January 19 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave. Jean Clemens wrote for her father to Anne Sullivan.

My dear Miss Sullivan; / As Father is still ill in bed with gout he cannot write you himself and has therefor asked me to do so for him.

He was of course very much pleased to hear of your happy engagement, especially so as he once met M Macy, at Mrs. Hutton’s, I believe.

He sends you his most cordial congratulations and sincerest regards, together with the hope that your health is good. / Very truly yours / Jean L. Clemens [MTP]. Note: Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, would marry John Albert Macy (1877-1932), Harvard instructor and literary critic, on May 2.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “To even up things a little—for one cannot have too much of beauty in life—there is Santissima away—and my eye continues its strange pains. But that would have to be to even up things a little. The solemn joy of living in the same house with Mr. Clemens who grows ever sweeter with the white, white years, is beyond all words of mine” [MTP: TS 38].