Vol 3 Section 0346
Review of Reviews (NY) ran an anonymous article, “A Sketch of Mark Twain,” p.480-2, summarizing Samuel Moffett’s biographical sketch of Mark Twain, which ran in the Oct. McClure’s. On p. 490 of the same issue there is a brief summary, with quotation, of Sam’s “Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy,” which ran in the Oct. Cosmopolitan [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 186].
Thomas Wentworth Higginson ’s article, “The Road to England” ran in Atlantic Monthly, p.524. Wells: “Higginson relates the anecdote that he could command the ear of any Englishman ‘by dropping out the fact that I had dined with Mark Twain in his own house and that he had said grace at table’” [25].
October 1 1899 to June 6, 1900 – Sometime during this period, Sam left his calling card for James R.
Clemens: “James, I want your address” [MTP].
October ca. – Sometime after Oct. 14, Sam wrote from London, 30 Wellington Court, Albert Gate, to Poultney Bigelow.
Goodbye & pleasant voyage and a safe return. Make a close examination of Osteopathy in New York and tell me wherein it differs from Kellgren when you get back—if it differs at all. I hope it is just the same for we are going home in the spring.
Sam also gave the address of an Osteopath on Madison Ave and 31st Street, and mentioned he tried to see Bigleow the day before but he was out [MTP shows as merely 1899].
Also listed as ca. October, 1899, a telegram from Sam to Frank Bliss: “MUST I SIGN BOTH NAMES / CLEMENS”
[MTP]. Note: This likely relates to the application for copyright Sam referred to in his Oct. 1 to Bliss.
Sam wrote to T. Douglas Murray about changes made to his “Introduction of the English translation of the official trials and rehabilitation of Joan [of Arc], then about to be elaborately issued. Clemens was greatly pleased at being invited to prepare the Introduction of this important volume, but a smug person with pedagogic proclivities was in charge of the copy and proceeded to edit Mark Twain’s manuscript, to alter its phrasing to conform to his own ideas of the Queen’s English.” Sam’s reply is this letter, in part:
Dear Mr. X.:
I find on my desk the first two pages of Miss Z’s Translation, with your emendations marked in them.
Thank you for sending them.
I have examined the first page of my amended Introduction, & will begin, now, and jot down some notes upon your corrections. If I find any changes which shall not seem to me to be improvements, I will point out my reasons for thinking so. In this way I may chance to be helpful to you, and thus profit you, perhaps, as much as you have desired to profit me.
NOTES.
SECTION I. First Paragraph.
“Jeanne d’Arc. This is rather cheaply pedantic, and is not in very good taste. Joan is not known by that name among plain people of our race and tongue….; to be consistent, it will be necessary that you strike out “God” and put in “Dieu.” Do not neglect this.
Second Paragraph . Now you have begun on my punctuation. Don’t you realize that you ought not to intrude your help in a delicate art like that with your limitations? …
Fourth Paragraph. ….you have been so busy editing commas and semi-colons that you overlooked them
and failed to get scared at them. It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. …
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.