July 20 Tuesday – In Weggis, Switzerland Sam wrote to John Y. MacAlister, apologizing for not hearing the doorbell on the night of July 7. Evidently MacAlister was going to urge Sam to take Pond’s lecture offer:

…& although I was up & laboring until midnight I wasn’t expecting any rings at the doorbell & so I didn’t hear yours. Was I in good luck or in bad luck? We can’t ever know for sure, but I took it for ill luck; for you would have talked Mrs. Clemens over & she would have allowed me to go over & capture that £10,000 on the lecture platform—she was rather expecting that the talk would result in that, and confessed it; but by next day she had swung back to her old position, & the lecture-project was definitely shelved. However, I am not going to feel sorry. Maybe it is good luck in disguise.

He also mentioned he had read “In Memoriam” again and claimed it “a noble poem.” He sent Livy’s thanks for the poem “for the healing it brings her” [MTP].

Sam also sent a telegram (not extant; mentioned in his July 30 to Chatto) to James B. Pond, in Liverpool, that he would not lecture this year. Then he wrote Pond a letter of explanation, relating “much trouble to persuade Mrs. Clemens to let me lecture & Clara play for me.”  “The thing is best as it is, anyway; it would not be right for me to lecture at this time; I owe Susy’s memory that grace” [MTP].

Note: one idea for the proposed US lecture tour was for Mark Twain to lecture and Clara Clemens to offer piano numbers. That the telegram and the letter would have been sent on the same  or next day was Sam’s usual method—it is assumed here.