, & that its situation & surroundings will soon come to be homelike & to your mind. I believe you are going to be happy. The best sign I have heard of is, that you are not absorbed in yourself, now, so much as you are in those about you, & in contributing to their lives whatever of comfort & peace & sunshine you can. I wish I was like this, myself, but it has long ago been petted out of me if it was ever in me, & I am too old & “set,” now, to learn to interest myself in anybody’s welfare but my own.
Miss Lyon went to the farm yesterday afternoon, & will be there to-day, superintending. I told her to stop negociations for an automobile, & make horse-arrangements with the Redding livery-stable for the season.
The stenographer has come.
With lots of love & kisses / Father [MTP].
Note: “Eastern Point, at the entrance to Gloucester Harbor, has been home to farms, a quarry, a Civil War fort, a number of summer residences and the Eastern Point Yacht Club. One of the most famous locations at Eastern Point is Beauport, a sprawling 40-room mansion that is now open as a museum. Among the visitors entertained at Beauport were Henry James, Amy Lowell, Booth Tarkington, Noel Coward and Eleanor Roosevelt”[New England lighthouses: http://lighthouse.cc/easternpoint/history.html]. Also, a 300-room luxury hotel at Eastern Point burned in 1908.
In his May 21 to Jean, Sam wrote that he spent three hours in the afternoon listening to speeches and two hours from 10 p.m. to midnight doing the same. A search of the New York Times for May 20-21 turned up one good possibility for a meeting with speeches during the day of May 20 that Twain would likely have been interested in: May 21, 1908, p. 5, “Want City to Pay for Drive Extension,” was a public meeting and taxpayers protest at a $1,500,000 assessment on their property for improvements made to Riverside Drive. The meeting was held in the Gerken Building, 90 West Broadway, during the day; this may have been the three hours Sam spent listening to speeches. As a former resident of Riverside, he would have known many of the speakers and groups.
In the evening Sam spoke before the American Booksellers annual dinner. The New York Times, May 21, 1908, p. 7 reported on the event:
MARK TWAIN GIVES THANKS
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To the American Booksellers for Helping Him Make a Living.
At the annual dinner of the American Booksellers’ Association last evening at the rooms of the Aldine Association, Mark Twain, in his usual white flannel suit, told how well his books had sold since they had passed from subscription agents into the hand of the booksellers.
“For thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription,” he said. “The books passed into the hands of my present publishers in 1904, and you then became the providers of my diet. I think I may say without flattering you that you have done exceedingly well by me.
“By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they sold them or not. It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it was your business to unload the 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years if you possibly could. Have you succeeded? Yes, you have—and more. For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000 volumes and 240,000 besides.”
The story teller then said he was building a farmhouse with the proceeds, where he intends to take a vacation for thirty or forty years before completing the five books he is now engaged on.
Other speakers at the dinner were the Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, Burges Johnson, Will Irwin, Holman Day, and Simon Brentano. About 400 were present [Note: part of Sam’s speech ran in the June 6 issue of Harper’s Weekly.]
Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to an unidentified man, advising that Sam must decline his invitation as he was now retired from the platform [MTP].
Howells & Stokes wrote a short note to Sam to enclose a letter from Harry P. Wood of the Hawaii Promotion Committee. “We told them not to hurry the matter, but to do something interesting” [MTP]. Note: relating to the gift of a mantel piece for Stormfield.
Alfred J. Silberstein for NYC College wrote to Sam. “Accept this Dedication Number of the ‘College Mercury’ as a remembrance of the splendid ceremonies on May 14th last, in which you so nobly participated” [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Many thanks / Answd. May 25”