July 16 Tuesday – In the late morning (“Forenoon”) in Cleveland, Ohio, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, describing the first Cleveland talk the night before (July 15).

Scharnhorst [151-3] lists an interview with Sam in an unidentified Cleveland newspaper for this date (Cleveland Leader?), which was reprinted on Sept. 14, 1895 p.7 in the Melbourne Australian Star. Tenney lists the interview as with the Daily Leader [Tenney 23]. After waxing eloquent about his Virginia City days, his time on the S.F. Call, and how he chose his nom de plume, Sam responded to the question of whether or not he was the author of JA being serialized in Harper’s Monthly Magazine:

He paused for a moment and then drawled out: “That question has been asked me several times, and I have always said that I considered it wise to leave an unclaimed piece of literary property alone until time has shown that nobody is going to claim it. Then it’s safe to acknowledge that you wrote that thing whether you did or not. It is in this way that I have become known and respected as the author of ‘Beautiful Snow’ and ‘Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.’”

Henry H. Rogers wrote to Sam, and quoted the telegram he sent Livy the day before. Rogers had telephoned Charles J. Langdon, who’d agreed to come to N.Y. and meet with Rogers, to help out on the debt of $5,046 owed by Webster & Co. to Thomas Russell. Rogers would let Sam know by telegram when an agreement was reached. He reassured Sam and Livy about all their misgivings:

Don’t worry about troubling me. You are in such a state of mind that you seem to worry about everything. It was not a comical defeat at Randall’s Island. It may have been a mistake to go up there to talk to a lot of hoodlums, nine-tenths of whom perhaps have never seen the inside of a book, but Miss Harrison says, that anybody of sense would have appreciated and enjoyed it. Let us kick over the whole of this miserable Russell business and we will attend to that here. In the meantime, let me say that everybody is in sympathy with you and feels most kindly. Why, Payne of the bank, even criticises Russell’s conduct as absolutely outrageous and poor old Whitford melted to tears over your troubles. They may have been of the crocodile kind, but in my judgment, came from a kindly feeling. The newspapers are agreeable and I send you two or three little clippings. Your examination is like one of New York’s nine days’ wonders, and will be forgotten within the prescribed time….I know to a degree, what it is to be as sensitive as you are and I am heartily sorry for Mrs. Clemens, but I hope that distance will remove all this unpleasantness [MTHHR 168-9].

Rogers added a PS that he’d received a check from Harper for $6,982, which he “safely stowed away” and added to funds he was holding for the Clemenses which now totaled $10,710.22. The check from Harper & Brothers was the balance due on serial rights to TS Detective and JA [170n3]. He also advised that his son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, had recommended “Williams, who was formerly with Webster & Co. but now with Benjamin,” to meet with Charles J. Langdon, Bainbridge Colby, and himself the following morning. [Note: This may be Thomas M. Williams mentioned in MTLTP].

In the evening, Sam repeated his program at the Music Hall, Cleveland, Ohio. Lorch points out the value of a Cleveland start to Sam’s tour:

“Cleveland was a propitious choice for the premier performance, for there he knew he could count on the enthusiastic support of the influential Cleveland Herald, and of the Solon Severances, old friends of the ‘Quaker City’ days” [188].

Note: Lorch also points out that Mary Mason Fairbanks had “helped launch him at Cleveland a quarter of a century earlier.” However, Abel Fairbanks, past part-owner of the Herald, was dead; and though several secondary sources mistakenly include “Mother” Fairbanks in the Cleveland inaugural, she no longer lived in Cleveland [MTMF 277]; she was an invalid living with her daughter in New England. Still, Sam and/or J.B. Pond must have felt the city would be enthusiastic; the crowd was far greater than Sam’s earlier guidelines of 1,000 to 1,500 given Pond.

Interestingly, J.B. Pond’s diary does not mention a second lecture for this date:

Ninety degrees in the shade at 7:30 a.m. Good notices of “Mark Twain’s” lecture appear in all the papers. “Mark” spent all day in bed until five o’clock, while I spent the day in writing to all correspondents ahead. If Sault Ste. Marie, the next engagement, turns out as well in proportion as this place, our tour is a success. “Mark” and family were invited out to dinner with some old friends and companions of the Quaker City tour. He returned very nervous and much distressed. We discover a remarkable woman in Mrs. Clemens. There’s a good time in store for us all [Eccentricities of Genius 201]. The “old friends” of the QC tour were no doubt Solon L. and Emily A. Severance.