May 30 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam added to his May 29 to Charlotte Teller Johnson.
Next night. After all those gay spirits, comes the natural reaction, the inevitable reaction, & I am as melancholy as a dog. All day. This morning came a newspaper from the Sandwich Islands, with an account of a marriage in it. Bride, groom, bridesmaids, groomsmen, their friends, their relations—I knew every one of them! & began to call up their faces out of the past, & their friendly voices, & shapely young forms, & care-free laughter, &—then it occurred to me, “Why, those are the children of the young people I knew”—for it was 40 years ago. It was a shock! More was to come: some of them were grandchildren of young people I had known; the bride & another were, at any rate. And her grandfather was referred to as “the late chief justice.” There is a whole history in it: bachelor, starting in life, in my time; husband since; father; grandfather; chief justice; dead, & buried. All since we comraded together. It made me blue. Human life is a fiendish invention, Charlotte. You admonished me lately to avoid melancholy—& that was wise—but in the same breath you confessed to that temperament yourself. Well, we can’t help these things: they are not subject to command, they are purely matters of temperament—for your sake I wish it were not so.
10 p.m. Do I seem to be writing a journal? It is by the master’s desire. This letter reminds me of the time I reformed. I said I would smoke only one cigar a day. Before the month was out I was getting the cigars manufactured specially. They were as long as a crutch [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Holiday from dictating & Mr. Clemens has been reading the auto-ms. aloud & revising it. I am his audience—he has read fifteen thousand words, 2 hours this morning, & nearly the same time this afternoon he has given to it. Susy’s Biography was the theme of it & his comment upon her comment is touching so wonderful is he—that all others are bleak, so full of surprises & thought & action that there is no monotony where he is.
Tonight he read from the first Jungle book—but he was too exhausted after the long reading & revising of the day & so went early to his bed [MTP TS 75]. Note: The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling.
Edward E. Clarke wrote two letters from Hastings, England to Sam. In the first letter Clarke tells of a tour of the Union Jeanne D’Arc, Rouen, with materials that drew quite a crowd. The president of the Union, Pierre Drapeau, had written to Clarke that he had a son in NY, who sought literary work and would like to have an interview with Twain. Lyon notes on the back of the first letter to the effect that Sam was old and “heavily burdened,” and that this was one of “a thousand appeals from strangers, to all of which he is obliged to say no.” Clarke’s second letter was one of introduction for this above mentioned son to Mark Twain [MTP].
Next night. After all those gay spirits, comes the natural reaction, the inevitable reaction, & I am as melancholy as a dog. All day. This morning came a newspaper from the Sandwich Islands, with an account of a marriage in it. Bride, groom, bridesmaids, groomsmen, their friends, their relations—I knew every one of them! & began to call up their faces out of the past, & their friendly voices, & shapely young forms, & care-free laughter, &—then it occurred to me, “Why, those are the children of the young people I knew”—for it was 40 years ago. It was a shock! More was to come: some of them were grandchildren of young people I had known; the bride & another were, at any rate. And her grandfather was referred to as “the late chief justice.” There is a whole history in it: bachelor, starting in life, in my time; husband since; father; grandfather; chief justice; dead, & buried. All since we comraded together. It made me blue. Human life is a fiendish invention, Charlotte. You admonished me lately to avoid melancholy—& that was wise—but in the same breath you confessed to that temperament yourself. Well, we can’t help these things: they are not subject to command, they are purely matters of temperament—for your sake I wish it were not so.
10 p.m. Do I seem to be writing a journal? It is by the master’s desire. This letter reminds me of the time I reformed. I said I would smoke only one cigar a day. Before the month was out I was getting the cigars manufactured specially. They were as long as a crutch [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Holiday from dictating & Mr. Clemens has been reading the auto-ms. aloud & revising it. I am his audience—he has read fifteen thousand words, 2 hours this morning, & nearly the same time this afternoon he has given to it. Susy’s Biography was the theme of it & his comment upon her comment is touching so wonderful is he—that all others are bleak, so full of surprises & thought & action that there is no monotony where he is.
Tonight he read from the first Jungle book—but he was too exhausted after the long reading & revising of the day & so went early to his bed [MTP TS 75]. Note: The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling.
Edward E. Clarke wrote two letters from Hastings, England to Sam. In the first letter Clarke tells of a tour of the Union Jeanne D’Arc, Rouen, with materials that drew quite a crowd. The president of the Union, Pierre Drapeau, had written to Clarke that he had a son in NY, who sought literary work and would like to have an interview with Twain. Lyon notes on the back of the first letter to the effect that Sam was old and “heavily burdened,” and that this was one of “a thousand appeals from strangers, to all of which he is obliged to say no.” Clarke’s second letter was one of introduction for this above mentioned son to Mark Twain [MTP].
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