July 1 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote on the Law Offices stationery of Henry C. Robinson to Marshall Mallory.

I concluded I would not visit Paige. I am about to sail tomorrow for Germany & when I get there I will cable Mr. Robinson whether to take up the matter of the option again or not, upon the terms proposed last March …. M.H. Mallory / Why not take half — / Mrs. C. would consent to that. [MTP].

Sam also wrote from the Glenham Hotel in New York City to Franklin G. Whitmore asking the hypothetical — if Mallory bought the option when would he pay Arnot and the others who’d purchased royalties? He guessed that they would pay them nothing unless the option was made a sale, and if it did not happen they would get the royalties back. Sam specified that on some of the royalties nothing should be paid in any case: Orion Clemens, Sue Crane, and Clara Spaulding Stanchfield. (These were gifts.)

I shall stay here, now, till the ship sails next Tuesday [July 5] afternoon [MTP]. Note: this suggests Sam had been to Hartford prior to writing this letter.

Will Montgomery Clemens published what was the first long biography of Samuel L. Clemens. From Railton’s website (see also Tenney 20):

“As far as I know, Will and Samuel Clemens were not related, though they did become acquaintances. The 200-page biography Will Clemens wrote and published himself may have been the earliest full-length study of MT. It was published 1 July 1892 as ‘No. 1’ in a paperback series called ‘The Pacific Library,’ price 25¢, and did well enough to be republished in 1894 by a publisher in Chicago. Throughout the book Clemens relies mainly on other writers’ previously published work. In the excerpt below he borrows the unflattering and anti-nostalgic description of Hannibal by William Dean Howells, who himself grew up in a non-slave-holding small town, to characterize the world of MT’s childhood.” Note: Railton then quotes from Chapter 1 of the biography, which may be found at:

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/tomsawye/nostalgia/willclemens.html

In November, The Overland Monthly ran a brief review of Will M. Clemens’ work:

Interesting only as an entertaining compilation of quotations and humorous anecdotes from the great humorist’s works, bearing on many phases of his adventurous life. The connecting paragraphs are loose, and of little or no literary merit. The author has not attempted to write from a critical or analytical standpoint, and thus the book is chiefly valuable as a memorandum of facts [Tenney, supplement in American Literary Realism Autumn 1978, p.166].