December 15 Friday – The N.Y. Times, p.1 reported Sam failed to meet his Dec. 14 speaking engagement at St. George’s Church because “his medical adviser forbade it.”

In New York, Sam wrote two letters to Livy, the second headed “PS.” In the first letter he was relieved that daughter Clara had “arrived at last and brought a breeze of life & cheer to you exiles.” He cautioned her to not mention Rogers “by word or pen” because if Paige found out he would “get so extravagant in his demands that it would be impossible to deal with him.” This suggests Paige knew nothing of the several recent meetings between the Chicago and Connecticut interests in the typesetter. A newspaper correspondent in Paris, Miss Van Etten had contacted Livy (evidently recommended by Howells), and Sam wrote that he “commanded” Howells to tell him about her (See Dec. 15 to Howells).

Also Livy had evidently expressed a desire to come home, to which he replied:

I am puzzled, puzzled, puzzled! You see, you mustn’t come home! Not a step, not a budge, until Paige is heard from. That will be within 10 days, if those people know how to work him. If he refuses to sign, I must stay & invent some way to make him sign. It won’t take long. …

It is an unspeakable pity that you should be without any one to go about with the girls, & it troubles me, & grieves me & makes me curse & swear; but you see, dearheart, I’ve got to stick right where I am till I find out whether we are rich or whether the poorest person we are acquainted with in anybody’s kitchen is better off than we are. I stand on the land-end of a spring-board, with the family clustered on the other end; if I take away my foot —

Sam reminded her of the progress he and Henry H. Rogers were making [MTP].

In his second letter, a long PS, Sam denied the newspaper reports that he was sick, other than a cold which he dismissed, blaming not speaking to the Workingmen’s Society on the weather:

Everybody had a cold until I took one. I was the last. The whole State is supplied, now. Mine does not trouble me, nor interfere with my hearty eating, nor with my billiards. The weather being atrocious, I have staid indoors & played all day [LLMT 283-4]. Note: Sam likely feared that Livy might see the page one NY Times notice of this day, “’Mark Twain’” Too Ill to Lecture.”

Sam also wrote to William Dean Howells, asking him to “tell all about Miss Van Etten, newspaper correspondent” who had contacted Livy in Paris. Sam quoted Livy as saying, “I want you to find out if she is nice. She seemed to me much modester & more agreeable than most newspaper women. She came to see me on behalf of some Frenchman who wanted to translate something of yours, so I gave her Chatto & Windus’s address. NOW BE SURE & ASK ABOUT HER & WRITE ME. I think I would rather have Mr. Howell’s opinion than the others.”

Being translated, those heavy underscorings mean, “You are not to be trusted two minutes — attend to it at once.” (Sam and Howells often feigned being so henpecked with each other.)

Sam also noted Livy had had a “charming visit” from Howell’s son, John Howells, who was studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris [MTHL 2: 656-7].