January 28 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells about the Whitelaw Reid “persecutions” of the New York Herald, which Sam had thoroughly investigated after Livy suggested he do so (See Jan. 21 entry to Webster).
Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when swearing cannot meet the emergency. How sharply I feel that, at this moment. Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this morning —I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances. But I will tell you about it.
About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend [Warner], approaching his revelation cautiously, intimated that the N. Y. Tribune was engaged in a kind of crusade against me. This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but no matter, it made me very angry. I asked many questions, & gathered, in substance, this: Since Reid’s return from Europe, the Tribune had been flinging sneers & brutalities at me with such persistent frequency “as to attract general remark.” I was an angered—which is just as good an expression, I take it, as an hungered. Next, I learned that Osgood, among the rest of the “general,” was worrying over these constant & pitiless attacks. Next came the testimony of another friend, that the attacks were not merely “frequent,” but “almost daily.” Reflect upon that: “Almost daily” insults, for two months on a stretch. What would you have done?
Sam “set a man out” [MTBus] to search the Tribune and also had London friends collect articles there; only a few items turned up, all explainable. What could his friends have been thinking?
There—that is the prodigious bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive of a man’s getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation? I am sure I can’t. What the devil can those friends of mine have been thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two months of daily sneers & affronts? The whole offense, boiled down, amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about my book—not me between Nov. 1 & Dec. 20; & a couple of foreign criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov. 1 & Jan. 26! If I can’t stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction [MTHL 1: 388].
Sam also wrote to Arnold, Constable & Co., letter not extant; referred to in the Co.’s Feb. 1 reply.
Hubbard & Farmer bankers & brokers sent a statement of Sam’s account [MTP].