February 15 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Such a sweet comfort of an evening I have had with the King, after a busy & fluttering kind of a day. Mr. Rogers came in for a long talk this morning. Brio left at 12:45, leaving a baddish taste in Santa’s mouth. At 2:15 C. Teller called up asking if the King would come to the telephone, but he wouldn’t of course, & then she sent in a note asking him to go to the Brevort (where she is stopping) in order to do some work which he alone could do. I called her up telling her that she’d have to talk to me & what she wanted was to have him make a speech at a big mass meeting to be held in aid of the 20,000 unemployed in this city. She isn’t alone in her belief that the King is the only one in the world best calculated to advance a cause, but she stands quite alone in being willing to sacrifice him in order to fulfil a whimsy of hers. Later we went to a little tea at Mrs. Dearborn’s & then home to dinner—we two, & then I to play for him. The Erlkonig or “konig Suhl”, & Schubert’s Impromptu I played, but they didn’t fit his mood, & finally the Lohengrin Wedding March, I played 5 times for him. Then to the billiard room, where he gently knocked the balls about making some beautiful shots, and we both smoked [MTP: IVL TS 22-23].
Addison C. Harris, attorney in Indianapolis, Ind. wrote to Sam. “I have not forgotten your good fun over a very long word which I heard you play off in Vienna. / I therefore make bold to send you one; and claim for my Hoosier State…” The clipping contained the word: “Pappatheodorokoummountourgiotopoulos” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Feb. 21, ‘08” and “Thank him for sending the clip”
Charlotte Teller Johnson wrote from the Brevoort Hotel, around the corner from Sam.
My dear Mr Clemens—I am quite sure that I am right—in the biggest sense—in ignoring the personal pride dictated by social prejudice—and in asking you to do a very great thing, which will cost you little effort. I am right because I know and share to a certain extent—your bitterness against the scheme of things as we have been born into it. I count upon what I learned of your attitude to help in promoting true passion for justice—in a concrete undertaking [MTP]. Note: she pleaded a convalescence and therefore couldn’t come in person. This one thing she wanted to accomplish before she died; he might bring Miss Lyon or Clara with him if he chose. See IVL entry this date for what Teller was grinding on about.
“A Senatory of the Sixties,” ran in Saturday Evening Post, with references to Mark Twain [Tenney 46: The Twainian June 1943]. Additionally, Tenney quotes William M. Stewart: “In Nevada, MT ‘went around putting things in the paper about people, and stirring up trouble. Naturally he was not popular. I did not associate with him.’ Stewart’s account of the mock robbery of MT … is violent: the boys overturned the stage, threw MT in a canyon, broke up his portmanteau, and threw the pieces afer him. A few years later, he dropped in on Stewart in Washington, ‘in a seedy suit,’ ‘a sheaf of scraggy black hair leaked out of a battered old slouch hat….He had a very sinister appearance.’ MT asked for a cash stake to finish IA, but Stewart countered by giving him a job as a private secretary and a room in his boarding house. MT repaid this kindness smoking cigars in bed, pretending to be drunk, and frightening the genteel landlady, and Stewart had to threaten him with a thrashing to make him behave” [Tenney, ALR Third Annual Supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1979) 193].