December 25 Monday – Christmas – In New York at the Players Club Sam wrote Livy a full account of the “Chicago campaign,” offered to “make up for the 3 letterless days.” See entries from Dec. 22 to 24.
Sam also wrote to Elsie L. Leslie:
Hel-lo! — is it you, Elsie? I wish you lived in this State; I would go straight & see you. But 103d street! If I had only known it — for I was right there in the neighborhood yesterday — out there by Chicago. Lord, I hate travel, & do hate to get lost, too — but the minute I get hands on your uncle Gillette I will require him to take me to 103d street [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Annie E. Trumbull, in Hartford, whose play, The Masque of Culture, he’d missed twice:
Theuerste Fraulein!
Dern that language, it’s so hard to spell I’ll bet I fetch up there this time, anyway. I’m not going to accept any invitation for Jan. 10 — that particular Sunday I’m going to keep open for your play — & if I am in this country & not dead, I’ll be occupying that reserved seat when the curtain goes up [MTP].
Sam also inscribed a copy of HF to “Young People” of Millicent Library, in Fairhaven, Mass.
Greetings and salutation to the young people who are blessed with the privileges of the Millicent Library, from a friend of theirs who was young himself once. / Mark Twain / ~ / New York, Xmas, 1893. [MTP]. Note: this library founded by a gift of Mrs. H.H. Rogers.
Sam went to William Mackay Laffan’s for Christmas dinner. It was spoiled by the arrival of:
…the one woman in the world whose every single detail, from her trivial head to her invisible heels, is hateful to me and maddening — & I was appointed to take her out to dinner!
Her dress was as usual one of her devlish inspirations — she lives solely for clothes. It being exactly a week since her brother died & four days since he was buried, she was in mourning, ostensibly. [Sam drew a woman’s shoulders and dress on the left side of the page] Shiny new black satin — bunch of great pink roses on port breast; a cob-webby transparent Oriental rag flung carelessly athwart her back; her waist away up close under her breasts — & she from there down a churn. Picturesque? Certainly; but if she belonged to me I would drown her, all the same. Lord, I loathe that woman so! She is an idiot — an absolute idiot — & does not know it. She is sham, sham, sham — not a genuine fibre in her anywhere — a manifest & transparent humbug — & her husband, the sincerest man that walks, doesn’t seem aware of it. It is a most extraordinary combination; he fine in heart, fine in mind, fine in every conceivable way, sincere, genuine, & lovable beyond all men save only Joe Jefferson — & tied to this vacant hellion, this clothes-rack, this twaddling, blethering, driveling blatherskite! [Dec. 27 to Susy]. Note: Sam could love and hate with passion; the vituperation reminds of his reaction to Lilian Aldrich, and would fit his regard for Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Certainly it is Mrs. Aldrich whom Laura Skandera-Trombley identifies at this dinner, but she gives no direct evidence [164].
Susan L. Crane wrote a long letter to Livy about the Clemens girls, and Christmas festivities at Quarry Farm [MTP].