February 5 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam answered Dean Sage’s Feb. 2 letter and wrote a long narrative of the misdeeds of Edward H. House. Sam accused House of lying about paying back a $300 debt in 1873; caused the rift between Sam and Whitelaw Reid by making false accusations that John Hay later corrected; was “wonderfully tedious company” while ill at the Clemens’ home in 1881; later wrote “great long tiresome letters, with nothing in them but talky-talk,” and more:
When he wrote, in 1885, that he should sail for America in the spring, to remain for good, I wished the ship would go to the bottom. You see, I was the only ostensible friend the man had in the world, & I had to keep up appearances, or be a brute.
He arrived in N.Y. May 10, ’86 (or ’87?) [It was 1886] & my sorrows began. I always had to go & see him when I went thither, & hear him damn his former friends for their neglect.
The reason we invited him to come to us for a month was because his letters indicated that he & Koto were being brutally treated by their landlord & were afraid of bodily assault. I wished he was in hell, but we had to offer him an asylum. He & Koto & their servant were here 5 or 6 weeks. Within the first 10 days he grossly insulted me in the library, & I told him that if he were not disabled I would throw him into the street. I made preparations to have him carted out, but he wrote & sent me a long & outspoken apology, & Mrs. Clemens required me to accept it. So things went smoothly again. I did not know (for it was concealed from me,) that he now & then insulted Mrs. Clemens & the children.
He moved to George Warner’s house, & the friendly relations continued. But at last he insulted Mrs. Warner so brutally that they had to ask him to go — but George Warner ought to have thrown him out of the window. The Warners came over & told me their story; then House wheeled himself over an hour later & told me this — & I told him gently but frankly that he was lying. He moved from the Warners’ to the Yost’s; & when he finally moved to New York he has quarreled with everybody he could get a chance to talk with, except John Hooker & his wife, & our family.
Old friendship? Oh, dear! In one of his lying affidavits, House swears I offered him $5,000 to “compromise” a claim which never existed save in his own laudanum-soaked imagination. Great Scott, I would have paid him that, any time these ten years to see him break his neck [MTP].
Sam also wrote some of this account to his N.Y. attorney, Daniel Whitford of Alexander & Green, countering House’s claims:
The new affidavit is crammed with lies. He has even been writing a diary for 1886-7. Do you think the Court will grant a stay till I can write up a counter-diary?
In two affidavits House has sworn that we talked together in January ’89. I swear I never saw him during the entire year [MTP].
W.A. Goodrich wrote from Elmira to Sam reporting that the wind had blown the doghouse and the dog “Bruce” at Quarry Farm “from where it always stands clear to the garden in one second.” Sam wrote on the envelope, “About the dogs / Jean must answer” [MTP].