Vol 3 Section 0349
“Nein, mein Herr! I’m keeping out of newspapers & out of places where one may get into print—for the next six months. Then I am expecting to want a holiday from work, & if there’s any Savage nights going I shall want to have a chance.”
Sam disclosed the family was still searching for permanent lodgings and found a place they might get in ten days. In the meantime he requested “a 2-hour smoke some night” at MacAlister’s when there was only family there or at his rooms.
“I have come back in sound condition & braced for work—a long, steady, faithful siege of it—& I begin now, in five minutes!” [MTP].
This was the evening that Sam invited H.F. Gordon Forbes to join him at 8:30 for some discussion on the S. Africa situation, and the Valentine Baker matter (see Sept. 15 to Forbes) [Oct. 1 to Forbes].
October 5 Thursday – At the Queen Anne Residential Mansions & hotel London, Sam finished his Oct. 4 letter to H.H. Rogers.
P.S. Oct 4. ’99 [Sam misdated here]. As I said yesterday (and also in my letter to Harper) I don’t want Harper to hamper Bliss in adding the new short-story book to the Uniform. I think, also, that Harper should have no ownership in the plates made for the new book for the Uniform, and receive no royalty from Bliss on the book….Ain’t that your judgment?
What unspeakable sharks those Harpers are! Bliss intimates that they will expect me to pay them a royalty on the English sets of my Uniform. When they charge Bliss a royalty it is merely robbery; but when they charge me, it is robbery and fornication combined [MTHHR 413].
Note: since the Uniform Editions provided by Bliss to Chatto & Windus were done so at cost, Harpers acknowledged on Oct. 17 they would claim no royalty [n5]. Welland: “The indefatigable Rogers reassured Bliss and dissuaded Harpers” [199].
October 6 Friday – A bill was given to Sam from Queen Anne Residential Mansions & hotel for this date in the amount of £25.11.8 for the period Sept. 30 to Oct. 6; it was paid on Oct. 12 [1899 Financial file MTP]. Note: there is no other bill in the files for the Queen Anne; it is assumed they moved after this day to 30 Wellington Court (Albert Gate).
October 7 Saturday
October 8 Sunday
October 9 Monday – In New York, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
Yes, if I were a great histrionic artist like you, I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them. But being what I am I should do the thing so lifelessly, that I had better recognize their deadness frankly, and read them.—I begin at Ypsilanti in Michigan the 19th, and I am sick of it already. Perhaps I shall write you of my luck; but I cant talk of it now.—Your beautiful books have come, and I have been reading the last to the family and to myself with a joy that I wish we could share with you. The thing is enormously good. No man ever got himself so honestly out as you have always done, and in Following the Equator the sincerity is notable, even for you. … I want to get a chance somehow to write a paper about you, and set myself before posterity as a friend who valued you aright in your own time [MTHL 2: 707-8].
John Brisben Walker for Cosmopolitan wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter from a teacher at Miami University, who estimated “Mark Twain’s article in the current number of the Cosmopolitan” was worth five years satisfaction to the magazine. Walker’s note:
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.