Vol 3 Section 0087

Note: a 22-page booklet of the Jubilee Story was privately printed but never published separately beyond the newspaper accounts; it was, however, incorporated into the 1923 Europe and Elsewhere [NY Times, May 22, 1910, p. SM4].

The Critic included “The Lounger,” p. 428, an anonymous article skeptical of the NY Herald’s attempts to subscribe a relief fund for Mark Twain: “He is one of the best paid living authors….[Tenney: “A Reference Guide Fourth Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1980 p. 173].

June 20 Sunday – Sam’s notebook : “June 20. Wrote Douglas Garth, 8 Rawlinson Road, Oxford, that the tax collector had threatened to take some of the furniture & sell it, & asked him to protect us” [NB 41 TS 32].

Douglas Garth, owner of 23 Tedworth Square in London, replied by telegram to Sam’s telegram: “Just received telegram from my wife on your letter this morning am sending cheque for taxes” [MTP].

The San Francisco Examiner, p. 13, published Sam’s cable on Queen Victoria’s Jubilee: “England’s

Jubilee Pageant to Be the Greatest in History.” Also in this issue was Sam’s “His Jubliee Art,” p.13-14.

The former was reprinted in the 1923 Europe and Elsewhere [AMT-1: 706]. Note: see also June 23.

June 21 Monday – Percy Mitchell , in Paris, telegrammed: (“not aware anything had been cabled”); and wrote to Sam that James Gordon Bennett, Jr. had not returned from Paris, so Mitchell telegraphed Bennett a summary of “our conversation” Was there anything else Mitchell could do? [MTP]. Note—this about Sam trying to get the Herald fund canceled.

              Rogers cabled Sam: “Twenty two hundred looked upon as Herald take” [MTHHR 285]. Note: “take” was initially mistaken for “fake”; see note 1 source. The fund never went beyond $3,000, and this may have contributed to Sam calling off the scheme. Or, did “the family” (meaning Livy) put their foot down, as his letters claimed?

In July, Sam’s notebook referred to this day: “The day before Jubilee (June 22) Skrine & General ____ were exhausted by the intolerable heat (83)—I never felt it” [NB 41 TS 43].

June 22 Tuesday – In London Sam attended the grand procession of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Paine writes of the date and of Sam’s accounts to the Hearst Syndicate:

The Queen’s Jubilee came along—June 22, 1897, being the day chosen to celebrate the sixty -year reign. Clemens had been asked to write about it for the American papers, and he did so after his own ideas, illustrating some of his material with pictures of his own selection. The selections were made from various fashion-plates, which gave him a chance to pick the kind of a prince or princess or other royal figure that he thought fitted his description without any handicap upon his imagination. Under his portrait of Henry V. (a very correctly dressed person in top-hat and overcoat) he wrote:

In the original the King has a crown on. That is no kind of a thing for the King to wear when he has come home on business. He ought to wear something he can collect taxes in. You will find this representation of Henry V. active, full of feeling, full of sublimity. I have pictured him looking out over the battle of Agincourt and studying up where to begin [MTB 1043].

Sam’s essay, “Queen Victoria’s Jubilee” was first published in the June 22-23, 1897 New York Journal, and was syndicated to other newspapers, then later reprinted in Europe and Elsewhere (1923).

In 1910 Frank Marshall White recalled the event and the hubbub Mark Twain’s presence created:

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.