March 17 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: “Mr. Vernon called to see Mr. Clemens this morning” [MTP TS 8].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tonight after dinner Mr. Clemens read us a new story that he is writing. Two chapters he read. I don’t know what he calls it, but “The Admiral’s Cat” will do here. It is a story of the poet who had a marvelous idea of erecting a statue to Adam, and he tells a friend of his project. He had no money and so would have to interest other people in the idea. The first person he goes to is an old Admiral whose weak point in his beautiful black cat—and Mr. Clemens’s description of the cat through the old Admiral’s comments upon it is a master stroke. He calls it Bagheera and draws upon a word or more of Kipling’s when he describes that glorious black panther of his. It is a beautiful story. The old Admiral is drawn from two old whaling captains—Capt. Ed Wakeman and Commodore Smith. The former was born on a whaler, and when he retired after 70 years of sea life he used to cruise as a passenger up and down the Pacific coast from San Francisco to Panama.

Mr. Clemens paced up and down the living room as he described the two old sailors—and he grew more and more interesting every moment. Then he missed Bambino and after a search through the house, even to the cellar—I found him shut out on the roof outside of Mr. Clemens’s sleeping room. He really is the most beautiful creature ever—that cat [MTP: TS 44; also Gribbern 378 in part]. Note: the story became “The Refuge of the Derelicts,” long unpublished, which borrows from Kipling to praise Kipling.