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Summer 1906 – Sometime during his 1906 stay in Dublin (May 18 to Oct. 18, excluding a few trips), Sam met Ethel Barrymore, who was spending the summer at the artists’ colony in Cornish, N.H., where she posed for several paintings. The colony, active between 1895 and 1925, was spread out over Windsor, Vt., Plainfield, and Cornish. During its time nearly 100 artists, sculpors, writers, designers, and well-known politicians chose to live there, either for the full year or during summertimes. Barrymore would become a famous actress. She wrote her memoirs in 1955 and mentions her first meetings with Mark Twain:

I went over to Dublin, New Hampshire, which is about fifty miles from Cornish, to visit Joseph [Linden] Smith, the artist. They were having some kind of garden fete and I was to be a sprite coming up from a fountain. Mark Twain was one of the guests that night. He was always very nice to me.

      It was the first time I had seen him in white evening clothes. I met him with Bob Collier at dinner in New York shortly afterward, and he was still in his white evening clothes. I saw him again at some big benefit at an opera house where there were booths. He was sitting in the book stall, signing things, when I passed by. He called out, “Oh, there’s the water sprite!” [TS by Tenney: Memories: An Autobiography y Ethel Barrymore p.154-5]. Note: Sam would “come out” in white evening clothes more spectacularly in winter in Washington on Dec. 7, 1906 before a Congressional committee. At this point, his dress was in-season.

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.