November 10 Sunday – In Timaru Sam was driven around the town and down to the beach, where he viewed the Elginshire, shipwrecked on May 9, 1892. He wrote, “big flowering mills; wonderful opaline clouds…a pretty town & cosy pretty homes all around it. Plenty of greenery & flowers…broom & gorse.” About the botanical gardens he wrote, “Why haven’t we have these?” [Shillingsburg, At Home; NB 34 TS 37]

Afterward he rested and read in bed at the hotel, then wrote in his notebook complaining of New Zealand’s “blue laws.” Livy and Clara were in Christchurch, N.Z. probably at Coker’s Hotel on Manchester St [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 23].

Sam wrote to his nephew, Samuel Moffett, claiming they were having a “darling time” and that “it didn’t seem to be in a foreign land, we seem to be home.” He wrote about a possible lecture tour in America for the following year, and discussed talking in San Francisco, where Adolph Sutro and other “old friends” would help. He mentioned New York, Chicago, and “maybe even” New Orleans as possibilities. He noted getting his third lecture program together only three days before, and a lady who “broke the record” coming over 200 miles to hear him. On his prepared letter for publication he wrote about paying off his creditors 100 cents on the dollar:

It was too bad that both your article & mine got into print. The fault was in the Examiner office, I suppose. Mine had gone there with a caution on the envelop that it was to be kept till you came. Then later I telegraphed you (or wrote, I don’t remember which), to suppress it. I wrote mine to take the place of yours because at first I thought yours too grave, although your aunt Livy contended that it was exactly right to a word. Later I saw that it was so, & then I took the above measures to suppress mine. An infernal pity they failed. / My love to Mary. Good-bye [MTP].

Sam also wrote a long letter to H.H. Rogers, filling him in on his lectures since Sydney, then forecasting a possible tour back in America the next year. Sam didn’t know who would manage such a leg, but he was sure it wouldn’t be Pond:

From the beginning it was my intention to begin in October of next year & lecture all over America, north & south; but I don’t know any agent but Pond, & he is such an idiot & such an incompetent–& particularly such a business-coward — that I cannot make up my mind to put myself in his hands. He has no idea of proportions. He lectured me twice in the little town of Winnipeg, & yet believes it would not be safe to attempt more than 2 appearances in Frisco, Chicago or New York.

Sam asked Rogers if he knew of a competent man. He also asked if Rogers’ son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, had received “any definite offer from that Chicago house” for his current travel book (FE) [MTP, not in MTHHR].

Sam’s notebook: A reminder to himself to get The Percy Anecdotes, etc.: “Get Percy Anecdotes” for Black Hole of Calcutta [Gribben 541; NB 34 TS 37]. Note: he made a similar entry on Nov. 30.

Timaru, Sunday, Nov. 10. The old fool notion that a ship in collision has an advantage, going full speed, over the ship going half speed! Lying abed reading Sala’s brilliant & breezy “Under the Sun” [Gribben 601; NB 34 TS 34]. Note: George Augustus Sala’ s Under the Sun: Essays Mainly Written in Hot Countries (1872).