August 20 Tuesday – In Vancouver, B.C. before boarding the ship to Victoria, Sam and Livy each wrote a paragraph to Franklin G. Whitmore.
It may be that a full length portrait of Clara will arrive at our Hartford house addressed to you. It will come from the artist, John W. Alexander.
Livy thanked Whitmore for a statement sent of Hartford finances. She disclosed that Sam had been in bed “for a day or two with a cold” but was better [MTP].
Note: John W. Alexander (1856-1915), American artist associated with Art Nouveau style, and illustrator for Harper’s Weekly from 1873-6. He moved to Paris in 1889 and worked with the Symbolists as well as doing portraits of literary greats like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. During this year he was commissioned by the Library of Congress to paint 48 mural panels at the Carnegie Institute. He died before completing the work.
Sam fought with a stubborn captain, ironically on a ship named the Charmer. J.B. Pond’s diary:
On August 20th the boat for Victoria arrived half an hour late. We all hurried to get on board, only to be told by the captain that he had one hundred and eighty tons of freight to discharge, and that it would be four o’clock before we left. This lost our Victoria engagement, which I was obliged to postpone by telegraph. “Mark” was not in condition to relish this news, and as he stood on the wharf after the ladies had gone aboard he took occasion to tell the captain, in very plain and unpious language, his opinion of a passenger-carrying company that, for a few dollars extra, would violate their contract and obligations to the public. They were a lot of — — somethings, and deserved the penitentiary. The captain listened without response, but got very red in the face. It seems the ladies had overheard the loud talk. Soon after “Mark” joined them he came to me and asked if I wouldn’t see that captain and apologize for his unmanly abuse, and see if any possible restitution could be made. I did so, and the captain and “Mark” became quite friends.
We left Vancouver on The Charmer at six o’clock, arriving in Victoria a little after midnight [Eccentricities of Genius 222].
Livy wrote to Samuel Moffett: “I send you three pictures that Maj. Pond took. You will recognize that two of them are on the Mohican and one of them on the Flyer” [MTP].
The Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser p.5 ran an interview, “Mark Twain Talks” [Scharnhorst, Interviews 187-9].