June 7 Saturday
Sorrentino gives a 6:30 p.m. dinner at the St. Louis Club and an 8:30 p.m. reception at the University Club [21]. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 8, Mark Twain spoke to the University Club:
If I am not called at least “Doc” from now on…there will be a decided coolness. This is a university club. No ignorant person can enter here. You are my collegiate colleagues—perhaps I may say collegiate inferiors, those of you who are not doctors yet. I have done a great deal of useful work during the past week, chiefly in the line of giving good advice. I have delivered diplomas and told the graduates what they must do, if they wanted to become doctors like me. I have talked to old soldiers and told them how much I admired them and how glad they ought to be that they had not got into such scraps as I had. I have talked in church on Sunday morning, to my own satisfaction at least. I have piloted a steamboat on the Mississippi river, and by the help of Providence that ship is still safe. When I saw a line in the Mississippi which looked partly like wind and partly like a snag, I simply told the regular pilot I was tired of steering and gave him the wheel. I could have told once what made the line on the water, but a man loses that trick. I would not lose that last week and my visit to Hannibal for anything. My joy has been made perfect by the handshaking of these Missourians. There has not been a cold handshake among them. Some have asked me if I were not tired of all this. That has seemed hardly a proper question. Missouri cordiality does not tire a man. If it is true, as has been published, that I have made the world laugh, it is also true that Missouri has made me shed tears. …Life is just a sandwich of pleasures and heartaches. You have to have the pains to appreciate the pleasures.
Sam’s notebook: contains a reference to a song, “When I am Gone,” and his intention to use the song in his next Tom and Huck story [Gribben 759; NB 45 TS 16]. Note: In London in 1897, Sam had recalled this song when thinking of Susy’s death [NB 39 TS 58].
Livy’s diary: “Julie & Ida came & spent the night—, dined with us & breakfasted Sat. morning” [MTP:
DV161].
Sam’s notebook: “Home-dinner (Bixby) / Old chum night” [NB 45 TS 16]. Note: the entry also
includes old activities he enjoyed as a boy [NB 45 TS18]. Note: The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1993: 394-5, gives: marbles, kites, sleds, skates, swings, picnics.
In St. Louis, Mo. Sam wrote on the flyleaf of a presentation copy of TS, to Lamotte Cates. “On the whole it is better to deserve honors and not have them, than to have them and not deserve them. Truly yours, Mark Twain. To Lamotte Cates with the best wishes of The Author. St. Louis, June 7, 1901” [MTP: Dawson’s Book Shop catalog,
Jan. 1938, No. 124, Item 4]. Note: Cates was a cousin of James Ross Clemens.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.
1902 693
Sorrentino reports that Sam attended a gathering at the Noonday Club [21].
Fatout has Sam giving a speech on art at the Arts Students Association, Museum of Fine Arts, St.
Louis. Fatout writes:
At the St. Louis art students’ luncheon for Mark Twain, Professor Halsey C. Ives, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, conferred upon the chief guest the degree of “Master Doctor of Arts.” Mark Twain enjoyed himself, although he was chagrined by a scheduling mixup that forced him to leve the luncheon party before the end [MT Speaking 443]. Note: Ives (1847-1911).
From 5 p.m. until about 11 Sam was entertained at the St. Louis Country Club [St. Louis Republic, June 9, p.3; Sorrentino 21]. Note: see Sorrentino for mention of several newspaper accounts not given here.
The St. Louis Republic, p. 1, ran “Mark Twain at Pilot Wheel; Bids Farewell to Mississippi” [MTCI 460-2].
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, p. 1 ran “The Eugene Field Memorial Tablet” [MTCI 463].