The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day

September — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Marjorie Breckenridge.

I can’t, Marjorie dear, my activities are pretty definitely suspended. I can’t drive, I can’t walk, I am a prisoner. I am as well as anybody—as long as I keep still; but the least little exertion gives me such a bitter pain in the chest that I could enjoy it more than anything in the world if somebody else had it.

You must look in on me, Marjorie, & if I get over this before you go away, I’ll pay back. /Affectionately / [MTP; MTAq 265].

September 2 Friday – This issue of Collier’s Weekly ran a quote of Sam about Christians and voting: It will be conceded that a Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man. If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease.

September 2 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

September 2 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The King had been up in my study telephoning to Dorothy [Quick] this morning, & when we went back to his room to go on with the morning business we found the smell of tobacco pretty strong & he said it smelt “as if a stuffy old archangel had been in there”. I told him that Santa & I love the smell of an archangel. He said “yes, the smell of young ones, but not the stale old ones.”

September 2 Wednesday – Dorothy Quick wrote to Sam.

My dear Mr Clemens.

September 20 Tuesday – Sam was in Fairhaven, Mass.

September 20 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

September 20 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Isabel V. Lyon in Dublin, N.H. 

Clara & I have just come in from dinner at the Grosvenor, & I am gone to bed.

Day before yesterday I told Mrs. Johnson frankly & in detail our judgment of the Joan play, & she took it in good part.

Yesterday on the yacht I read 10,000 words of the story, & to-day I read 10,000 more—both batches with great admiration & continuous & strong interest.

September 20 Friday – Sam left Fairhaven, Mass. early in the morning on the Kanawha. H.H. Rogers did not accompany him, but Harry and Mary Rogers did [NY Times, Sept. 21, p.18]. Sam arrived in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. in the evening and wrote to daughter Jean in Katonah, N.Y.

September 20 Sunday – Sam’s new guestbook:  

Name Address Date Remarks

F. Opper New York “ [September]  20 [Note: IVL: misspells Opper as “Opher”]

C.J. Taylor “    “ “                        “  

September 20 Monday — In Redding, Conn. Albert B. Paine wrote for Sam to Archibald Henderson.

September 21 Wednesday – Sam was in Fairhaven, Mass. The dedication of the church was postponed; it finally took place on Oct. 4, 1904, and was reported on Oct. 8 by the Fairhaven Star. The article did not mention either Mark Twain nor Henry Rogers on those dates. However, Sam’s Oct. 7 to Lyon included a note that he’d breen “too busy dedicating churches in Fairhaven” to write Jean, which reveals Sam did attend the Oct. 4 event. Note: thanks to Carolyn Longworth, Millicent Library.

September 21 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to George B. Harvey

“Dear Colonel— / All right, bang away, go ahead. Yes it will be a ‘red-letter day,’ & a red-headed day, too, for Old Age will take the scalp of Belated Youth that day—mine, to-wit” [MTP]. Note: likely a go-ahead for Harvey’s plans to honor Mark Twain’s 70th birthday.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: All the days are sprinkled with pin cushions. They’re pretty little creatures, and best of all they sell. Teresa calls them my boys. George MacDonald is dead at 83

September 21 Friday – In N.Y.C. Sam began a letter  to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) that he added to after reaching Norfolk, Conn. Sept. 22, where he finished it on Sept. 23. Daughter Clara was to make her American debut as a concert singer in Norfolk on Sept. 22.

[first page of letter written between typewritten lines of letter to SLC from W. M. Vanderweyde:]

September 21 Saturday – Early in the morning Sam left Tuxedo Park for N.Y.C., where he boarded the Kanawha and left for Jamestown, Va. with Harry Rogers and his wife Mary

Benjamin Rogers, to attend the Robert Fulton Day celebration. Sam would preside at the ceremonies.

September 21 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “F. Opher [sic Frederick Burr Opper] & C.J. Taylor / Santa to N.Y.” [MTP: IVL TS 66]. See guests above for Sept. 20.

Helen Kerr Blackmer (Mrs. Henry Myron Blackmer) wrote to Sam.

September 21 Tuesday — Paine writes of a dream Sam related:

September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream he had had just before wakening.

He said:
“I was in an automobile going slowly, with ‘a little girl beside me, and some uniformed person walking along by us. I said, ‘I’ll get out and walk, too’; but the officer replied, ‘This is only one of the smallest of our fleet.’

September 22 Thursday – Sam returned to N.Y.C. and wrote to Senator Odoardo Luchini in Florence.

Your kind letter of the 5th has just reached me from Lee, Mass., where Jean & Katy & Miss Lyon are occupying the cottage in the hills; Clara is in a rest-cure in a village in Connecticut, where she sees no one but the nurse & the doctor & neither writes letters nor reads them; I am kept constantly in New York.

I am very sorry Mr. Traverso has had an accident, & I hope he is well again by this time. Jean had one, but is well again. She & her horse… [etc.]

September 22 Friday – At 9 a.m. in Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Thomas S. Barbour of the Congo Reform Assoc., Boston, that he was “sending something which you should stop the press & add if humanly possible.” Mounted on another page was the following:

KING LEOPOLD’S SOLILOQUY

THE PUBLISHERS DESIRE TO STATE THAT MR. CLEMENS DECLINES TO ACCEPT
ANY PECUNIARY RETURN FROM THIS BOOKLET, AS IT IS HIS WISH THAT ALL
PROCEEDS OF SALES ABOVE THE COST OF PUBLICATION SHALL BE USED IN

September 22 Saturday – At 3 p.m. in Norfolk, Conn. Sam added to his Sept. 21 to Mary B. Rogers. Norfolk, 3 p.m., 22

I have gone to bed—as usual. It is to be hope that you are in bed, too, & that last night’s hilarious late hours & this morning’s murderously early ones have not broken you down utterly & condemned you to Norfolk again. I had a marvelously narrow escape from death coming up in the train.

===

September 22 Sunday – The New York Times, “Mark Twain Skipper of Rogers’s Yacht,” p.9 reported the Kanawha and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s steam yacht North Star leaving for Jamestown.

September 22 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Benares goes” [MTP: IVL TS 66].

Charles Henry Meltzer, reporter for the New York American, visited Sam to question him about the pamphlet that Elinor Glyn had been circulating. The visit is referred to in Meltzer’s letter of the following day, Sept. 23.

In New York, Jean Clemens wrote to Isabel Lyon [MTP]

September 22 Wednesday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Mrs. Augusta M.D. Ogden in Tuxedo Park, N.Y.

September 22? Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Helen Kerr Blackmer (Mrs. Henry Myron Blackmer)  (mother of Margaret Gray Blackmer). “I accept with great pleasure. / S.L. Clemens” [MTP]. Note: because Sam wrote on Sept. 18 to Margery as if his call at the Woman’s Club had already been accepted, it may be that this note predates Sept. 22, which the MTP has placed it with question mark.