June 4 Saturday – Robert Bush, in “Grace King and Mark Twain” [38], includes a segment from Grace Elizabeth King’s notebook with this date of her first impressions of Sam. This notebook entry date of June 4, however, conflicts with Bush’s conclusion that Sunday, June 5 was the date of their first meeting. Bush does not address this conflict, so we are left to choose. Bush quotes from her June 5 letter, meeting Sam during a walk home from church with Charles Dudley Warner, though a “first meeting” is not explicit in the letter. (Note that the letter does not say Sam was in church, merely walking when Grace and Charles met him while they were walking home from services.) This June 5 letter does correctly put their trip to Frederick E. Church’s in Hudson, N.Y. on Tuesday, which would have been June 7. (This jibes with the citation from MTNJ 3: 293n227.) Either the June 4 notebook entry, therefore, was misdated, or, she first met Sam in Hartford prior to June 5. Regardless, here is the notebook entry, dated June 4, which Bush contrasts with her impressions in the fall of 1888 (see Oct. 10):

“Mark Twain” is a disappointment to the eyes until he begins to talk; then his features explain themselves. The head is not so heavy as massive, the eyes not stupid but introspective — his air and manner, not so much the vulgar carelessness of the ignorant — but the unconscious carelessness of the preoccupied. He is a man of genius — the material not so very rare and unique — as inexhaustible in richness. His wit runs to fat — his humor is fleshy — coarse-grained — but solid and generally wholesome, where the mind has not been too much pampered with delicacies of intellect. He said that in a hundred years from now America would be leading the world — in art, letters, science, and politics. Our population would be so great that we would be the market — the customers of the world’s intellectual commerce. We therefore would set the fashions, regulate the taste — would have an opinion to express, an opinion that would have a cash value, as we would have the money with which to back it. Opinion is the authoritative expression of the new supreme court of art, morals, science. His reasoning followed naturally from the premise and sounded irrefutable — but across it all — there was felt the want of spiritual provision in his argument. Money, or pay in his opinion would call out the best work every where — and money would be the highest reward. He did not consider those who working for a higher aim would disdain the prompt paying American market. He seems to have made a slave of his soul — & condemned it to trudge along with him as he shakes his cap & bells — clipped the wings — and put out the eyes — making it a physical impossibility to see the world above…. [Bush 39, quoting Grace King, “Mark Twain, First Impression,” June 4, 1887 notebook].

Check #  Payee  Amount  [Notes]

3708  Hartford City Gas & Light Co  54.18

3709  Western Union Telegraph Co   5.95

3710  Bearer  40.00

3711  Mssrs Fox & Whitmore Co  5.00  Frescoing, wallpaper

3712  Mr. H. E. Patten  4.31  Dye & Carpet clean

3713  Mssrs McCarty & Cleary  132.72

3714  The Hartford Club  50.00