April 5 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Alice Pearmain (Mrs. Sumner B. Pearmain).
Dear Mrs. Pearmain: The first of May falls on Tuesday. My plan is to go to Boston on the previous Saturday, & remain until the family are settled at Dublin and ready for me. The family leave here for Dublin the first of May and will have everything ready for me by the 4 or 5 of May, no doubt. I thank you ever so much for your exceedingly kind invitation and I gladly accept it. I will keep bachelor’s hall at the Touraine [Hotel, Boston] three days, & remove to your house on the day appointed for me in your letter—May first. I am a desperately tired man & I have engagements in front of me which will find me much more tireder by the time I reach Boston. I shall be wholly glad to slump down there & have a rest. With many thanks & with love to you all & to Margaret. Sincerely yours, S.L. Clemens [Skinner Auctions Oct. 26, 2002 Sale 2167 Lot 18].
Clemens’ A.D. for the day: Miss Mary Lawton the rising sun, Ellen Terry the setting sun— Ellen
Terry’s farewell banquet, on 50th anniversary—Mr. Clemens’s cablegram—Clemens has fine new idea for a play; James Hammond Trumbull squelches it—Orion Clemens is defeated as Secretary of State—At Mr. Camp’s suggestion Mr. Clemens speculates unfortunately—Orion refuses— Mr. Clemens just discovers that he still own 1000 acres of the Tennessee land—Orion comes East, gets position on Hartford Evening Post—After various business ventures he returns to Keokuk & tries raising chickens [MTP Autodict1].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The Vorses took Mr. Clemens, Jean & me up to see that wonderful creature Ruth St. Dennis [sic] in her Hindoo dances. Oh, such a marvel as she is” [MTP TS 61]. Note: Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) was an early modern dance pioneer who would found Adelphi University’s dance department in 1938. Her and her husband, Ted Shawn, were known for their Oriental productions. The ad for this day give it as a 3 p.m. matinee at the Hudson Theatre. See insert.
William Bengough wrote from N.Y.C. to Sam:
I enclose a print from the portrait sketch I made of you that rainy fall day in dripping old Kaltenlutgen away back in ’98. The day I called to tell you about Santiago—and stoically kept my promise not to print our interview.
I realize the imperfection of my hasty sketch, and wish that some day I could make a “real oil painting” of it, with a sitting or two to help me out.
This appeared in the March number of M.A.P. —you probably saw it staring at you on various newsstands [MTP]. Note: Lyon answered ca. Apr. 7: “Doesn’t think he could make it worse.”
Norman Hapgood wrote to Sam on a University Club note sheet. “I am giving a lunch at this club next Monday at 1 to the British novelist, H.G. Wells. Can you be persuaded to come? Hoping so…” [MTP].
Calvin H. Higbie wrote to Sam: “Yours of March 26 at hand, and much pleased that you will do so much for me, but as the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, of March 25, has begun an [a series] article on the same subject, I am afraid that it will greatly injure my plans.” He characterized the first article as “a garbled mess…nothing original…taken almost verbatim from Roughing It, and with some deliberate lies.” He had consulted an attorney in S.F. to prosecute them for libel and damage [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote to go on with things as if nothing had happened and to have the MS typewritten. They wouldn’t know if any damage had been done until he submitted the MS to the NY Herald or to a magazine.
Wanda M. Russian wrote from Chicago asking if she might “translate into German works of your pen specified by you and under your own conditions?” [MTP]. Note: The MTP catalogs Sam’s reply as “ca.7 April,” buit five days estimated postal time is allowed here, giving ca. Apr. 10. See entry.
Albert G. Webber, attorney in Decatur, Ill. wrote philosophizing about whether a person in good health and in the luxury of wealth enjoyed Twain’s humor as much as one with bad health and “buoyed up by adversity.”
Is it not in your power to produce a work of humor which will portray the wrongs and abuses of the poor and the downtrodden and that will cause the rich to ponder over what good they can do with their wealth to mankind [?]. Can you alienate selfishness and cultivate a love of mankind [?]
The luster of such a concluding work from you would be an apex of imperishable honor and glory to your immortal living monument [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the back of the letter: “I wrote that very book nine years ago & after I am dead it will be published but not before that.”
April 5 ca. – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Ellen Terry, the actress:
“Age has not withered, nor custom staled, the admiration and affection I have felt for you so many many years. I lay them at your honored feet with the strength and freshness of their youth upon them undiminished. / Mark Twain” [MTP].