June 11 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to the Twichells.
“The baby is here & is the great American Giantess—weighing 7¾ pounds, & all solid meat….It is an admirable child, though, & has intellect. It puts its fingers against its brow & thinks.”
Sam then described what became a famous structure, now at Elmira College:
“Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with spacious window, & it sits perched in complete isolation at top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley & city & retreating ranges of distant blue hills.”
Sam would do his best work in what he called his “cosy nest” [MTL 6: 157-8]. Willis describes Sam’s use of the octagonal study at Quarry Farm (designed by Elmira architect, Alfred H. Thorp):
“For over twenty creative summers his schedule … rarely varied. After breakfast, Clemens left the hubbub of the Crane house, strolled across the lawn, and climbed up the steps to his sanctuary. He labored steadily all day, not stopping for lunch, and rejoined the others for dinner. Each evening he read to his family audience his day’s work. It was forbidden to disturb Mark Twain during the day. Samuel Clemens could summon or be summoned only by blowing a horn” [Willis 90-1].
Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote to Sam (clippings enclosed from the Cleveland Herald, articles by Charles Mason Fairbanks). “I take the name ‘Modoc’ in my arms—I kiss it. I embrace the dashing mother—and you, and the little princess…Whom do you think I have in tow today? None other than the vehement, ardent, good feeling Col. Denney….I took him to see the Severances” [MTP].
Summer – Paine notes Sam and Theodore Crane’s favorite books enjoyed on the lawn of Quarry Farm during summers.
“At other times he found comfort in the society of Theodore Crane. These two were always fond of each other, and they often read together the books in which they were mutually interested. They had portable-hammock arrangements, which they places side by side on the lawn, and read and discussed through summer afternoons. The Mutineers of the Bounty was one of the books they liked best…Pepy’s Diary, Two Years Before the Mast, and a book on the Andes were reliable favorites. Mark Twain read not so many books, but read a few books often. Those named were among the literature he asked for each year of his return to Quarry Farm. Without them, the farm and the summer would not be the same” [MTB 510-11].
During the summer Sam first read British Author William Edward Hartpole Lecky, and his History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. Gribben lists volume I signed, “T.W. Crane/1874 New York” [400]. Baetzhold traces Lecky’s influence in Tom Sawyer as well as Huck Finn and places Sam’s first reading of Lecky as “probably during the summer of 1874” [MT & John Bull 54]. This is likely, given the above inscriptions as Crane’s dates of acquisition, and given the other notable books they shared this summer. Paine writes that the two men “read Lecky avidly and discussed it in original and unorthodox ways” during this summer at Quarry Farm [MTB 511]. Sam would be greatly influenced by Lecky’s later A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1887-1890) in eight volumes (see Gribben 400-403).
June 11 Thursday – Alfred H. Thorp, Elmira architect, was the man who designed the now famous octagonal study at Quarry Farm, by assignment from Sue Crane. Together with Edward Tuckerman Potter he also designed the Clemens’ Hartford house [NY Times, Dec. 7, 1901, p.BR4].