June 26 Tuesday – Sam left Dublin, N.H. and traveled first to Boston, then on to New York. If his plans went as he’d told Charlotte Teller on June 25, he arrived home at 6 p.m. (See IVL’s journal entry below). In the evening he wrote to William Dean Howells
It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things—I don’t know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.
I read “After the Wedding” aloud to Jean & Miss Lyon, & we felt all the pain of it & the truth. It was very moving & very beautiful—would have been overcomingly moving, at times, but for the haltings & pauses compelled by the difficulties MS.—those were a protection in that they furnished me time to brace up my voice, & get a new start. Jean wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, & for “Keeps” to, I suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like “In Our Town,” particularly that Colonel of the Lookout Mountain Oration, & very particularly pages 212–216. I wrote & told White. After “After the Wedding” I read “The Mother” aloud & sounded its human deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it was first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings—for no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century—if then. But I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years—& that was the main thing. I feel better, now.
I came down to-day on business—from house to house in 12½ hours, & expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy. / Yours as always / Mark [MTHL 2: 814-15]. Note: “After the Wedding” was a poem of Howells that would run in the Dec. Harper’s; “The Mother” was another Howells poem published in Harper’s Dec. 1902.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: This morning at 6 o’clock we left the house to start on the journey to Boston. Mr. Clemens had overslept & so couldn’t shave—but that didn’t matter. He was so gay & told a delightful story about an experience he had 30 years ago when he was on a train & a farmer introduced a conversation on his own achievement & his crops. Hiram Carey sat & listened as a keen Yankee farmer can. On the train going to Boston Mr. Clemens was in a great mood, he talked steadily saying unforgettable things of which I have made notes elsewhere. Reaching Boston we took the trunk on a cab & drove to the Boston Public Library where we stayed for more than an hour over the Abbey & Sargeant pictures & too the wonder of the Mexican marble entrance was enchanting—the yellows are wonderful. It is so sweet to prowl about any place with Mr. Clemens for he catches & holds the beauties of things and forever he is a joy. As we stood at the entrance of the long reading room Mr. Clemens caught sight of a little girl who was watching him & he sent me to bring the child to him. She attached herself & we went on through the place with the child as guide & when we left to enter the cab again Mr. Clemens kissed her goodbye & left her in a little maze of wonder. I left him at the station for N.Y. & then I went to shop & shop—with a foolishly miserable heart in my breast. It would be so lonely now at The Lodge of Sorrow [Fifth Ave. house] [MTP TS 90-91].
It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things—I don’t know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.
I read “After the Wedding” aloud to Jean & Miss Lyon, & we felt all the pain of it & the truth. It was very moving & very beautiful—would have been overcomingly moving, at times, but for the haltings & pauses compelled by the difficulties MS.—those were a protection in that they furnished me time to brace up my voice, & get a new start. Jean wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, & for “Keeps” to, I suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like “In Our Town,” particularly that Colonel of the Lookout Mountain Oration, & very particularly pages 212–216. I wrote & told White. After “After the Wedding” I read “The Mother” aloud & sounded its human deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it was first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings—for no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century—if then. But I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years—& that was the main thing. I feel better, now.
I came down to-day on business—from house to house in 12½ hours, & expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy. / Yours as always / Mark [MTHL 2: 814-15]. Note: “After the Wedding” was a poem of Howells that would run in the Dec. Harper’s; “The Mother” was another Howells poem published in Harper’s Dec. 1902.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: This morning at 6 o’clock we left the house to start on the journey to Boston. Mr. Clemens had overslept & so couldn’t shave—but that didn’t matter. He was so gay & told a delightful story about an experience he had 30 years ago when he was on a train & a farmer introduced a conversation on his own achievement & his crops. Hiram Carey sat & listened as a keen Yankee farmer can. On the train going to Boston Mr. Clemens was in a great mood, he talked steadily saying unforgettable things of which I have made notes elsewhere. Reaching Boston we took the trunk on a cab & drove to the Boston Public Library where we stayed for more than an hour over the Abbey & Sargeant pictures & too the wonder of the Mexican marble entrance was enchanting—the yellows are wonderful. It is so sweet to prowl about any place with Mr. Clemens for he catches & holds the beauties of things and forever he is a joy. As we stood at the entrance of the long reading room Mr. Clemens caught sight of a little girl who was watching him & he sent me to bring the child to him. She attached herself & we went on through the place with the child as guide & when we left to enter the cab again Mr. Clemens kissed her goodbye & left her in a little maze of wonder. I left him at the station for N.Y. & then I went to shop & shop—with a foolishly miserable heart in my breast. It would be so lonely now at The Lodge of Sorrow [Fifth Ave. house] [MTP TS 90-91].
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