Before November 10 Friday – In London, England Sam wrote two notes to Poultney Bigelow. The first agreeing to walk at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 10. The second a P.S. “Too bad! Clara is to perform with [Blanche] Marchesi Friday eve the 10th. I had forgotten it. I’ve got to be there” [MTP].
November 10 Friday – In London, England Sam replied to H.F. Gordon Forbes, whose incoming letter is not extant, but the subject was politics and the Boer War:
Events do seem to confirm your judgment. It is a pity for all concerned, that the force was not overwhelming in the beginning, as it will be presently. The war could have been cut down to a brief space of time & much blood-spilling saved. …
Oh, the French! The unspeakables! The incident you mention was strictly in character. I don’t think they have improved a jot since they were turned out of hell.
England & America will pull together yet—under compulsion. Compulsion is the only law that politics heeds. … [MTP]
Henry Ferguson wrote from Hartford to Sam.
I was surprised to see so much of my own and my brother’s diaries republished in your article in the November number of the Century. Perhaps you never knew how unexpected it was to us that they should appear in Harper’s 33 years ago without allowing us to edit them previously [MTP]. Note: Ferguson didn’t want his name connected with the diaries, and hoped Sam would be willing to make the slight changes which “would make republication less disagreeable to me and my relations” Sam replied on Nov. 20.
Gribben writes of Sam’s inclusion of an excerpt from John Guille Millais (1865- 1931)’ The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy, by His Son, John Guille Millais (1899):
In London, on 10 November 1899, Mark Twain inserted a quotation from page 316 of volume 2 (copied by an unknown assistant) into a manuscript titled “Postscript—Osteopathy” (DV13, MTP). Mark Twain took the quotation from Lord Leighton’s letter of 19 May 1895 to Sir John Millais, which recommended Jonas Henrick Kellgren’s therapy of Swedish massage [467].