August 22 Sunday – In Weggis, Switzerland Sam wrote to Wayne MacVeagh, having delayed in thanking him for “providing me a friend in Vienna.” Sam had just finished with the last proofs of his book the day before, and pronounced it “the only book I have ever confined myself to from title-page to Finis without the relief of shifting to other work meantime.” He had:

…mapped out four books this morning, & will begin an emancipated life this afternoon, & shift back & forth among them & make them furnish me recreation & entertainment for three or four years to come, if I last so long.

We live in a cottage on the grassy & woodsy Rhigi-side, over-looking the lake, a half-hour by boat from Lucerne. Julia Langdon is staying with us, & she & our two girls bike 20 & 30 miles a day & row us old people about the lake in the evenings, & are tanned like a meerschaum, & wholesome to look at…

Sam then told of the “black shadow” of the anniversary of Susy’s death on Aug. 18 [MTP]. See entry.

Sam also wrote to Francis H. Skrine, now on the Isle of Man, apologizing for mislaying Skrine’s letter (not extant). He received another letter from Skrine on Aug. 21 (not extant either), and so was writing a reply.

I can take those cigars to heart, don’t you doubt it; & it is just like your good spirit to offer me the chance. And in the matter of the Jäger underwear , either you or some other friend in London put me on that lay, & I am wearing it. I believe it is the most comfortable & serviceable underclothing I have tried yet. It comes in very handy here on the Righi-side where we have a raw day every little while.

I am submerged in work again—9 hours a day, 7 days per week—& am well content. I have begun four books….I don’t mean to finish more than one per twelvemonth. There are five of them, in fact, but two of them are not for publication in my lifetime.

We shall reach Vienna a month or more ahead of you, & you must be sure & let me know the date when you will arrive, so that we can foregather. I do not know what our address is going to be, yet, but that is no matter, Care Chatto & Windus, 111 St. Martin’s Lane will always find me. And Clara or I will give you the Vienna address when we get it [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Captain Richard Edgcumbe:

Hail, & thank you! I am glad it was the Ellis picture that was used; & glad, too, that it went wither it did; for it will be conveyable thence to the illustrated when you are ready, whereas the illustrated wouldn’t take it from a periodical which wasn’t a member of its own family. I am deep in play again—the usual 9 hours a day, 7 days in the week—& perfectly contented. And this is just the place for play in a peasant’s house, steeped in stillness by the lake’s edge, several hundred yards from our house & Clara’s piano & my visiting niece’s violin. In these last 4 days I have turned out an average of 2,800 words a day, which is 50 per cent above my custom. This is delicious recreation after the hard work I did in London. I never intend to do another stroke of work while I live; but make the remainder of my life one sumptuous & care-free holiday, playing with the pen 9 hours a day continuing this abandoned orgy till I die. We’ve got to leave here sometime or other; it is fate, & cannot be helped; but I am to be chloroformed, & not know anything about it till we get to Vienna [Sotheby’s Karanovich auction catalog , 19 June 2003, p 74].

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell. He opened telling about Livy meeting George Williamson Smith, president of Hartford’s Trinity College, “and such intellectual refreshment as we have not tasted in many a month.” Sam then told about the six Fisk Jubilee Singers who entertained nearby (Dolmetsch gives Aug. 12; see entry), one of whom Sam had known in London 24 years before (1873).

“This is a paradise, here—but of course we have got to leave it by and by. The 18th of August has come and gone, Joe—and we still seem to live. / With love from us all” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Henry M. Alden:

This lament was written to beguile me through the heavy hours of the first anniversary of our Dark Day & not for print; but I have always meant to say some day a modest public word in memory of our lost Susy, & so I am now minded to offer this for the Monthly, if it may meet your approval. / Sincerely Yours / SL. Clemens [MTP: 3 Jan 1997 issue of Art & Literature, p. 135].