July 5 Sunday – In Redding, Conn. Sam began a letter to Dorothy Sturgis which he mislaid, found and finished on July 14. The July 5 portion: Sunday noon.
Dear Dorothy, I was not in Boston much, but I slept there 3 nights at the Touraine. I went to your house the first day—not really expecting to find any one there, but hoping to be pleasantly mistaken as to that. The weather is divine here, to-day & I wish we had some angel-fishes with us to enjoy it. We have had visits from two, & another is coming day after tomorrow. Meantime Mr. Paine comes every day & plays billiards, & Ashcroft comes up for the week-ends. I may stay here all the winter, but I suppose I shall keep the New York house. But I shan’t be there much. This place is pleasanter.
Cohasset, if I remember rightly, is in Michigan—or maybe India, or around those places somewhere. I will inquire, or send this letter to Beacon street when I finish it tomorrow.
The billiard room in this house is Aquarium head-quarters, & on its walls hang the framed photographs of 6 of the 12 members—yours among the 6; but it is not a good picture at all, & I think you must send me a better one. I shall soon have all the 12. However, it can very well wait until you come here. In time I hope to have all the beloved dozen photographed here on the premises [MTP].
John Brown, Jr. (“Jock”) wrote to Sam, “pleased and proud” to have rec’d Sam’s letter of June 20. His son was now sixteen, daughter fifteen, and he thought his son (also Jock) was “in character & mind like my father” [MTP].
Alice Von Versen wrote to Sam.
Dear Mr Clemens / I am going to ask you to help me in the International popular Art Exhibition which takes place next year in Berlin. They have asked me to take charge of the American exhibit. What I want you to do is to give me the name of some lady in New York who would be willing to receive all the artists sent for this Exhibition & have them forwarded to Europe; of the Lyceum Club has [illegible word] perhaps some member of it would do this… [MTP]. Note: MT wrote in the margin of the first page, “Hofrath von Reuvers” and “J. Borden Harriman”