Vol 3 Section 0259

I shall be introducing another aristocrat to you presently, but in that instance I take all the responsibility myself: I know the man.

Don’t chaff me about importing princes, & don’t put others up to it. I shan’t import any that are not square men; & if a man is that he is worth importing, I reckon, no matter what his social trademark is. [MTP]. Note: See Dec. 15 for PS. Prince Casimir Lubormirksy would be appointed Polish Minister to the U.S. in 1919.

December 14 Wednesday

December 15 Thursday – Sam also wrote to an unidentified man (the recipient’s name has been mostly erased – “Nash”?) on Hotel Krantz stationery: “It is too late. I am sorry, but this article went out of my hands a couple of months ago / Sincerely Yours / SL Clemens” [Weekes Autographs; eBay 180520623000, June 15, 2010]. Note: the sender likely was inquiring about an article for submission to some publication, so was likely an editor. Jodee Benussi caught this one.

Sam added a PS to his Dec. 14 to Richard Watson Gilder:

P.S. 15th He left for Paris yesterday & will sail 8 or 10 days hence. We learned tonight that his sister is the wife of a brother of Princess Clary, who is a special friend of Mrs Bronson and an acquaintance of ours. Mrs. Clemens seems to have the idea that when a person knows a person who knows a person who is married to a person who knows Mrs. Bronson it establishes the respectability and cubicality of all those people. It affects me so, too, though the why of it is one of those elusive things which slip your grip when you try to close on it [MTP].

December 16 Friday

December 17 Saturday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam and Livy:

Yours of the 2nd inst. about Ned Bunce came this morning, and found me on the point of mailing you the enclosed. Yes, as you say, the old fellowship is now at the dissolving stage and we are writing one another’s obituaries. How could life ever have seemed anything but the stuff that dreams are made of. Only to hope andto grief it is long.

Harmony saw Libbie H.— only last Saturday. She had not walked a [illegible word] alone since her stroke last summer, and she could not control her speech. Yet wrecked as she was, she was completely herself in countenance and look and was apparenty in a cheerful mind. In the end, the day broke and her shadows fled away very suddenly. All our friends were at the funeral, tender and tearful, but thinking of Libbie, not unhappy. …

Sally Dunham is better than she was, and so is Molly, but still in a feeble state….you’d better come home

while some areleft and while you are left [MTP].

December 18 Sunday

December 19 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow.

I was astonished at the handwriting & took it to mean extreme age until I referred to the signature; then I judged it meant rheumatism and would presently disappear, you being young, as yet, and no proper subject for permanent infirmities of that nature.

….

I very much wish we may go barging and cycling with you next Summer; nothing would suit me better; but thus far our plans are foggy and indefinite. I think we shall go home to America at the end of the summer and see if we can afford to live there—a pretty serious question and doubtful, perhaps. Still, we want to try

[MTP].

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