January 18 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Mai H. Coe and William R. Coe.
Dear Coes:
It is lovely of you to ask me, & I wish I could go to you—& indeed I will in the by & by, but I am going to New York day after tomorrow for the last time this season, to fill a last-April speech-engagement which includes guestship at young Robert Collier’s house. But you are a strong & young pair, & I shall expect & require you to come to me, for you don’t mind the travel, whereas I dread it.
With love to you both … [MTP].
Sam also replied to the Jan. 4 from John Henniker Heaton in London.
DEAR HENNIKER-HEATON,—I do hope you will succeed to your heart’s desire in your cheap-cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed your cheap-postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter-century of determined opposition, is good and rational prophecy that you will. Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash and high- placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was.
Now then, after uttering my serious word, am I privileged to be frivolous for a moment? When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy, are you going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other people’s pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap postage? You get letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an once, then you mail me a 4-ounce letter with a 2- cent stamp on it, and I have to pay the extra freight at this end of the line. I return your envelope for inspection. Look at it. Stamped in one place is a vast “T,” and under it the figures “40;” and under those figures appears an “L,” a sinister and suspicious and mysterious L. In another place, stamped within a circle, in offensively large capitals, you find the words “DUE 8 CENTS.” Finally, in the midst of a desert space up nor-noreastard from that circle you find a figure “3” of quite unnecessarily aggressive and insolent magnitude—and done with a blue pencil, so as to be as conspicuous as possible. I inquired about these strange signs and symbols of the postman. He said they were P. O. Department signals for his instruction.
“Instruction for what?”
“To get extra postage.”
“Is that so? Explain. Tell me about the large T and the 40.
“It’s short for Take 40—or as we postmen say, grab 40.”
“Go on, please, while I think up some words to swear with.”
“Due 8 means, grab 8 more.”
“———. Continue.”
“The blue-pencil 3 was an afterthought. There aren’t any stamps for afterthoughts; the sums vary, according to inspiration, and they whirl in the one that suggests itself at the last moment. Sometimes they go several times higher than this one. This one only means hog 3 cents more. And so if you’ve got 51 cents about you, or can borrow it—”
“Tell me: who gets this corruption?”
“Half of it goes to the man in England who ships the letter on short postage, and the other half goes to the P.O.D. to protect cheap postage from inaugurating a deficit.”
“—————!”
“I can’t blame you; I would say it myself in your place, if these ladies were not present. But you see I’m only obeying orders, I can’t help myself.”
“Oh, I know it; I’m not blaming you. Finally, what does that L stand for?”
“Get the money, or give him L. It’s English, you know.”
“Take it and go. It’s the last cent I’ve got in the world———.”
After seeing the Oxford pageant file by the grand stand, picture after picture, splendor after splendor, three thousand five hundred strong, the most moving and beautiful and impressive historically-instructive show conceivable, you are not to think I would miss the London pageant of next year, with its shining host of 15,000 historical English men and women dug from the misty books of all the vanished ages and marching in the light of the sun—all alive, and looking just as they were used to look! Mr. Lascelles spent yesterday here on the farm, and told me all about it. I shall be in the middle of my 75th year then, and interested in pageants for personal and prospective reasons.
I beg you to give my best thanks to the Bath Club for the offer of its hospitalities, but I shall not be able to take advantage of it, because I am to be a guest in a private house during my stay in London. / Sincerely yours, … [MTP]. Note: Henniker-Heaton (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not) had successfully led a campaign for penny postage in England; he was now on a similar campaign to secure cheap cablegrams. Frank Cavendish Lascelles was logged into the guestbook for Jan. 16, but not for Jan.17. He may have stayed over, however, as Sam refers to him spending the day of Jan. 17 “at the farm here.”
Sam also wrote to William Dean Howells.
Dear Howells: / I have to write a line, lazy as I am, to say how your Poe article delighted me; and to say that I am in agreement with substantially all you say about his literature. To me his prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin’s. No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. …
Another thing: you grant that God & circumstances sinned against Poe, but you also grant that he sinned against himself—a thing which he couldn’t do & didn’t do.
It is lively up here now. I wish you could come [MTHL 2: 841; MTP; Gribben 328].
Note: In the main part of his letter, Sam reacted to Howells’ Jan. 16 article in Harper’s
Weekly in which he maintained that none of Poe’s stories would be accepted by present day publishers because of their “mechanicality.” Howells blamed Poe’s need for money, his drinking and the backward state of the country (“abjectly provincial”) at that time. In the last sentence Sam indirectly referred (“lively”) to the pianists then visiting Stormfield, Ossip Gabrilowitsch (who became Clara Clemens’ husband later in 1909) and Ethel Newcomb. See Sam’s Jan. 3 to Margaret Blackmer.
Clemens acquired another case of Queen Anne whisky [L-A MS]. Note: see June 8, 1907 for the full list of acquisition dates of whisky, intended as ammunition against Isabel Lyon. After this entry Clemens wrote a summary of all the whisky acquired from Jan. 8, 1908 to Jan. 18, 1909:
+48 bottles used in 2 months
The bottled cocktails (in rich abundance) came from Park & Tilford [NY merchant], Claude [the butler] says.
