December 1 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Marjorie Breckenridge.
You see I have followed your suggestion—so the house has two names: “Innocence at Home” for the Aquarium girls, & “Stormfield” for the general public.
Those poor burglars have gone to jail. I haven’t anything against them, I bear them no malice & put no blame upon them, for it is only circumstances & environment that make burglars, therefore anybody is liable to be one. I don’t quite know how I have managed to escape, myself. Yes I do: my circumstances & environment protected me. Whenever a man is not a burglar, that is the only reason—there is no other.)
If your turned ancle afflicted you only a fortnight, you are fortunate. Don’t turn it again—it is a bad business sometimes & hangs on & pesters a person a couple of years: I have had that experience.
Three days ago I walked down to your cabin with a guest. It was in good shape. There was a bow & some fishing tackle on the porch, & the wood-pile had not been robbed.
Although the beginnings of winter are here & the trees are more or less bare, the landscape is still astonishingly beautiful: indeed we can’t swear that it has ever lost any of its beauty at any time: what it loses in one way it seems to amply make up in another.
Love to you, & a merry Christmas, & the best of health & prosperity. / … [MTP; MTAq 238-9].
Sam also wrote to Dr. Edward Quintard.
Dear Doctor: / Call Clara up, & require her to report to you. She is occupying a cunning little flat on the 5th floor at 17 Livingstone Place, corner of Stuyvesant Square and – – – is it 15th street – – – or 17th? – – – well, it’s there somewhere, on a corner. Damn a square that has corners to it, anyway! you never can tell which corner it is; whereas, if it were round, you wouldn’t need to try to know—you could just go on around till you got there.
Well, we are hungry to see you, too—therefore come up & give us a chance. Trains (good ones) from Grand Central at 8. 50 a. m. & 3. 32 p. m. Distance, about an hour & a half. Choose your own day, per your own convenience‘—& telephone us, so that we can meet you at the station with a hack or a garage or some other adequate transportation, the distance being 3 miles & the walking not good, with baggage. Come, won’t you? I am trying 74 now, & can tell you a lot about it. I do hope the madam can come with you; I should love that.
With love to you both— … [MTP].
Sam’s new guestbook (and Lyon’s journal TS 81):
Name Address Date Remarks
Stewart Walker 1845 Broadway, N.Y. December 1-2
Mrs. ditto “ “ “ “ “ à “(Mrs Sybil”)
Notes: Alexander Stewart Walker (1876-1952), architect, married Sybil Kane in 1906. Walker was a member of the firm of Walker & Gillette (Leon N. Gillette; 1878-1945).
J.H. Alden wrote from NYC with birthday wishes; he noted that he’d reached 73 a day before Clemens [MTP].
Oliver Bainbridge wrote to Sam. “I have sent you a copy of the ‘Devil’s Note Book’ with hearty congratulations on your seventy-third birthday” [MTP; Gribben 40]. Note: The Devil’s Notebook (1908).
Alexander P. Beedell wrote from London to admire the way CY “blended incidents of Early English life with those of modern America” [MTP].
M.H. Clark wrote from Clarksville, Tenn. with birthday wishes [MTP].
Mark Twain Davis wrote from Saginaw, Mich. to congratulate Sam on reaching 73. His father chose his name and everyone remembered it [MTP].
John C. Fry wrote from Wash. DC to Sam with birthday wishes. “You and I were young fellows in the printing business in Keokuk. You being employed in Orion’s office, over Ogden’s book store, while I was doing my best, as an apprentice, to earn two dollars per week in the office of the Evening Times located in the building adjoining the old Atheneum” [MTP]. Note “Ans Dec 7 MLH”
F.A. Googins, a teacher, wrote from NYC on Harvard Club notepaper to ask “what five or more short humerous poems” were representative of the idea of “local color” [MTP].
Percy S. Grant for the Church of the Ascension wrote to invite Sam to the 300th birthday of John Milton, at the Church on Dec. 9 at 4:30 [MTP].
