September 21 Thursday – In New York Sam wrote a short note on Webster & Co. letterhead to daughter Clara in Elmira. The letter is a response to Clara’s (not extant) need for a saddle.
Clara dear, why don’t you write Patrick [McAleer]…& tell him to send you your saddle? If he has taken proper care of it, it is in good condition yet.
Sam also expressed worry that he’d had no letter from Europe in two days — did she get one? Was “Mamma still ailing, or had she recovered?” Sam added a PS: “Letters have come — Mamma is evidently all right again” [MTP].
Sam also wrote two letters to Livy, still in Franzensbad, Germany, the first on letterhead of The Players Club, which related the previous day’s meeting with Charles and Ida Langdon, and Mr. and Mrs. John D. Slee at the Waldorf (see Sept. 20):
They speak ever so fondly of Clara; that witch has witched her way into their & other folks’s admiration & affection & is having a good time. Why didn’t you all come with us! I do wish, wish, wish you had. The farm would be such a magnificently effective health resort, such a darling change from unspeakable Europe; then we could go back to the baths in the spring. …
Good-bye, Sweetheart, I must go over to the Century & read some proof (for December) on the story which they continually & everlastingly glorify & shout about [LLMT 271-3].
Note: the first segment of the serialized version of PW ran in the Dec. 1893 issue of Century.
Three or four hours after his first letter to Livy from The Players, Sam wrote her a second letter, this on Webster & Co. letterhead. He related when his “volcano turned itself loose” at the Century office when he discovered his punctuation had been changed in the proofs of December’s PW installment.
…the exhibition was not suited to any Sunday school. [Robert Underwood] Johnson said that the criminal was De Vinne’s peerless imported proof-reader, from Oxford University, & that whatever he did was sacred in De Vinne’s eyes — sacred, final, immutable. I said I didn’t care if he was an Archangel imported from Heaven, he couldn’t puke his ignorant impudence over my punctuation, I wouldn’t allow it for a moment. I said I couldn’t read this proof, I couldn’t sit in the presence of a proof sheet where that blatherskite had left his tracks…
Johnson ordered the proof reset using Sam’s original punctuation for Sam to read the next day (Sept. 22). Sam added that some pictures from Onteora would be sent to her, and that he liked the Century people. He closed with Mrs. Johnson’s wanting to be remembered to Livy; Sam said she “came in, looking plump & young & pretty” [LLMT 273-4]. Note: Katherine McMahon Johnson ( ? -1924) was indeed a stunner, though not “plump” in 1876 when she married Robert. See opposite p.590 in Robert’s autobiography, Remembered Yesterdays.
Sam also responded to a letter (not extant) from his sister, Pamela Moffett and niece, Annie Webster. He wrote on Webster & Co. letterhead.
Yes, I saw the [S.F.] Examiner article, & was greatly pleased with it. …I will ask Mr. Hall for Sam’s [Moffett] book; I shall be very glad to read it.
Clara keeps her trunk at Charley Langdon’s, & thinks she lives with her aunt Sue on the hill; but as nearly as I can make out she is in both places daily, & is having an energetic good time. This I gather at second hand, for she & Susy are like me, they only write when threatened with a club.
Sam added that Livy and Jean were still in Franzensbad, still worried about cholera in New York, though there was no evidence of it. It was Livy who was in cholera country, he wrote [MTP]. Note: Samuel Moffett’s books: The Tariff. What It Is and What It Does (1892), and Suggestions on Government (1894) [Gribben 479]. This reference was likely to an early release of the latter.
September 21 Thursday ca. – Sam wrote a short note to William Carey in the editorial department of the Century, responding to a request for chapter titles for PW installments.
Land, I never was able to invent chapter-titles. I’m too old to learn, now.
Look here! Now they’ve gone to mending my dialect for me — I can’t stand it. Won’t you tell them to follow copy absolutely, in every detail, even if it goes to hell? [MTP].
Sam had developed a violent cough, but Dr. Clarence C. Rice, his host, advised him that if he tried, he could “repress the cough almost entirely.” Sam referred to this consultation in his Sept. 23 letter to Clara:
I find it true. I cough very little, now. But he told me too late to save me — I had already ruptured myself. There is no inflammation & no pain, & he did not tell me to put on a truss; but uncle Charley says I must put one on, & wear it for the rest of my life. He has worn one himself for 20 years [MTP: Sept. 23 to Clara].