July 7 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margaret Blackmer.

I was wondering what was become of you, you dear little angel-fish, & was very glad to find out by your letter, which came an hour or two ago. I hoped & believed I should hear from you before very long. My fishes are good & faithful correspondents. There are 12 of them, & two days seldom go by without a letter from one or another of them. Yesterday I answered letters from Dorothy Harvey, Dorothy Quick & Dorothy Sturgis. I watch the mails, for the Aquarium is one of my life’s chiefest interests.

The fishes are as good as they can be, & they come & see me whenever they can. The first to come, when I opened this new house among the hills & the woods, were Dorothy Harvey & Louise Paine; they stayed a week & said they enjoyed it. I know I did.

Dorothy Quick will arrive with her mother day after tomorrow & stay a week. Irene Gerken expects to come before long; Francesca Nunnally will come when she lands from Europe Sept. 21; Helen Allen, (Bermuda), is coming in December, & her mother too, I hope.

And I hope you & your mother will come when you return home. The English member (Dorothy Butes) expects to come over before the summer is ended. The others are coming as opportunity offers.

I like the new house so well that I am likely to remain here all the winter. We are on high ground & it is always cool, for we get all the breezes. All about are richly wooded hills, & only half a dozen houses in sight. There are no sounds but the singing of the birds, so it is very quiet & peaceful.

We spend our days in the loggia, which opens out from the living-room & has 8 tall arches & they frame the scenery and make 8 pictures of it. It is tile-paved, & the fishes play diablo & other violent games in it. I think I will call it the Fish-Market, for I built it for the fishes.

The billiard-room is Aquarium headquarters, & the angel-fishes are in command there. Their framed photographs hang on the walls, & yours looks very sweet there.

Half a mile from the house there is a deep little gorge spawned by an antique stone bridge with a single arch under it. I am going to stop up the arch & make the water flow over the bridge & make a cataract, to be called the Aquarium cataract. The arrested water will make a fine pool above the bridge, & the children can skate there in winter. My house is named “Innocence at Home,” & it is the angel-fishes that are to furnish the innocence though the public don’t know that. It isn’t the public’s affair. Please remember me to your mother. / With lots of love to you, dear— / SLC [MTP; MTAq  185-6]. Note: this is a reply to a non-extant from Blackmer; also the three letters Clemens mentioned to other angelfish are also not extant.

Sam also wrote to Margery Hamilton Clinton in Glen Cove, Long Island, N.Y.

Dear Miss Marjorie: / Won’t you run up here July 18th for the week-end & a day or two longer if you can?

I am asking Miss Lucia Hull to do the same, so that you will have comradeship in addition to Miss Lyon & me.

I hope to get both of you, but will compromise on one if I can’t have two.

You will find it cool & comfortable here.

The Express, with Pullman car, leaves the Grand Central at 1.27 p.m. (Saturdays) & at 4.15 p.m on the other weekdays, & fetches you to Redding station in an hour & a half without change of cars.

There is a morning-express, too, at 9 a.m.

With hopes for the best, / Affectionately, … [MTP]. Note: Sam’s guestbook shows 21 year old Margery there from July 18 to 24.

Sam’s A.D.   for this date continued to focus with “spectacular venon” (Hill 209) against Lillian Aldrich for the June 30 Memorial of her late husband, which Sam attended. Sam also referred to Bayard Taylor’s translation of Faust. A Tragedy. “Clemens referred to Taylor as the poet ‘who made the best of all English translations of Goethe’s ‘Faust’” [Gribben 264]. Sam also remarked in his A.D. that “Bedouin Love-Song” was one of only two of Taylor’s poems that were still remembered, “the tremendously inspiriting love song of an Arab lover to his sweetheart; and “The Song of the Camp” (poem), “about the Scotch soldiers singing ‘Annie Laurie’ in the trenches before Sebastopol”  [687, 688].

Edward Verrall Lucas (1868-1938), popular English writer of over 100 books (aka E.D. Ward), wrote from London to Sam. Lucas provided extensive content for Punch.

Dear Mr Clemens   in a collection of stories for boys entitled Runaways & Castaways I very much want to include two chapters from Tom Sawyer describing how the three boys run to the island & pretend to be Indians. Your English publishers said that I might make the inclusion in our edition; but they cannot of course give permission for America where the book would be issued by the Macmillan Co. What do you think? / Believe me yours faithfully / E.V. Lucas [MTP]. Note: IVL: “The Harpers couldn’t grant the permission, because they have withheld it from a thousand others..” On another sheet also by IVL: “Mr. Clemens’s permission is not sufficient. By the enclosed letter you will see that the publishers are most unwilling, which Mr. Clemens regrets. Mr Clemens wants them to visit him here when next they come to America, as he does not expect to be in N.Y. any more to live. Also not in the MTP file: “see letter to ‘dear lucy’ 20 July 1908 for dating of year.”

Zoheth S. Freeman for Merchants National Bank wrote to Isabel Lyon (though catalogued to Clemens), regarding letter of credit for Clara Clemens [MTP].

James A. Renwick wrote to Sam, acknowledging receipt of $291.67 for July rent of the Fifth ave. house and his July 6 letter (see entry). “In regard to your inquiry about the lease I want time to consider your proposition & submit it to Mrs Whittingham who jointly owns this property wth me” [MTP].

R.A.S. Wade wrote from Los Angeles, Calif. to ask Sam for his help in publishing a poem. He enclosed a sample of his writing [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Answrd July 15 08”