February 28 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon replied to Odoardo Luchini‘s Feb. 14.
Dear Senator Luchini: / M . Clemens wishes me to write for him and thank you for your very interesting letter. He is much pleased with it. He wishes me to tell you that he is still in his bed and hopes to remain there for a few years yet; for, undisturbed, he can read and smoke and write all he wants to, and so he is having a good time.
M . Clemens has very good news from Miss Clara who is improving constantly under the rigid rules of the sanitarium. She can now walk out each fine day—and although she cannot see either family or friends we hear from her nurse by telephone every day and the reports are comforting.
M . Clemens wishes me to say that he hopes you will not trouble to return the “Monna Vanna”, for there are no associations connected with the book.
He wishes me to convey to Signora Luchini, your family, and to yourself his very warm regards. With great respect … [MTP]. See Gribben 446.
Sam also wrote to Abbott Handerson Thayer.
I shall no doubt receive your letter before I put this in an envelop. Thank you ever so much for your telegrams.
The bearer of this, Miss Katy Leary, our housekeeper knows by old & seasoned experience just what we want in the way of a house; & so, if you will send her to Mr. [George W.] Gleason I shall be very greatly obliged … [MTP].
On the above letter to Thayer Sam wrote to Emma Beach Thayer:
“Dear Mrs. Emma: / The letter has arrived & my daughter Jean is prodigiously delighted to go with Katy. Many thousands of thanks! / Yours, now, as long ago, / SL. Clemens” [MTP].
Note: See Volume I entries for Emeline (Emma) Beach, who had briefly been a love interest for Sam. In 1891 she became the second wife of Abbott Handerson Thayer, the distinguished artist. The Thayers moved in 1901 to Dublin, N.H. at the foot of Mt. Monadnock, where Thayer did his best work. Hearing from Alice Day that the Thayers lived near Dublin, he enlisted them in his search for a summer place.
Sam also wrote to the NYC Postmaster, his letter not extant, but referred to in the Mar. 2 reply [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Today Herr Heinick called to see Jean. He was ever so interesting telling about the corpse that he’s at work on—medical student. That corpse has been on the ice for 1½ years, and he is going to work on it until May when it will be so soft that he can pick up the muscles and nerves, without cutting for them.
This morning, looking for a MS. for McClure’s among Mr. Clemens’ papers I found the notebook that he used on the Quaker City in 1867 [MTP: TS 41-42].
Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: “Rent. Mr. Brownell—Check for Mrs. Greening, 25.00.
“Today I counted the words of the ‘Czar’s Soliloquy’—there are 1900” [MTP TS 6].
George W. Reeves wrote that he’d written to Mr. Thayer about a place at Dublin and expected to hear from him in a few days. He enclosed a Feb. 26 from Mrs. Amelia Edith Huttleston Barr (1813-1919) about a “very pretty cottage” in Dublin for rent; Sam could write Mrs. Dr. Sass, Cornwall-on-Hudson about it. Reeves wrote that Barr was an authoress who seemed to know Clemens [MTP]. Note: this is not Mrs. Robert Barr, known by Twain, but another Mrs. Robert Barr whose husband and children died in 1876.