Vol 3 Section 0343

Sam wrote it was a shame they’d missed seeing them and the Twichells in London, and told also of missing Harry Rogers and Mai Rogers Coe, who had just returned to London again, but he feared they were on the way home.

Harry was in his first pants when I saw him last, & since then he has been a Columbia College boy. Why, hang it, we haven’t seen a home-face for generations! I suppose Mr. Rogers is old & fat & wearing a wig, now, & dying his moustache, but I hope not. Go & see him, & tell me privately of the ravages of time & piety [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Mr. Lee:

I have written a Boyhood-Dream Sketch, but as it can come in as well at the end of your series as earlier—best there, on one account, maybe—I will not send it just yet, but wait & get it type-written in London the first week in October. There’s about 1300 or 1500 words of prose nonsense, & 20 quatrains of Omar poetry—took me two weeks to build them. What are your highest poetry rates—where it costs a man’s bowels to grind out satisfactorily. In case the article shall suit you, how much do you bid? [MTP]. Note: perhaps this may be Sir Sidney Lee (1859-1926), English critic and biographer, though no matching publication was found. Interesting that the Omar quatrains, at least 20 of them, were included. See Nov. 13, 1898 entry.

September 19 Tuesday – In Sanna, Sweden Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking them to “send no more postal matter after Sept. 24th / Nor the ‘Chronicle’—it can go to the Queen Anne Mansions” [MTP]. Note: postcard postmarked this date, possibly written earlier.

September 20 Wednesday

September 21 Thursday – The New York Times, p.5 reported that Mark Twain had canceled arrangements to stay in Princeton, N.J., and would spend the winter in London.

September 22 Friday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, the letter not extant but referred to in Sam’s Oct. 4 reply.

September 23 Saturday – In Sanna, Sweden Sam added a PS to his Sept. 15 to H.F. Gordon Forbes:

“P.S.—8 days later—Sept. 23.

I learn this morning from London, in answer to my inquiries, that you are still at Boulogne—so I need not have waited” [MTP].

Harper & Brothers of London wrote to Sam. “The New York house have cabled us inquiring if we can secure from you for early serial publication in the Magazine your proposed book on Christian Science, and have requested us to cable your reply, together with particulars as to terms etc” [MTP].

September 24 Sunday– In Sanna, Sweden Sam wrote to Andrew Chatto, asking him to reach Madame Dreyfus, suggesting she see Kellgren to “bring back health & strength to her husband.” Sam claimed to have spent 20 minutes each morning for the past ten weeks in Dr. Jonas Henrick Kellgren’s “work-room watching him perform upon his patients,” and that he made some 7,000 words of notes. He told of Nathaniel Rothshchild, the daughter of Mr. Cohen, Miss Schuhmann (“the daughter of the Schuhmann”), Frau von Kopff, and Poultney Bigelow—all “cured” by Kellegren. “Cannot you & M. Zola

get this conveyed to Madame Dreyfus, by translation or otherwise?” [MTP].

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