Vol 3 Section 0370
Kate Field: A Record, by Lilian Whiting contains Sam’s letter to Kate Field of Mar. 8, 1886, in which he agrees with Field about the Mormon religion [Tenney 33]. See entry, Vol. II.
1900 ca. – About this year Ugo Catani painted a 10.6 x 8.1 cm. portrait of Mark Twain on what appears to be ivory, with a copper frame with loop for hanging [Bancroft Library pictorial online]. Note: See Sept. 15, 1903 and Oct. 1903 for early publications of the portrait.
1900-1902 – Sam wrote several pieces which have been dated to this period: “A Passage from a Lecture,” “Passage from ‘Glances at History’ (suppressed.)” and “Passage from ‘Outlines of History’ (suppressed.)”
[Fables of Man 380- 402]. Note: these essays deal with “the duty of righteous dissent,” suppressed history, and the question, “Will this wonderful civilization of today perish?”
1900-1903 – Tuckey puts Sam’s piece “The Synod of Praise” to this period, and writes the “piece is more nearly a set of working notes than a finished composition. The idea that God was not moral was to be proved by his persecutions of the creatures he had made to suffer without any hope of future reward…”
[Fables of Man 141-3].
January – In London, England Sam wrote an aphorism to an unidentified man:
“We ought never to do wrong when any one is looking. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / London, Jan. 1900”
[MTP: Charles Hamilton catalog, 21 May 1965, No. 4, Item 31].
Sam’s article “My Boyhood Dreams” signed “Sanna, Sweden, Sept. 15th” 1899, first ran in McClure’s for Jan. 1900. It was included in the collections The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) and My Debut as a Literary Person, with Other Essays and Stories (1903) [Budd Collected 2: 1005]. Sam’s poem, dated Sept. 15, 1899, “To the Above Old People” also ran in McClure’s for Jan. 1900 [Camfield’s Bibliog.].
January-Februrary – Sometime during these two months, Sam sent a request to Chatto & Windus.
Please charge £2 against me, and for the same sell me several of my books, making a discount to me that will make the £2 go as far as possible, for the cause is a pious one. Don’t send the books to me. Send them to Mrs. ———, Birmingham. I don’t know the lady, but she has applied to me on behalf of her husband’s church. Going to hold a church fair there, and wants some of my books to sell to the godly. I have assured her that the same shall be done, I being rather down on the godly, though I did not tell her that [MTP: Syracuse Post Standard, 25 Mar. 1900, p. 12]. Note: no incoming from Birmingham was found; the lady was not identified.
January 1 Monday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam replied to Will M. Clemens (incoming not extant).
No-no, don’t print a line from those letters, nor from any other letters of mine. I am very glad you asked me, instead of printing them first & asking afterward, as some people have a way of doing. I hope you will destroy the letters—it is what Redpath ought to have done. They are strictly private—he knew that—& they should have been burned at once. Such letters should not even be published after a man is dead, let alone while he is alive….when Redpath allowed these to survive, he did an inexcusable thing [MTP: Sotheby’s auction June 19, 2003, Item 99].
Sam also replied to Laurence Hutton, whose incoming letter is not extant, but as with other lost letters we can see what at least some of the subject matter was by virtue of Clemens’ reply.
To encourage you I will remark that your troubles with the new house have only begun. We have been there. Tinkering on our Hartford home still cost $500 a year, & would cost four times that if we did all of the necessary ones.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.