January 18 Monday – J. Woulfe Flanagan, London Times reporter, wrote on mourning stationery to complain about Clara’s piano playing. The piano was on the common wall between the flats in Clara’s upstairs bedroom. “It is my misfortune never to get to bed before 4 a.m. as I work on a morning paper….Will you think me very rude & unneighborly if I ask you as a great favour not to play the piano in the mornings?” [MTP].

Note: See Sam’s Jan. 19 reply. Fred Kaplan identifies Flanagan as a London Times journalist, “whose bedroom was on the other side of the wall,” and that “Six months of exchanges with this unhappy neighbor became both an irritant and an amusement. And Clara played on” [545-6]. See also Sam’s notebook entry of May 24, when he took another of Flanagan’s letters to Richard Edgcumbe and then to Chatto & Windus for their opinion of his best response. Flanagan’s initial letter seems quite polite, yet Sam took umbrage.