April 10 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote a reply on Edward Everett Hale’s Apr 8. “I had already dismissed the copyright matter from my mind, recognizing that it was too late to accomplish anything with it this year. Therefore I squash my answer to your letter into a simple sentence, to wit:—I haven’t any wish to follow up the copyright matter this year” [MTP].
Sam also replied to the Apr. 8 praise of his A.D. from William Dean Howells:
It is lovely of you to praise it so, & to want to read the rest of it. I’ll see to it that you do read the rest of it, before you get out of the notion. Clara will arrive this evening & fetch it. She took 500 pages with her—to pretend to read, as I supposed, & thus please me—but she has actually been reading them; & moreover she says in plain terms:
“I spent the morning reading in your biography even forgetting my fresh air duties the time passed so smoothly, so rapidly”—& more of the same sort. This from one’s own flesh! It is next to incredible. Let us institute a gang next fall, made up of nice publishers & nice literary folk, whose function it shall be to entertain at luncheon the visiting literary stranger, the expense to be distributed among the gang. He must be entertained, & why should the cost fall upon an individual?—as in the H.G. Wells case. There’s you; & me & Augustus Thomas; & the Colonel; & Sam M Clure; and Doubleday; & Gen. Haven Putnam; & Ed Burlingame; & Gilder; & Mr. Shaw; & Mr. c Dogley & Robert Collier; & Norman Hapgood; & Francis Wilson; & David Munro; & Lanier; and—and—well, there’s others. Plenty of nice boys. None eligible but literatics, publishers, & maybe a one or two nice actors & managers. Yours ever [MTHL 2: 804]. Notes: those not prior identified: Edward Burlingame, editor of Scribner’s; Albert Shaw, ed. of American Review of Reviews; Henry W. Lanier secretary of Doubleday, Page & Co. Clemens’ A.D. for the day: Child’s letter about “Huckleberry Finn” being flung out of Concord Library—Ambassador White’s autobiography—Clemen’s version of the Fiske-Cornell episode—Another example of his great scheme for find employment for the unemployed—This client wins the Fiske lawsuit [MTP Autodict2].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Jean, 10:10 from 6 a.m. (very good & obedient) 12:05, very bad; 5:05
The morning mail batch wasn’t heavy, but it had a nice letter from E.E. Hale on the copyright question in which he said that nothing can be done in the matter this year, but if Mr. Clemens & Mr. Howells have any personal reason for pushing it, he is willing to do his part. His copyright on “A Man Without A Country” expires this year & it is “pretty devilish” SLC. There is no reason now, why Mr. Clemens should want to push the matter & he dictated a reply to Dr. Hale.
Last evening Mr. Clemens left at 5 with Mr. Rogers & after dinner at the Rogers’s they went to see a champion billiard match at the Madison Square Garden. This morning Mr. Clemens said he and Mr. Rogers were very conspicuous for 2 reasons. Because they were about the only men in evening clothes & because of our old white heads. The men assembled there were a serious & a knowing lot; men ranging in age from 35 to 50; most discriminating company, & there were miracles wrought there, Mr. Clemens said. He told me how the game went—all on the side of the Frenchman Curé, who was laying against the young American, Morningside. 100 points ahead he was when Mr. Clemens and Mr. Rogers started to leave at 10 o’clock. As they made their way along to the exit there was a great wave of applause, & Mr. Clemens turned instinctively to see the shot that had been made, only to find the billiardists surprised at applause for what wasn’t anything to applaud, & then Mr. Clemens knew that he “was the shot” they were celebrating [MTP TS 63-64].
Also in her journal for Apr. 11: “Last night [Apr. 10] Mr. Clemens dined with Mrs. Johnson and her revolutionary tribe—Narodny and others. No—Narodny wasn’t there either—but he’s to be there tonight, and Gorky too. A buck dinner” [MTP].
John Brown, Jr. (“Jock”) wrote from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sam. “Thanks for your kind note returning the types of your and Mrs. Clemens’ letters and thank you for letting me use them. … I have sent you the Memoir by Dr. J.T. Brown.” He also thanked Sam for his photograph [MTP].
Harry C. Eva for Harlem Rescue Mission wrote to invite Sam to be “one of the speakers” at th the sixth anniversary of the Mission on Apr. 19 at 8 p.m. [MTP].
Ivan Narodny wrote from 3 Fifth Ave., NYC to invite Sam to dinner Wed. Apr. 11 at 7 pm to meet Maxim Gorky [MTP].
Guion P. Wilson for Journalists’ Club of Baltimore wrote to Sam asking him to appear at the Lyric Theatre there to help the club climb out of debt [MTP].
April 10 ca. – Sam replied to Wanda M. Russian’s Apr. 5 inquiry about German translating:
I don’t know where these rights belong but I do know they formerly belonged to Chatto & W. pub. London & whether they have been transferred to Harper & Bros or not I don’t know. Robert Lutz of Leipzig has long had the right in Germany [MTP]. Note: this was written across Russian’s letter.
Sam also replied to Marie E. Burns (hers not extant): “In the circumstances I find I’m getting more & more worn, & there are many things for me to do before I can leave this town” [MTP].