Vibrator Oct. 24 (the first one?)
(The other one bought with case? Inquire.)
Jan 8/08 to Jan. 18/09——11 cases.
I did not use more than 3 bottles of this during the year. I used 5 bottles sent me by Mr. Carnegie.
½ case per year is about all I need.
When she [Lyon] left us, her first order for home consumption was 1 case & a lot of wine [L-A MS]. Note: here Clemens claimed that Isabel Lyon consumed 48 bottles of whisky in two months! See Hill 231.
The Armstrong Assoc. of New York per Marguerite Palmie wrote to advise Sam they were reserving a box for him at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 23. They’d “secured the President-elect, Mr. Taft, to make the principal address at a meeting for the discussion of Hampton and the Southern work generally….Booker T. Washington will also speak and Governor Hughes has been invited to preside.” The Hampton student chorus would sing plantation songs [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Jan 19 M.L.H.”; no record was found of Clemens attending.
The Republican Club of New York wrote to enclose 40 cents in additional postage for return of the print sent of the Quaker City. He asked for an acknowledgement when the print was returned [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Jan 27 M.L.H.”
The New York Times , p.4, “Roosevelt Asked to Police Dinner,” announced that Mark Twain was among those invited to the Police Benevolent dinner on Feb. 8.
January 18 Monday ca. – In Redding, Conn., Mary L. Howden (“Miss Mollie”) wrote for Sam to Diana Belais.
3 Dear Mrs. B. / Mr. C has had your letter in his room for some days and now asks me to write you for him to say that he regrets not being able to grant your request. So many have come to him of a similar nature that it is impossible for him to write letters of introduction to any one ] or really have any [illegible]. Mr. C has come to live in the country to be away from all activities as he finds that even the smaller ones exhaust him and that he must live in great quietness here in order to do even a small amount of work [MTP].
Mary also wrote for Sam to John Larkin. “4) Dear Mr. Larkin X sending this tax notice to you and asking that you’ll kindly notify the tax commissioners that he is no longer a resident of the city of N.Y.” [MTP].
Mary also wrote for Sam to Miss S. “2 Dear Miss S. / X and thank you very very much for the little volume of letters which arrived sometime since. He has been overdriven with work, with ] guests, with books that he has had on hand, that he has only just now reached the point where he can acknowledge the receipt of the vast number that come to him about Christmas time /Sincerely yours. / not secy” [MTP].
Mary also wrote for Sam to other various unidentified persons, as follows: Note: these ca. Jan. 18 letters are shorthand drafts of the letters that survive, and so lack identification; note each is numbered, from 2 to 11, then 3, 4 and 5 again, suggesting they were done in two different batches, perhaps on different days.
“ 5. / Dear sir X me to say that your letter didn’t teach him until Monday then too late to reach the outgoing post. Mr. C is leaving for N.Y. on Wednesday-morning [illegible] his business in town the [illegible] practically [illegible]. Can you not make an arrangement to [ come up next week say Monday, on the 8:50 train from N.Y. to R. station.”
“ 6 / X thank you very much for your letter and the [offer] and the books [and] to say that he has come to R to live and doesn’t expect to be in NY.”
“7 / X in answer to your letter, say that he regrets not being able to grant your request but that he is now a citizen of Conn. and [illegible] doesn’t feel that he [illegible ] interfere with the [illegible] of N.Y. state.” Note: see Jan. 20.
“8 X to acknowledge with many thanks your check for $20. He has been overdriven with work and engagements so has been unable to autograph all of the books that you sent he thinks he will be finished today. As Mr. C’s secretary I would like to say that much autographing has [ ] become a great burden to Mr. C and that you have to wait the right time to present such matters to him. This I am quite sure you’ll understand knowing as you do how full Mr. C’s life really ] is”
“9. Dear sir / X to say that the book you sent him for him to autograph has gone to you coming as it did and just at Ch ristmas time it lay in his room for a long time among other books and ] that he has autographed it for you with [illegible] and thanks you for your kind wishes and your pleasant note”
“10 Dear Madam / X to thank you for your letter and the compliment contained in it and to say that he regrets not being able to grant your request. He wishes me to say that his name now stands as V.P. on a great many boards and that he finds himself obliged to withdraw from [associations] instead joining in new ones. He has come into the country to live very quietly and withdraw from many activities”
“11 Dear Sir / X to thank you very much for your invitation for the dinner to be given on Feb. 11th in honor of Mr. Carnegie. To say that he is obliged to decline it as he has come to the country to live and doesn’t expect to be in N.Y. on that date”
“3. Dear Sir / X and say that he must refer you to his publishers Messrs. H-F Sq. for permission to include the sketch you mention in your collection if you’ll write to them saying that Mr. C has referred you to them they will give you all necessary answer as they alone possess the authority to grant the permission you ask for / Very truly yours”
“4) Dear Sir / X and thank you for your note and say that he regrets not being able to grant your request. That even if he had time and inclination to write the sketch you ask for he would be prevented from doing so by his contract with his publishers which doesn’t allow of his writing anything for anyone but them.
“5) same as No 4” [MTP]. Note: see also Jan. 19.