September 3 Sunday – In Sanna, Sweden Sam replied to T. Douglas Murray (incoming not extant).

Yes, it does indeed remind one of the Rennes trial. I had a paragraph in my Introduction, particularising the twin-resemblances, & suggesting that French character has not improved in five centuries, but Mrs. Clemens knocked it out. And quite right: it was not the place for it. …

My land, all that “expert” twaddle and guessing & Bertillonising over resemblances & partial resemblances in handwriting! I have had to copy my Introduction myself, there being no typist here; & according to my mood the handwriting changed from time to time, in the 3 days I was at it. I think Bertillon would have no difficulty in showing that part of it was written by Dreyfus & the rest by Esterhazy, & that I was not in Europe at the time.

Sam asked that when he sent the introduction, for Murry to “knock the lies out of it & purify the grammar,” as he had “only two books here—my own & Mrs. Oliphant’s, the latter had not always furnished the facts I wanted” [MTP].

Note: Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), a French police officer who devised an identification system based on physical measurements called “Anthropometry.” His system was partly replaced by fingerprinting, but some elements, like the mug shot and analysis of crime scene photography remain. He was a witness for the prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 and 1899, so would have been an object of Sam’s scorn. Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the French army major who was the real traitor in the Drefus affair. Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897): Jeanne d’Arc: Her Life and Death (1897) [Gribben 515].

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers, asking he not be left out of what Rogers had his “financial eye on now….I want to be in, with the other capitalists.” Sam was somewhat down by the idea that Jean’s cure was only a possible one after six months—that it might take up to a year. Still, it had been 54 days since Jean had taken any dose of medicine, 35 days since an attack [July 20], and only in the mornings did her “disease slightly manifest itself.” He described his daughter as “full of life & go & energy & activity.” Then he turned to the introduction he was writing for Murray’s book, which he hoped Bliss would issue as a subscription book:

The Official Records of the Joan of Arc Trials (in Rouen & the Rehabilitation) have at last been translated in full into English, & I was asked to write an Introduction, & have just finished it after a long & painstaking siege of work. I am to help edit it, & my name will go on the title page with those of the two translators. ….

Canon Wilberforce wants to start a Joan of Arc cult in England, & of course his great position will enable him to do it. He wants to start the boom with a lecture on Joan in the winter at St. James’s Hall with all the best & influential people present…& he wanted me to do the lecture, but that wouldn’t do; the subject is too grave. If he will do the lecture I will play second fiddle & talk 15 minutes.

This is a grand place to build up a person’s muscle. I can lick you, now. Anyway I can lick Harry, & I mean to do it when I get my hands on him [MTHHR 409-10]. Note: see prior Wilberforce entries.

Sam also wrote to Frank E. Bliss about the above Joan of Arc Trials book.. “Canon Wilberforce wants to start a Joan of Arc cult in England, & begin the boom this winter with a Joan of Arc night at St. James’s Hall, with all the great & influential people present in the house; it was his idea to have me for sole performer. But I couldn’t do that. He is a much bigger man than I am, & must play first fiddle & do three-fourths fo the work if I am to venture a share. I could do 15 minutes of it, but not more.” Sam wrote of doing the Introduction to the “Official Original Joan of Arc Trials in Rouen & at the Rehabilitation,” which had “at last been translated into English in full…Do you want it—to publish by subscription & add to the Uniform Edition later?” [MTP; [MTHHR 410n1].