February 28 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, asking him to return the 1601 manuscript (Or, Conversation As it Was by the Social Fireside, in the time of the Tudors) “& keep no copy of it.”  Evidently, Sam had given the risqué sketch to his brother during his and Mollie’s recent visit to Hartford, and later thought better of it. Sam added that they “got the new telephone up—private wire to Western Union telegraph office” [MTLE 5: 29]. Erica Jong, in the Introduction to the Oxford edition of 1601 writes that the piece enabled Sam to “transport himself to a world that existed before the invention of sexual hypocrisy. The Elizabethans were openly bawdy” [xxiv-xxv]. Jong reads 1601 as a “warm up [no pun] for his creative processes.” So much for psychobabble—Sam purely and simply did not trust Orion to keep the manuscript quiet.

Sam also wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, that he’d told Orion to…

“…return that thing & keep no copy. Doubtless you were right. It should only be shown to people who are learned enough to appreciate it as a very able piece of literary art.”

Sam enclosed $200. He wrote of his new telephone wire, of an invention that he’d considered, and of Livy “ailing, a trifle” [MTLE 5: 30].