September 3 Thursday– In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to the Aug. 31 from James R. Clemens by sending a telegram: “Shall be very happy to see you on Sunday but am very sorry you not both come. / S. L. Clemens” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Quick in Plainfield, N.J.
Dorothy dear, I have been over-busy with guests, for a time, & I guess you are back home before this. There isn’t much news to report. We lunched with the Paines day before yesterday & saw to Louise, but Frances has gone back to her school in Rochester. Louise is soon going away to school on Long Island. We had a kind of house-warming three or four days ago, & the people of the countryside came, about 300, young & old, & boys & girls, & we had a very pleasant afternoon. The Waylands have been here several days, & went away today. Some more guests are coming tomorrow & next day, to sleep over Sunday, & on the 10th my daughter Clara will arrive from Europe. Jean will sail for Germany towards the end of this month. There will be some more friends coming in the meantime—two young girls & an elderly couple.
I hope you & your mother have had a pleasant summer, & that you are well rested-up & ready for school & glad to begin again. Miss Lyon has nearly emptied the New York house, & so this one looks more furnished & less naked than it did. / With lots of love— … [MTP]. Note: see Aug. 30 for the gathering.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: The burden of this house is heavily upon my shoulders. Being on my shoulders it is an alien weight and has all the chances of being shifted to other props. I keep it there rather than in my heart too securely for if it were, or when it is taken from me, all the bleeding heart of me would be torn out with it. It’s because I’ve been down to the N.Y. house working hard all day, and because Paine was there and was sad at leaving it; sad at seeing the dismantling of the rooms where we’ve had charming times, and gay times, but for me they have been sadder than gay I think, or more agonizing, for in that house I saw the terrible sorrow and grief of the King after Mrs. Clemens’s death, and I saw the crying rage of servants dismissed by Jean and Clara. I saw Jean in her convulsions, and I saw Clara in her agony and in her illness, and in her struggles with her career and in her hates and fierce lovings, and while my heart was full of loving for all of them, there was a long, long lack of peace, and the stairs I climbed were often pitifully weary ones. But against it all was the great joy of living close to the King and of learning his ways and his moods and of holding my spirit arms about him, and of having my life fuller than I thought it could be.
Benares met David and me at the station [MTP: IVL TS 62-63].
Alice Minnie Herts for the Children’s Educational Theatre wrote to Sam, this letter enclosed in a Sept. 2 to Lyon.
Arrangements are now completed for the lecture course to be given under the auspices of the Educational Theatre during January, February and March, 1909…
My immediate object in writing all this is to ask you to introduce the lecture course at the Lyceum Theatre on the afternoon of Jan. 8th by saying a few words concerning the aims and objects of the theatre as a force for shaping character in the young through the joy and happiness they experience in the work [MTP].
Matt H. Hewins wrote from Hartford to Sam having read in the morning paper that Clemens had “established another home.” Hewins spent 3 or 4 pages describing liquor he’d had in his billiard room for the past 50 years; now he wished to dispose of it and offered the whole lot for $500 for Sam’s wine cellar [MTP].