June 11 Sunday – At the Prince of Wales Hotel in London, England, Sam wrote a follow-up to Douglas B. Sladen.
“Did I tell you, the other night at the Authors, that this family (including me if I can manage it) are expecting to go to Lambeth Palace on the 22d at 3 p.m.? (Date and hour correct?) Did I tell you that, or have I dreamed it?” [MTP]. Note: Sam did have this appointment in his notebook.
Sam also wrote to an unidentified woman, declining an invitation for June 29 as he had another engagement [MTP]. Note: notebook entry: appointment at the New Vagabonds at King’s Hall for the 29th [NB 40 TS 57].
Sam also wrote an aphorism to an unidentified person: “Be good & You will be lonesome. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / London, June 11/99” [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote to Sam, addressing him as “My dear Clemens”:
If I were merely a selfish man, I should answer your letters instantly, and get more, for I have no such pleasure as your letters give me, but I am lazy as well as selfish, and I would rather put off a joy than hurry to have it. Now I’m writing rather promptly because I want your advice, and of course it’s about a thing already done. I have agreed with Pond to be personally conducted by him on a tour of 25 or 30 lectures in the Northwest between October 7th and Dec. 20; for two thirds of the profits. I find that I can lecture—I have made 900 Smith College girls hear—and a paper that I’ve given 10 or 15 times on Novel writing* has never failed to please, unless my audiences flattered me. What do you think?….Naturally, I don’t want to pull up at
62 and start out on a scamper to Winnipeg and back; but it will be a relief from writing, and I must boil the pot somehow. Again, am I a fool to do this thing? ….
* Hamlin Garland says it is the best lecture he ever heard. He has not heard you.
Howells conveyed the rumor that the Clemenses would settle in Princeton, N.J.., where the Huttons lived. He pointed out though it was “a pretty place with pretty people in it,” it was a “college town, and it isn’t New York.” He conveyed the news that Charles Dudley Warner had been very ill. He’d read reports of Sam meeting Emperor Franz Josef I, and recalled seeing him when they were “boys together at Venice” [MTHL 2: 700-2].