March 19 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to W.T. Hall.
I thank you very much for the clipping from the Atlantic [sic Atlanta] Evening News. I have waited these many years for you to hear me lecture, but now it is too late: I am taking my farewell of the platform three weeks hence. The hostiles say “But you are forgetting the gallows—” a joke which I am too proud & arrogant to notice [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Jean, 8:20 10:30
Mr. Paine spoke to me about a piece of land 75 acres with an old farm house on it in Redding, Ct. where he recently bought a place—$2,000.00 is the price—and when I told Mr. Clemens about it, he closed in with the idea as a good investment, and Mr. Paine has sent off the first $100.00 to bind the bargain. I didn’t think he would want it because I couldn’t think he would want anything that I want—with an aching heart. I reached out for that farm for I don’t ever want to go back to Farmington again. I want & want & want to sell Choisy & so be able to settle where there is more room—you can see for 20 miles. Life is such a tiny bubble that why we reach out for material things I don’t know; but we do it and that old beamed farmhouse on top of the hill held out its arms to me.
It is dreary & gloomy with Mr. Clemens in his bed because he must be there. Mr. Paine has taken some more wonderful photographs of him.
Dr. Halsey came down to see Mr. Clemens & has ordered cold water compresses for his throat & Mr. Clemens finds him a beautiful creature to look at! [MTP TS 53-54; also in part, Hill 126]. Note: the Redding land would be Sam’s last home, “Stormfield.”
W.W. Hallock wrote from NY to offer Sam a speaking engagement to the Sphinx Club, “an organization of newspaper and magazine publishers, printers, advertisers, Agents, Newspaper Representatives, and those in kindred lines” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter “Farewell to Stage”
March 19 ca. – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Isabel Lyon replied for Sam to Thomas P. Brown’s Mar. 13 offer: “should only lose it—& so does not care” [MTP]. Sam answered Duffield Osborne’s request of Mar. 17. See entry. “Yes certainly—use it” [MTP].