November 30 Saturday – Sam’s 60th Birthday.
In Napier, N.Z. on Frank Moeller’s Masonic Hotel letterhead, Sam responded to a letter (not extant) from J.B. Pond asking if he’d be interested in 50 lectures in England the next year.
No; fifty lectures in England would not be worth my while.
I think the madam & Clara have had a very pleasant time of it since we shoved out from that Victorian pier that day. And I’ve had an exceedingly good time, barring the carbuncles. One couldn’t have more delightful audiences; & the journeys, both water & land, have been full of interest.
The fact is, the matter of lecturing, either in America or England, has been resolutely banished from my mind for the present.
Sam added that his book (FE) was his “next thing to be thought of & planned for.” Sam made no mention of his objections to Pond’s past management, his lack of “sand” or his judgment about “priorities” which he had complained to others about [MTP].
He also wrote his sister, Pamela Moffett, about being laid up “a few days with another carbuncle,” but he hoped to perform again on Dec. 2. He gave a general report of the family’s travels, and claimed “Livy & Clara enjoy themselves first rate” [MTP: Jan. 18, 1896 letter from Pamela to Samuel Moffett].
A short, unfavorable review of Sam’s Auckland performances ran in the NZ Observer and Free Lance. The article called Mark Twain “scarcely more entertaining than a speaker at an average Sunday school bun scuffle” [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 28].
Sam made a second notebook entry to get The Percy Anecdotes for information on the Black Hole [Gribben 541; NB 34 TS 44]. See also Nov. 10.
Sam also wrote on Frank Moeller’s Masonic Hotel letterhead to Henry M. Whitney (1824-1904), Hawaii’s first postmaster and past owner of the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser :
Dear Mr. Whitney: — Your long-delayed letter has reached me today, and I was very glad to hear from you, and know that you are still hale and hearty — which I am not; it exasperates me to have to say. I was perishing to get ashore at Honolulu, and talk to you all, and see your enchanted land again, and be welcomed and stirred up. But it was not to be, and I shall regret it a thousand years; for of course I shan’t get another chance to see the islands again. At least, I am afraid I shan’t, life is so uncertain now-a-days.
I have had a very delightful time in Australia and New Zealand, notwithstanding my poor health.
Do please remember me most cordially to any of my old-time friends that still survive the thirty years interval since I was with them in Honolulu.
I thank you ever so much for your beautiful “Tourist Guide Through Hawaii, which arrived by recent mail [“Letter from Mark Twain,” reprinted in Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser , Jan 6, 1896, p.6].