April 24 Monday – At 3:15 p.m. in Chicago, Sam responded to Orion’s Apr. 20 letter. He told of being able to walk about the room for parts of the past two days, and the doctor deciding he was well enough to travel. Sam and Fred Hall would leave “a couple of hours hence for New York by the Limited.” He’d heard from the family and passed on the news.
I have a letter [this was her Venice letter Apr. 9] from Livy in Venice — Jean had become an expert gondolier but was knocked out by a cold & was confined to the house the last 3 days in bitterness of spirit as her gondoliering days are over for this year.
Don’t lose or sell that $1 royalty. From all I can see, it ought to begin to pay more than $50 a month after this time next year [MTP]. Note: This last reflected Sam’s hopes that Paige and the Chicago backers would ultimately manufacture the typesetter.
Meanwhile, at the Villa Viviani in Florence, Livy wrote “just about crazy with delight” since receiving encouraging letters from Sam yesterday. In a bittersweet moment, Livy expresses a prophetic anxiety:
It seems almost incredible that we are soon to be out of our financial difficulties. I do hope now that we shall all live for a few years to enjoy it. Sometimes I feel as if just as the money begins to come in freely we shall some of us be taken out of this world. I really was too excited yesterday to write you [The Twainian Nov-Dec 1977 p.4].
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore; he was preparing to board a train in one hour with Frederick J. Hall.
The [T.K.] Webster Co & their attorney want to get some kind of a halter around Paige’s neck if they can, & they want to know what sort of a case I could make out against him; — not that any suit or even mention of a suit is to be thought of now, or until many months gone by. They wanted to see my Paige contracts.
Sam asked that Whitmore have the contracts typed and sent to Mr. Towner K. Webster, President Webster Mfg. Co. 195 Canal St. Chicago (unrelated to Charles L. Webster & Co.) Sam expected to be at the Murray Hill Hotel in New York about 8 p.m. the following evening, or some 27 ½ hours [MTP].
Sam and Hall left Chicago for the long train ride to New York. Sam’s notebook:
Was in Chicago from Apl. 13 to Apl. 24 & saw not a vestige of the World’s Fair — sick abed all the 11 days [NB 33 TS 11].