July 29 Wednesday – Photographer Elisha M. Van Aken (1828-1904) arrived at the Quarry Farm and was mentioned in Sam’s letter to Orion: “…& it is a faultless, cloudless day, & he will have good success no doubt.” Van Aken had set up a studio in Elmira in 1873. See also Sept. 2, 1874 when he presented his bill for various photographs [MTL 6: 196-7 & n2].
Sam wrote from Elmira to Orion. After relating a short visit by Ed Brownell, “one of the best boys in Keokuk in my day, & one of the smartest,” Sam disclosed feeding problems with the new baby Clara:
Two or three times the baby has threatened to wink out like a snuffed candle, at 5 minutes notice; & each time the trouble was laid to prepared food, & the same discarded & a wet nurse employed—& each time the wet nurse went dry or something happened. —We have fled to wet nurses four times & to-day we are after two others down town. Livy is about worn out; the present wet nurse is pumped out; & my profanity is played out—for it no longer brings healing & satisfaction to the soul. Our love to Mollie [MTL 6: 196].
Sam also wrote to Mary M. Field, a poor writer who had sent Sam a pretty effective sob story; she also asked for a $100 loan. (This draft was probably not sent, as no reply has been found.)
Madam: Your distress would move the heart of a statue. Indeed it would move the entire statue if it were on rollers….Nothing in the world between you & starvation but a lucrative literary situation, a few diamonds & things, & three thousand seven hundred dollars worth of town property. How you must suffer. I do not know that there is any relief for misery like this. Suicide has been recommended by some authors….if it shall carry its lesson sharply home to you by leading you to reflect upon what sort of heroine you would make for one of your own Christmas stories, making an agonizing appeal to a stranger with $3,700 in your pocket—I shall not then regret writing this letter to you for nothing when I could sell it to a magazine for two or three hundred dollars [MTL 6: 197].
Sam also wrote on or about this day to Joseph Twichell.
“We must have a nurse that has a native faculty for soothing little people. We must have one that breathes ether from her nostrils & oozes chloral hydrate from every pore. We must have one who is worthy to stand in the pulpit” [MTL 6: 201-2]. Sam added more comment on the Beecher scandal.