Vol 3 Section 0345
article weakened by sundry jokes by no means aimed against Jews, but which prevent many people taking the author seriously. Another blunder, and one on which a third of the article depends, is the use of wrong statistics’: there are approximately 1,000,000 Jews in the Austrian Empire rather than 5,000,000, and in the United States 750,000 rather than 250,000” [Tenney:
“A Reference Guide Fifth Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1981 p. 164].
September 30 Saturday – In his Oct. 1 to Franklin G. Whitmore, Sam detailed the Clemens’ family arrival in London:
We reached here from Sweden yesterday evening [Sept. 30] at 5.20; put in 45 minutes at the station trying to get hold of a porter; 50 minutes outside the station waiting while a man & a youth hunted for two 4-wheelers; then got one & a hansom; took 45 minutes to drive to the hotel. Thus, after arriving it took us 2 hours & 20 minutes to get to the hotel [MTP]. Note: the hotel referred to was Queen Anne Residential Mansions & hotel; the family would be billed from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 and pay on Oct. 12.
James Henry Wiggin (1836-1900), Unitarian minister of Roxbury, Mass. wrote to Sam via Rogers’ office; Katharine I. Harrison forwarded it on with a short note added on Oct. 3. Wiggin had been one of the paid editors of Mary Baker Eddy’s MS, and described “wading through” Mrs. Eddy’s “extraordinary sentences” which he had to “lick into shape”; but he declined to bore Sam with long descriptions of “behind the scenes in Christian Science” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Mrs. Eddy’s publisher”
Note: Sam replied on Oct. 12. Mary Morse Baker Eddy (1821-1910), wrote Science and Health (1875)—or did she? It was Sam’s position that she could not have. She did organize the First Church of Christ Scientist in 1879 and the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881. Sam’s book on Christian Science would not be issued until 1907. Wiggin had revised the entire sixteenth edition of Baker’s Science and Health, adding a chapter of his own, “Wayside Thoughts”; the popularity of the volume dated from his revision.
October – Sam wrote “Private” to Richard Watson Gilder:
“Can’t you send to Professor Henry Ferguson, Trinity College, Hartford, & get him to photograph a page or two of Samuel Ferguson’s Diary for reproduction?”
Sam suggested Gilder write Joe Twichell who would attend to the errand, and also that Gilder might get photographs of the Ferguson brothers and also a current one of Professor Ferguson, to be added to his account of the Hornet survival [MTP]. See Feb. 25 for information about the Ferguson brothers, who survived the disaster in 1866.
“Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy” first ran in the Cosmopolitan. It was collected in the English edition of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (London: Chatto & Windus, 1900) and in an edition by Tauchnitz in Leipzig the same year. The essay was incorporated into Sam’s book Christian Science with Notes Containing Corrections to Date (1907) [Budd, Collected 2: 1005].
Alf Doten’s article, “Early Journalism in Nevada” ran in the October issue of The Nevada Magazine,
p.182-4. Tenney: “Includes the account of a joke Steve Gillis played, presenting MT with an imitation Meerschaum pipe.
(Source: Benson (1938), pp. 88, 90, 162)” [30]. Note: Doten (1829-1903) was a journalist friend of Sam’s in Nevada.
M.S. Levy’s article, “A Rabbi’s Reply to Mark Twain,’ ran in the Overland Monthly, p. 364-7. Tenney: “An answer to MT’s ‘Concerning the Jews’ in the September Harper’s, lists Jewish patriots and their contribution to American freedom, and points to brave Jewish soldiers in American and other armies” [31].
Samuel E. Moffett’s article, “Mark Twain: A Biographical Sketch,” ran in McClure’s for Oct. , included a statement by Sam that the sketch suited him entirely [Tenney 31].
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.