March 19 Friday – In London Sam wrote to Frank E. Bliss.

I enclose renewal-application & letter about it. Please attend to the matter for me.

I finished the book (in the rough) March 1st, then spent a week gutting it. I gutted a third of it out, & then began a careful revising & editing of the remaining two-thirds. I shall complete this revision in two or three days. I set the type-writer to work on the first 10,000 words a couple of days ago.

When she finishes the first 100,000 words I will carefully revise that & it will then be ready for you.

Sam expected to complete the book by June. Once he got the book (FE) good enough to suit him, he felt he’d know what the title should be. He suggested A.B. Frost as the illustrator, admitting he was,

…an expensive artist; but if he is not too expensive it might be well to get him to make 3 or 4 full-page humorous pictures. He is the best humorous artist that I know of, & he might not be difficult to deal with for the reason that he told me 3 years ago that he had long had an ambition to make some illustrations for me [MTP; also MTHHR 268n1]. Note: Sam did not trust Bliss with his address, using c/o Chatto & Windus; Frost was one of eleven illustrators used for FE.

Sam then wrote to H.H. Rogers:

I have just written Bliss, and told him I should finish the book about June 1, and that now pretty soon I shall send over the first part of it to select canvassing-matter from.

I didn’t say to whom I should send it. I shall send it to you, of course. If I sent it to him it might not be wise. ….

[an afterthought, written sideways in the margin besides his signature:]

I shall consider Mr. Warner pretty shabby if he doesn’t cease from any further claim upon the Gilded Age [MTHHR 267-8].