December 4 Tuesday – In Hartford Livy wrote to Grace King, “delighted” in King’s two letters. Livy’s letter reflects the close friendship established between Livy and Sam and King. Livy related Thanksgiving with the Cranes, and Theo’s ups and downs of mood. She also wrote that Annie Webster, Sam’s niece was “now with us and is to be for a few days.” King was now staying with one of her sisters. Sam wrote at the bottom of Livy’s letter:

Livy left me to address the envelop, & suspects no overstepping of my privilege [MTP].

Abby Sage Richardson (1837-1900), historian, literary editor and Shakespearean actress, wrote to Sam asking his permission to dramatize P&P. She wrote that it was “one of the most beautiful stories and most exquisite in treatment of anything I had ever read….I can scarcely hope that an author of your reputation and experience would accept even the assistance of a collaborateur” [MTNJ 3: 435n93].

Fatout gives this date as the opening-night performance of seven-year-old Elsie Leslie Lyde (known professionally as Elsie Leslie) in Little Lord Fauntleroy, and that Richardson was so impressed with the girl’s role that she thought of casting her in a stage version of P&P. Daniel Frohman, theater owner and stock company director, encouraged Richardson to contact Mark Twain [“MT Litigant” 30].

Alexandra Gripenberg wrote from Finland to Sam. She’d sent his story about the “Negro cook who cut off the leg of the roasted goose,” and a writer in Sweden claimed it was stolen from Boccacio’s Decameron, which made her angry. Could he send her “a word or two in answer”? She sent a photograph of herself and asked for his offering a Finnish saying: “also the cats might look at the king” [MTP].