August 12 Thursday – Sam’s notebook recorded a score of 42 to 16 for C. against T.W. (Clemens vs. Theodore W. Crane). This is listed as perhaps a “popular parlor game during summers at Quarry Farm” [MTNJ 3: 229].

George Standring (1855-1924), at that time editor of the London monthly, Republican Chronicle, about to be changed to the Radical in Sept. 1886, wrote to Sam that he was sending a copy of his book, People’s History of the English Aristocracy, which became an important source-book for CY. [Note: See Aug. 25 entry where Sam thanks Standring “in advance for the book”]. Standring was also a printer, and son of a successful toy manufacturer. He became a freethinker whose main interests were political, and he gave most of his time to advocating republicanism, which attempted to bring together all laws “to attack the Church, the Financial Interest, Intemperance, the Land Laws, and the present distribution of power.” His main thesis was that England’s salvation rested in forming a republic and doing away with the monarchy [Royle 5-6; MTP; MTNJ 3: 260n110]. Sam may have met Standring earlier in London, however no record could be found; Baetzhold offers,

“Clemens’ acquaintance with Standring seems to have begun early in 1886 with a note of thanks for the complimentary review of Mark Twain’s life and works which the Englishman had contributed to the Progressive magazine as part of a series on American humorists. Thereafter the two exchanged letters occasionally, with Standring sometimes sending The Republican and copies of other articles that he thought might be of interest. The pair met personally at least once, for Standring’s letter of December 5, 1905, congratulating Clemens on his seventieth birthday, recalls a pleasant visit at Dollis Hill in 1901” [John Bull 111].

Note: Baetzhold also writes that Sam wrote Standring “sometime during the summer of 1886 after reading and being intrigued by The People’s History in serial publication in the Republican. No such a letter was found, although Baetzhold writes that Sam offered a “complete set of his own books in exchange for a copy of the entire work, The People’s History,” which he offers “crystallized” Sam’s desire to give new directions to CY [111].