October 5 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder, responding to his invitation and offering to bring a guest:

Fellowcraft Club, 32 W. 28th. 7 pm Oct. 16 — I will be there.

And might I bring a foreign ex-journalist if he is not engaged? Frank Finlay, old English-Irish friend of mine in London 17 years ago…visiting member of the Players & The Lotos, here, & Hon Sec. Of the Reform Club on the other side… [MTP]. Note: Sam was sick in bed on Oct. 16 so did not attend [MTNJ 3: 522n132].

Sam also wrote a long letter to Elsie Leslie explaining that “Away last spring” he and William Gillette had undertaken to embroider a pair of slippers for her, each man making one of his own creation. Sam drew a parallel between creating the slipper and writing a story:

I began with that first red bar, and without ulterior design, or plan of any sort — just as I would begin a Prince and Pauper, or any other tale. And mind you it is the easiest and surest way; because if you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them — you can’t help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so, first thing you know, there’s your book all finished up and never cost you an idea. Well, the red stripe, with a bias stitch, naturally suggested a blue one with a perpendicular stitch, and I slammed it in, though when it came daylight I saw it was green — which didn’t make any difference, because green and blue are much the same, anyway, and in fact from a purely moral point of view are regarded by the best authorities as identical. …

You notice what fire there is in it — what rapture, enthusiasm, frenzy — what blinding explosions of color. It is just a “Turner” — that is what it is. It is just like his “Slave Ship,” that immortal work. What you see in the “Slave Ship” is a terrific explosion of radiating rags and fragments of flaming crimson flying from a common center of intense yellow which is in violent commotion — insomuch that a Boston reporter said it reminded him of a yellow cat dying in a platter of tomatoes.

Take the slippers and wear them next to your heart, Elsie dear; for every stitch in them is a testimony of the affection which two of your loyalist friends bear you. Every single stitch cost us blood. I’ve got twice as many pores in me now as I used to have; and you would never believe how many places you can stick a needle into yourself until you go into the embroidery line and devote yourself to art.

Do not wear these slippers in public, dear; it would only excite envy; and, as like as not, somebody would try to shoot you [MTP]. Note: See picture insert of Sam’s slipper in MTB, after p.884.

Sam also wrote to Karl Gerhardt, letter not extant but referred to in Gerhardt’s Oct. 7 [MTP].