February 27 Saturday – Julia D. Grant was presented with a check drawn on the U.S. National Bank, New York for $200,000. Charles Webster wrote Sam on Feb 26 that he’d decided to pay her that amount, so Webster did the honors, not Sam, as some have reported (Perry, p 233, for instance — see prior entry). The actual check no. 353 was inspected at the MTP. (See Oct. 11 entry.)

Coincidentally, this was the anniversary of the signing of the contract for Grant’s Memoirs. In a letter to Cyrus West Field (1819-1892) American financier and head of Atlantic Telegraph Co., Webster wrote, “It seems fitting to me on the anniversary of the signing of that contract to pay to Mrs. Grant the check which you know about, and it will accordingly be handed her this morning” [MTP].

Webster announced this payment in a personal letter to Field, who was also a personal friend of General Grant. Field published the fact in this day’s issue of the New York Mail and Express, no doubt further upsetting Sam, who probably heard about the newspaper account before hearing it from Webster [MTNJ 3: 313n37].

Lawrence Barrett wrote from New York to Sam and Livy accepting their “kind offer” of a visit, but doubted his wife could come due to a “sick girl.” He would reach Hartford late Wednesday, Mar. 3 [MTP].

From Susy Clemens’ diary:

Last summer while we were in Elmira an article came out in the “Christian Union” by name “What ought he have done” treating of the government of children, or rather giving an account of a fathers battle with his little baby boy….And when papa heard that she [Livy] had read it he went to work and secretly wrote his opinion of what the father ought to have done. He told aunt Susy Clar and I about it but mamma was not to see it or hear any thing about it till it came out….The article was a beautiful tribute to mamma and every word in it true; But still in writing about mamma he partly forgot that the article was going to be published I think, and expressed himself more fully than he would do the second time he wrote it…[Papa 194-7].