May 29 Wednesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
Dear Admiral: / Why hang it, I am not going to see you & Mrs. Rogers at all in England! It is a great disappointment. I leave there a month from now—June 29. No, I shall see you; for by your itinerary you are most likely to come to London June 21 or along there. So that is very good & satisfactory. I have declined all engagements but two—Whitelaw Reid (dinner) June 21, and the Pilgrims (lunch), June 25. The Oxford ceremony is June 26. I have paid my return passage in the Minne-something, but it is just possible that I may want to stay in England a week or two longer—I can’t tell, yet. I do very much want to meet-up with the boys for the last time.
Harry is getting along all right; I was there three or four days ago & saw him.
Mr. Vanderbilt is back in New York & doubtless has invited Mr. Cleveland in behalf of the Fulton Association. I have already invited him in behalf of the Kanawha.
I have signed the contract for the building of the house on my Connecticut farm & specified the cost-limit, & work has been begun. The cost has to all come out of a year’s installments of Autobiograph y in the N. A. Review.
Clara is winning her way to success & distinction with sure-steady strides. By all accounts she is singing like a bird, & is not afraid of the concert stage any more.
Jean will never be well, but is contented & happy where she is & does not want to see the city again.
Miss Lyon runs Clara, & Jean & me, & the servants, & the housekeeping, & the house- building,& the secretary work, & remains as extraordinarily competent as ever. Mr. Broughton —after his characteristically engaging & Broughtonian fashion—was elaborately courteous & courtly to her on sight (there at his office) & said he was intemperately eager to help her run my stock-affairs, & even threatened to take her out to lunch at his club some day. I think Miss Lyon is a flirt—& Broughton the same.
Tuxedo is a charming place; I think it hasn’t its equal anywhere.
Very best wishes to you both [MTHHR 625-6]. Note: Sam’s ship was the SS Minnesota. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the President and Sam the vice president of the Robert Fulton Monument Assoc. A celebration was planned for the Sept. 23, 1907 at The Jamestown Exposition in Virginia.
After May 29 Sam replied to Constance Clyde at the Writers Club in London, whose request is undated. “I should dearly like to write it, but I am too rusty on the facts now, & have forgotten where to look for them. But your suggestion is a high compliment to me, & I prize it & thank you for it” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Calls. Yes we made calls, and found the Ronaldses at home, just back from getting a new mobile. It’s a lovely house. Mr. Clemens is carried away by the loveliness of this place. He says he has never seen so beautiful a place in all his travels. To me it is the expression of artificiality and great wealth; and I’m beginning to feel a hankering, a great quiet longing for Dublin and the upper pasture and the road leading to the Raynor Cottage. There I was almost-a-free creature of the hills. Here I am a gloved and card-cased thing [MTP TS 60- 61].
Harry E. Brittain wrote to Sam confirming June 25 as the luncheon date with the Pilgrims, London [MTP].
Ralph Danenhower for Frank N. Doubleday wrote to Sam, sending six copies of “What is Man?” and furnishing Rudyard Kipling’s address, Batesman’s Burwash, Sussex, England [MTP].
Therese Girand wrote from Katonah, NY to Miss Lyon about Jean and doing errands for her when going to NYC [MTP].
Crittenden Hampton wrote to Sam shortly before this date. Hampton was an attorney in Tuolumne County, Calif. He wrote to advise of the passing of Jim Gillis and related that Jim’s one letter from Mark Twain was the prize of his life [MTP].
Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam that Baron Tauchnitz asked if he could publish CS—would Sam give permission? [MTP]. Note: Sam answered the following day.
Howells & Stokes wrote to Sam and John Mead Howells enclosed a handwritten note to Lyon —all concerning “the possibility of constructing the open veranda to the west with the extra bedroom and bath above” [MTP].
John Japp, Mayor of Liverpool, England, wrote to Sam, offering “the hospitality of our Town Hall, on your arrival here or at any time during your English visit,” hoping regardless of Sam’s prior cable, that he might reconsider [MTP]. Note: Sam enclosed Japp’s letter and also Japp’s June 14 in his June 19 reply.
H.L. Pangborn wrote (not extant) from 48 Wall St., N.Y.C. to Sam [MTP]. On or after this date Sam replied: “Your note about our lost hell is a refreshing breeze to me. It was the most valuable thing we had, & I do not think we have anything to live for now— / Sincerely yours” [MTP].
In his A.D. for this day Sam commented on John Burroughs (1837-1921), ed. Songs of Nature. Gribben: “Burroughs is ‘a heavyweight’ who intimates that ‘he knows more about an animal than the animal knows about itself’” [117]. Note: See also May 30; Sam also mentioned William Joseph Long’s nature books and observed that at least he wrote from his own observations, his only fault being a tendency to overestimate the intelligence of the creatures he described [419]. Sam’s A.D. also included a remark about Theodore Roosevelt: “If he should die now, he would be mourned as no ruler has been mourned save Nero” [677].
Of the selections from Twain’s A.D.’s, DeVoto selected about half of the materials not chosen before by Paine to be included in Mark Twain in Eruption (1940); among DeVoto’s choices, was “Naturalist and Nature-Fakir,” dictated this day, which criticized Roosevelt’s attack of naturalist William Joseph Long, and of other criticism of Theodore Roosevelt, including Executive Order 78, which established military pensions for all veterans, disabled or not, between the ages of 62 and 70, at a cost of about five million per year. Sam saw the order as a naked grab for votes. Sam Clemens was no socialist [19-22].