February 23 Tuesday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to William Dean Howells. He thanked Howells for his “splendid phrases, so daringly uttered & so warmly” in his review of the first five volumes in Harper’s of Mark Twain’s “Uniform Edition” (HF, LM, P&P, CY, TSA, TSD). “The words stir the dead heart of me,” he wrote, but confessed he was “Indifferent to nearly everything but work.” Admitting that “This mood will pass” but only after Livy “comes up out of the submergence.” He then gave a positive report on the girls and turned to world events:
Jean’s spirits are good; Clara’s are rising. They have youth—the only thing that was worth giving to the race.
These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, & that whole shabby muddle. But I am not sorry to be alive & privileged to look on. If I were not a hermit I would go to the House every day & see those people scuffle over it & blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has been a bitter year for English pride, & I don’t like to see England humbled—that is, not too much. A little of it can do her good, but there has been too much, this year. We are sprung from her loins, & it hurts me. I am for republics, & she is the only comrade we’ve got, in that. We can’t count on France, & there is hardly enough of Switzerland to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted—& sincere, too, & nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that the wide extension of the suffrage has damaged her manners, & made her rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels [MTHL 2: 664-6].
Note: Harper’s did not yet have permission to publish Sam’s books first printed by American Publishing Co.,(IA, RI, GA, TS, Sketches New and Old, PW) so their use of the term “Uniform Publishing” the source calls “disingenuous.” Sam referred to an uprising on Crete aiming at annexation of the island to Greece. Britain’s prestige had been damaged by the Jameson Raid, Cecil Rhodes, strained relations with Russia and Germany, and for giving way in Siam to the French. See notes p.666-7 in source.
Sam also wrote to Gertrude Darrall of London thanking her for her “pleasant words” and for being a “friend whom I did not know that I possessed.” Sam wrote a short paragraph referring to Francis Galton’s 1892 book, Finger Prints, which he’d used in writing P&P. Citing use of fingerprints by India and China for 25 years, Sam claimed the use of fingerprints had been “quite thoroughly & scientifically examined by Mr. Galt [sic Galton], & I kept myself within the bounds of his ascertained facts” [MTP: Sotheby’s, New York]. Note: See Nov. 10, 1892 entry; also Gribben 251.
Sam’s notebook:
S. to omnibus driver. I suppose you are glad the winter is over.
No, I don’t care for the cold weather. Gives me chilblains, but that isn’t any matter. But I don’t like the road.
What is the matter with the road?
Don’t like the society. Nothing to these people down the King’s road—Chelsea. Just villagers, don’t’ you know. No style about them.
Were you better off before? Where you before?
Well, I should think! Hammersmith, Earl’s Court, Knightsbridge. There’s society! Interesting people, you see—city people. They’re not dull, like these King’s Road clodhoppers [NB 41 TS 14].