January 13 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Jan 13 ’98 Sent 3 fables to Century” [NB 42 TS 53].
At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Henry C. Robinson’s Dec. 29, 1897 letter.
It was good to hear from you. And good that you have liked the book well enough to pay it that finest of compliments, disseminating it not by lending but by outlay of cash. (I filled out that page, but had to destroy it because the madame edited it out. Privately, you know, she’s so dam particular. As like as not she would edit this one out, too, if I should leave it lying around.)* (in left margin of second page: * You see, dear Mr. Robinson, how I have to watch him. Sincerely yours O.L. Clemens)
Your picture of the [Monday Night] Club! I can see it; & it makes me old. I suppose I attended it for the first time in Nov. or Dec. ’71, when I was a lad of 36. Susy was not born, then; nor Clara, of course; and Franklin—why, Franklin was young in those distant times. What business has Charley Clark to be sporting his irreverent fun in this graveyard? And Twichell—grandfather Twichell in these late years—hard of hearing & asleep under the disconnected mumblings of the mummies. Let’s get away from this subject.
Sam related he was taking the afternoon off to answer letters to strangers (though none are extant) which he wrote, “pile up & presently get to weighing heavy on my soul.” The family liked Vienna and the weather—the people but not the streets which were torn up for installing gas lines. He closed with the line that he had “exhausted the novelties of this world & was depending on the Resurrection for a fresh emotion” [MTP].
Sam also replied to Richard Watson Gilder’s Dec. 17 (not extant) which he disclosed he’d received “2 weeks ago.” Until Sam saw the Nov. issue of McClure’s magazine, he did not understand Gilder’s complaint that the Century couldn’t have a segment of FE, but that “monthlies & dailies could have it.”
Sam confessed that the American Publishing Co. had restrained him from publishing any part of the book in a periodical, but that their contract “put no restraint upon Bliss,” something Sam had not noticed.
I am sorry about this thing, and ashamed of it. Bliss has acted within his rights, but it is shabby, just the same.
I’ve an article for you, but I can’t find it. It was a chapter of my book—a study of ants. I imagined it while in Jeypore; crammed for it at sea, & wrote it in London. I think it’s derned cunning & good. It interrupted the flow of the book, & I took it out. I’ve been kind of hoping, all day, But Mrs. Clemens reports, now, that she has searched everywhere & found no trace of it. So—let it go; I can’t bear to cram for it again; it takes too blessed long.
Do you care for fables? I enclose some.
It’s all the miscellaneous MS I’ve got, & no time to write more. (I’ve got acres and acres of uncompleted M.-MSS., but they’ll never be completed. I like other work better) [MTP].
Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to at the bottom of the Jan. 10 from Livy for Sam [MTP].