December 11 Saturday – Here—as in London—Livy & the girls find that the name Clemens is no sufficient disguise. They have Pleasant adventures.
Sam related an episode of Clara and Katy Leary’s the day before, with a cabbie and a box office man at a theater, who softened once Clara gave the name Clemens.
Livy has adventures, too. And Katy—but you know Katy. If I should start in on Katy’s adventures with this family’s name, a certain amount of time would be consumed.
We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the lovely people come to see her; & Clara & I go to dinner parties, & around here & there, & we all have a most hospitable good time. Jean’s wood-carving flourishes, & her other studies.
Good-bye, Joe—& we all love all of you. / Mark [MTP]. Note: Joe answered on Dec. 27.
Rogers wrote to Sam, enclosing complimentary letters from several of his creditors.
“I know your heart will be made glad by the accompanying sheets which express the appreciation shown by the creditors of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Company, of your kindly act. …”
Rogers would send more such letters as they came in. Harry Rogers had received his copy of FE; his father had “monopolized it to the present time” and wrote, “I like it particularly well. It is a good book.— My word!” He was just winding up a business deal in Boston that had taken five years [MTHHR 305-6]. Note: for excerpts from the complimentary creditor letters see n1. In that note, the source continues:
It must have been at about this time that Miss Harrison also forwarded a three- page document listing 101 creditors of Charles L. Webster & Company, to whom $79,704.80 had been owed, indicating amounts they had been paid, first by Colby, then by Miss Harrison for Rogers, until only $7,990.82 was outstanding. These figures did not include, she explained, the $33,862.72 owed to the Mount Morris Bank, Mrs. J.D. Grant, and the Barrows.
Sam’s notebook: “Cablegram from Keokuk ‘Orion died to-day.’ He was past 73” [NB 42 TS 51]. Note: Orion Clemens (1825-1897) was actually 72 at the time of his death. By Dec. 30 Sam still had not rec’d a letter from Mollie and wrote “we do not know whether it was sudden or not” [ibid.].
Powers writes,
Orion Clemens rose at six, his usual time, and descended the stairs of his small Keokuk house to build a fire. Mollie stirred awake upstairs. Orion sat down at the kitchen table and wrote out some notes for a court case. Molly waited for his rap on the ceiling, their signal that the fire had warmed the room enough for her to come down. The rap did not come. She gave the floor a rap of her own. No response. She hurried downstairs and found her husband upright, but with his head slumped forward and his arms dangling. He was seventy-two [MT A Life 591].
Paine writes of Orion,
Deaths never came singly in the Clemens family. It was on the 11th of December, 1897, something more than a year after the death of Susy, that Orion Clemens died, at the age of seventy-two. Orion had remained the same to the end, sensitively concerned as to all his brother’s doings, his fortunes and misfortunes: soaring into the clouds when any good news came; indignant, eager to lend help and advice in the hour of defeat; loyal, upright, and generally loved by those who knew and understood his gentle nature. He had not been ill, and, in fact, only a few days before he died [Nov. 30] had written a fine congratulatory letter on his brother’s success in accumulating means for the payment of his debts, entering enthusiastically into some literary plans which Mark Twain then had in prospect, offering himself for caricature if needed [MTB 1052].
A cable was sent to the Clemens family in Vienna, Austria. At 9:30 p.m. Sam sent a cable of sympathy (not extant). At 10 p.m. Sam wrote to Mollie Clemens, now a widow. He noted the cable was now in Mollie’s hands, in what was a “wintry mid-afternoon of the heaviest day” she had known since her daughter Jennie Clemens died, 33 years before, “& we were too ignorant to rejoice at it.”
We all grieve for you; our sympathy goes out to you from the experienced hearts; & with it our love; & with Orion, & for Orion, I rejoice. He has received life’s best gift. He was good—all good, and sound; there was nothing bad in him, nothing base, nor any unkindness. It was unjust that such a man, against whom no offence could be charged, should have been sentenced to live 72 years. It was beautiful, the patience with which he bore it [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore in Hartford.
“My brother Orion died to-day in Keokuk. Please send to Mrs. Orion Clemens $50 extra when you receive this, because of her heavy immediate expenses. “Continue to send her the usual $50 per month upon the usual date.”
He then asked how things were; he hadn’t received a statement “for a while.” The family was settled in the hotel for the winter and liked it; they couldn’t find a furnished flat [MTP].
The London Academy ran an anonymous review of More Tramps Abroad, (FE): “a good-humoured, instructive, entertaining, careless, ill-considered, and rather disappointing book” [Tenney 25].
Speaker p. 671 also reviewed More Tramps Abroad, ( FE). From Tenney: “A disappointing book, though ‘distinctly worth reading,’ it contains prosy and labored sections as well as some good specimens of MT’s humor and some ‘quick witted an caustic social judgments’” [26].
December 11 after – Samuel E. Moffett, now in N.Y. on the staff of Hearst’s N.Y. Journal, wrote to Sam and Livy, the letter not extant but referred to in Livy’s reply of Jan. 6, 1898. From her response it is clear that Moffett wrote of Orion’s death, and of the Reichsrath disturbances of November. See Livy’s reply.