March 22 Tuesday – In Menton, France Sam wrote to daughter Clara at the Royal Hotel in Berlin, passing on instructions from Livy as to packing their trunks. His letter is obviously a response to Clara’s letter (not extant). Sam mentions “Yaas” always wearing a beard — Susy’s nickname (Paine calls “rather disrespectful”) for Minister William Phelps. Paine writes, “a term conferred because of his pronounciation of that affirmative” [MTB 934]. Sam mentioned that Phelps wore a beard when he was in Menton. Sam also told of seeing royalty in Menton:
The other day if I had been six feet further to the left of the Prince of Wales’s landau would have run over me. If I had been noticing, instead of not noticing, I could have had a good look at the whole fambly, but as it was I saw only him & Georgy. He went to Mr. Hanbury’s this afternoon — where I was going, but was kept home by a very profane cold in the head….Likely he was disappointed. …
We had a very funny letter from Uncle Jo Twichell, & Mamma sent it to Mr. Phelps to read. …
We leave here early in the morning Thursday. Joseph [Verey] will switch off at Pisa & go for you folks. He has never uttered a scolding word to anybody, this time, but has made himself pleasant & welcome with all servants. He is doing his very best to please, & you must all help him succeed [MTP].
Note: Victoria and Albert’s son, the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, was also a regular visitor to Cannes. A decade before, Queen Victoria stayed in Menton, the largest British Colony in the Riviera. Arthur W. White writes that Sam dined with Edward VII at Bad Nauheim, but the “meeting was not a success because Twain insisted on being the center of attention” (no date given) [“Edward VII” MT Encyc. 245].
Sam and Livy also wrote to their oldest daughter, Susy Clemens. Sam wrote:
Susie dear — I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your pen & proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind & another — clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression, photographic ability in setting forth an incident — style — good style — no barnacles on it in the way of retarding, unnecessary words (the shipman scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait & straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short — & so ought I, but I don’t.
Sam also told of being unable to go to Nice, their last chance to do so; of Livy’s fall the evening before making her sore and stiff, but “working it off trunk-packing.”
Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodacking — & to get the pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she didn’t take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine pictures on top of each other — composites.
Livy wrote sideways in the margin: “He is a scandalous man, bless him isn’t he?” [MTP].
George T. Bromley for the Bohemian Club of San Francisco wrote asking Sam to contribute a paper for their Apr. 16 gathering, the subject being “Life / Its Sunshine and its Shadows” [MTP].