September 3 Friday – In Weggis Sam replied to Chatto & Windus’ letter (letter not extant).

Your letter caught me in bed this morning, & that is the best place for digging maxims. Put Nos. 1 & 2 or 1 & 3 together over one chapter, but don’t use all three. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s uncle is here, & he thinks we should not use No. 3 at all. He says it has a subtle & indefinable odor of irreverence about it. I do not see what gives him that idea, still I do not insist; I leave the matter in your hands…[MTP]. Note: Sam enclosed “the required maxims,” including No. 3: “The Bible of one eon is the toilet-paper of the next.”

Sam also wrote to Robert Farquharson Sharp (1864 -1945), who was compiling A dictionary of English authors: biographical and bibliographical (1897) and included Mark Twain on p. 286. Sharp was sort of an early-day Tom Tenney, and his work is described as “A compendious account of the lives and writings of upwards of 800 British and American writers from the year 1400 to the present time”.

I have made the corrections, according to your desire. I hope you will strike out “Autobiography, Eye-Openers and Screamers.” The first is a very brief & very extravagant sketch, & at home I bought & destroyed the plates & put the thing out of print 20 years ago; the other two are unauthorized compilations, (largely of spurious matter) which have been fathered upon me in England—along with the disgusting titles [MTP].