L.J. Kingsley wrote from Binghamton, NY to enclose a clipping titled “OBITUARY” that noted Clemens passed his 73rd birthday [MTP]. Note “Ans Dec 9 MLH”
Donald L. Lilley wrote to ask Sam to sign enclosed cards [MTP]. Note “Autogr. Sent Dec 7 MLH”
Frank V. McGrath for Leary, Stuart & Co. wrote to ask for an autograph [MTP]. Note “Autogr. Sent Dec 7 MLH”
Carolyn Myers for Emanu-El Brotherhood, NYC wrote to Sam enclosing a ribbon for him to sign for their bazaar [MTP]. Note “Autogr. Sent Dec 7 MLH”
Frank Presbrey, president of the Aldine Assoc wrote to offer his advertising services for Plasmon Co., which he noted had been reorganized [MTP]. Note “Ans Dec 9 MLH”
Eleanor Christina Rosekrans wrote from to Sam with birthday wishes and a verse [MTP].
C.F. Stromeyer wrote a list of furniture shipped this day to Redding [MTP].
Howard P. Taylor wrote to Sam.
My Dear Sam:/ I read in a ‘Frisco paper yesterday that you had just celebrated your 73d birthday. Let your old friend of nearly 50 years ago throw a few congratulations over your old pompadour, with the fervent hope you may life to celebrate many more annuals, and to continue to entertain the world with your pestilential pleasantries. I am but three years your junior, but feel fourteen years your senior, owing to a bunch of ingrowing rheumatism that has claimed most of my system since my advent among the ‘glorious fogs of California’ shortly after the earthquake, and left me physically and financially ‘pinched’ on a bargain-day mattress in Oakland, with a second-hand typewriter for company. I have read, too, of your frequent illnesses, and can only wonder at your extraordinary vitality, for when we were doing time on the old Enterprise in Virginia, you didn’t seem “bigger than a paragraph,” nor stalwart enough to pry up a carpet tack. I don’t know your attitude on religion, or whether you ever had any (few of us had in the old days), but doubtless you are thankful to the Great Unseen for the blessed energies He has given you, for prolonging your days, and for making you the creature of cheerful usefulness to the world. It saddens “we old ‘uns,” though, to know that so few of our comrades of the past remain. A new, and still newer, generation has sprung up, and only a bent form and wrinkled face from among our youthful friends is occasionally seen wandering listlessly among the streets of San Francisco and Oakland. It makes one feel like the proverbial cat in the strange garret.
Nearly all the old newspaper editors, reporters and compositors that we knew have passed to the beyond, except Joe Goodman, whom I have been unable to locate, but hear he is somewhere in Southern California. Jim Townsend, I am told, died a year or two ago at Lodi, Cal., and Jim Gillis passed out last year—Steve a few years previously. Dan de Quille some time ago, as you know. Denis and Jack McCarthy, Pit Taylor, Jack McGinn, Mike McCarthy, George Thurston, and other of the old office boys, have all been gathered in, leaving but few of the old Comstockers to face the inevitable. My brother Billy, whom I believe you knew, is still on earth, here with me, but a paralytic. He is 76 years old. All very saddening; yet the retrospect is not so unpleasant, as I ponder over it, and doubtless the sanctities are still slumbering within both of us that make this life worth the living. …
Your croney of Lang Syne… [MTP].
Rev. Charles Watt Whistler (1856-1913), historic fiction writer, wrote from Mercer, Penn. to Sam. “Dear old man: / In 64 or 65 I met you frequent in the old Alta Calif on Sacramento st, San ‘Frisco. John McComb was one of the [illegible words]. / I said goodbye when you set sail on the bark Whistler—my own name—when you went out to Honolulu. He added birthday wishes [MTP]. Note: Sam took the steamer Ajax to Hawaii on 6 Mar 1866.
Mrs. E.A. Zimmerman wrote from Johnstown, Penn. with birthday wishes and request for autograph [MTP]. Note “Autogr. Sent Dec 7 MLH”
December 1 Tuesday ca. – Nettie Brockley, an English schoolgirl, wrote from London to wish Sam a happy new year [MTP].