September 30 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

As your letter hasn’t come, I judge that there wasn’t any news in the locker. There isn’t any at this end, either. Four days ago I got to the point I was struggling for and anxious about, and now that bridge is behind me and all right. It foots up 40,000 words since I arrived. Since then we have had visitors — relatives. I got through exactly in time for them. In front of me now is a long course of study and not much production — on the book.

Sam added that Livy was busy packing trunks for the move to Paris, and he was translating Paul Bourget’s “Outre Mer” articles which he wished “to abuse in a magazine.” Sam thought they would leave for Paris the next day, then corrected himself to Monday, which, either humorously or strangely was the next day. Note: the relatives are not specified but may have been Langdon relatives. Sam’s article, “What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us,” would be published in the North American Review, Jan. 1895. It was based on Borget’s articles which ran in the N.Y. Herald and in Le Figaro, the latter beginning on Sept. 26, 1894. Cummings calls the article “a lucid and penetrating discussion of realism without using the term” [MT Encyc. 725].

Note: Interestingly, William Dean Howells had been a disciple of realism since the 1870s. Both he and Sam had read Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) who was a major force in shaping literature toward realism and naturalism, but Sam never used the term for his own writing, which was nevertheless influenced by the movement.