October 11 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam began a letter to Mary B. Rogers that he added to on Oct. 12, 13, and 16.
Thursday. 6 pm
Dublin, Oct. 12/06.
It isn’t right to pelt you with a letter so soon, dear pal, but there’s been a cloud-lift today & I’ve got to jubilate with somebody or expire with satisfaction. Next, I will write Clara, & between you two I expect to quiet down & become rational again.
When I was arriving from Fairhaven the physician boarded the train—he was on the watch for me—& told [rest of page is cut off; section of next page is cut off leaving a few words on the right]
(You little rascal, if you had sent me without writing the part of the letter you wrote on the day & night I left Fairhaven with your victory over Harry, it would have discharged some valuable jollity into this gloom—sure!)
I will say to you & Harry (privately) that during the week that
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At 1 today I put on fresh white clothes & drove—between two very real snow-storms—to a lunch-party at the house of a daughter of Professor Pumpelly—a lady-friend with much of your charm & about your age, & similarly jewelled (2 little children,) She has made several
In the middle of that luncheon I got a mental-telegraphic shock, & said to myself, “Bad news is arriving at the house!” I knew something was arriving, & most likely had, in these days: “Twichell has fallen out of his pulpit & broken his neck—Clara has been run over by a cow— Harry has bankrupted Mary—at any rate something has gone wrong with someday.”
But it wasn’t so! As soon as I was home & in bed (afternoon-habit [on another page, in MBR’s hand: I did not cut missing parts of this letter out—Uncle Mark did this himself—perhaps he was sad—MBR] at home but not elsewhere) Miss Lyon came up & reported. She brought your breezy & delightful letter (winner, after being so close to irremediable disaster, poor pal!) & Peterson’s cablegram from Europe; & not even a rumor of trouble between Clara & the cow! Then Jean came up & sat on the bedside, & the last cloud vanished—
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It is pathetic.
Presently she said, “But I am interrupting you, & will go—you are writing to Clara?”
“No, it is to my niece, my pal—stay where you are, & we will talk.”
So she stayed, & was sad & subdued, but very gentle & sweet. Which wrung my heart, but threw me into a boiling internal rage—rage against brutal Nature & her hell-engendered crimes against the innocent & the unoffending—for neither your sister nor Jean has done anything to deserve the afflictions visited upon them.
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10 p.m. As I had eaten luncheon I did not go to dinner, but I dressed & went down after dinner & finished reading the first half of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar aloud to Jean & Miss Lyon— that tremendous poem!—a poor enough preparation for sleep, certainly. I shall lose to-morrow; I lost to-day, & also yesterday. But it doesn’t matter—there will be plenty Autobiography before we call the undertaker.
Yes, I can see the picture. I can see you quite clearly, flying around in your chaos & reducing it to order & symmetry. Ask Henry to tell you. There is no other way to keep you from wearing yourself out. I’m glad you beat him! the fact that I am fond of him these many many years doesn’t seem to keep me from rejoicing when you skin him in those contests [MTP].
Note: Sam misdated the letter Thursday, Oct. 12, and the MTP shows it from Oct. 12 to the 17, but Oct. 12 was a Friday; subsequent additions are shown as “Next Day, 11 a.m.—Friday”; “9.30 a.m. Saturday”; and “Tuesday.” Assumed then, that Sam had the correct day of the week in these segments and began the letter on Oct. 11, Thursday, making the dates Oct. 11 to Oct. 16.
Clemens’ A.D. of this day included: From Susy’s Biography [MTP Autodict2].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Snow. Letter from Dr. Hunt containing cablegram from Dr. Peterson.
No dictating today. The King began it & then had to stop—it wouldn’t come. But again I got the benefit of the lack of inspiration for he talked an hour & more—thundering out his detestations. He detests the stranger who applies to him for help. He detests the stranger who brings his idiotic reforms before the King’s notice in an assinine [sic] letter. These creatures insult him & this morning for the first time in many weeks he wished the heavens would open & send down a bolt of lightning to split open his head. “There is always plenty of lightning, but such damned indiscrimination in the use of it.” Whenever the King goes to the fresh batch of mail & opens stray letters he is bound to find something to throw him into a rage & make him curse the Human Race. He storms up & down the room & is so beautiful, that you love the torrents of blasphemy & the anger that produce that wondrous beauty.
He lunched with Handasyd Cabots today & Mrs. Cabot photographed him. (8 plates)
Tonight he read “Julius Caesar” again & standing under the light with his black cape on over his white clothes, he was lost in the wonder of the play & unconsciously acted it [MTP TS 133]. Note: Gribben adds using an older TS, a section not in this TS: “The King has been reading George Eliot’s translation of Straus’s [sic] Life of Jesus, & is amazed at the great care taken by Straus to trace the genealogy on the father’s side. No one—apparently—not even George Eliot remembered that on the father’s side he had God, & as the King said he could so easily say ‘Papa up there, is enough for me’” [Gribben 673]. Gribben gives no page number.