April 22 Sunday – In New York at the Players Club Sam wrote to Livy. There was hope the company could resume business since the creditors initially seemed friendly. Sam blamed Fred Hall’s “stupid & extravagant mismanagement” as well as J.M. Shoemaker’s “fooling around so long” for the assignment. Still, he took the bright side of things, as he was usually disposed to do. He wanted to revoke Shoemaker’s privilege to sell his Paige Compositor Co. stock if not effected within 30 days. Friends were trying to prop him up:

Now & then a good & dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles me & says, “Cheer up — don’t be downhearted,” and some other friend says, “I am glad & surprised to see how cheerful you are & how bravely you stand it” — & none of them suspects what a burden has been lifted from me & how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you, dearheart — then I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving & ashamed, & dreading to look people in the face. For in the thick of the fight there is a cheer, but you are far away & cannot hear the drums nor see the wheeling squadrons. You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored colors dragging in the dirt — whereas none of these things exist. There is temporary defeat, but no dishonor — & we will march again. Charley Warner said to-day, “Sho, Livy isn’t worrying. So long as she’s got you & the children she doesn’t care what happens. She knows it isn’t her affair.” Which didn’t convince me.

Sam also told of his trip to Hartford, his long walk with Twichell and of Charles Dudley Warner going to Bermuda to avoid testifying in a scandal case, the Pollard-Breckinridge breach of promise suit for $50,000 damages, brought by Miss Madeline Pollard against Col. William C.P. Breckinridge, the Kentucky Congressman. She was awarded $15,000, overcoming defense suggestions that she was a prostitute. Warner had spent some time with Miss Pollard and did not want to be called to testify [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks who had read about Sam’s business failure:

Oh, I expect to pull through — I am not losing any sleep. I think the creditors will let us resume business; in which case they will get their money. The strongest & wisest friends in the world are at my back, & I make no move until they have decided what it shall be.‑‑

Sam added he’d like to run to Boston for a visit but he was “very busy here with this episode,” and would sail for Europe in a few days. He noted that he’d seen her son, Charles Fairbanks the other night, “& report him in good health & grand bulk” [MTMF 273-4].

The Boston Daily Globe ran a long article by George Alfred Townsend (“Gath”), p.24. Townsend commented on Sam’s business failure and quoted him. Townsend was a famous Civil War journalist for the N.Y. Herald, N.Y. World, and later a ghostwriter for the N.Y. Times. He was also a prolific poet and novelist who rubbed elbows with Sam in his early Washington days. (See Feb. 7, 1871 and also 1880 year entries, Vol. I.)

I see Mark Twain has failed. The effect upon my mind was like a composition of Artemus Ward’s, which I saw Artemus composing. He was sitting near me in the De Soto, a restaurant in New York, and he began to laugh to himself.

I crossed over to get part of the laugh. Said he: “Georgey, I have been making one of my papers. I think them out when I sit alone. Here is the idea of a prosperous man, like my showman, who is the delegate of my wit. He reflects how much better luck he has had than others. He would like to stop with lamenting their misfortunes. But he can’t help ending up with an enumeration of his own progress. Suppose him to reflect like this: ‘Where are the friends of my youth? Some are dead and some are married. Some sprout in daisies where they lie, some are in jail. Several are divorced. O where are the friends of my youth? I keep a pig this year.’”

Not a horse nor a cow, but the sublime advance of a pig.

So when I read of Mark Twain’s failure, like Walter Scott’s, Ballantyne’s and Constables’ in one, I feel like saying:

“Alas! Friend of my youth, I keep a pig this year.”

The writer of humor appears for a certain time to have it all his way. He lectures, writes, gets illustrated, joins the magazine coterie, and lives among the magicians like light-waisted Ariel in the family of Prospero.

But the people get tired of his strain.

The moment humor loses its surprise, the fall from the sublime to the ridiculous, it becomes serious.

…

In the year 1867, I think it was, I boarded with Mark Twain on Indiana av, Washington city. It was down between the capitol and the city hall hills, in the stinking vale of the Tiber.

We had at our table, Sam W. Clemens [sic], Jerome B. Stillson, one Ramsdell, a press writer; old Riley, a committee clerk and writer, too, and I was a stranded man of family at 26, with a babe and a nurse.

Where are the friends of my youth?

[Note: It seems Gath was as wrong about Sam being a washed-up “humorist” as he was about Sam’s middle initial. On Nov. 21 1867 Sam took the night train from N.Y. to Washington to take the job with Senator William M. Stewart. He also stayed in a rooming house with Stewart, so evidently Townsend also roomed there.]