Vol 3 Section 0628
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.
Our Hartford house, stable & grounds (unfurnished) cost $ 111,000 cash. I think you have said that the land is worth what it cost—$31,000. Do you think you could sell the whole $111,000 worth for $60,000—one fourth cash, the rest on long-time notes, interest-bearing, protected properly? Keep it in your mind, & let me know, any time between this & a year hence [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
I remember with satisfaction our joint success in keeping away from the Concord Centennial in 1875, and I have been thinking we might help each other in this matter of the Yale Anniversary. What are your plans for getting left, or shall you trust to inspiration? I am advertised to be in New Haven on the 23d, and I suppose you are to come up for your degree of Doctor of Divinity when I am to get mine of Doctor of Letters. Now, how can we best avoid being present? We ought, if we try it together, to be able to do something handsome. / Yours ever… [MTHL 2: 730]. Note: both men were in New Haven for Yale’s Bi-Centennial (Oct. 21-24); each won an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
A.W. Carson of Joplin, Mo. and “engaged in newspaper work since 1868,” wrote compliments of Twain’s “Sitting in Darkness” article [MTP].
Joe Twichell wrote to Sam: “You are coming to the Yale Bicentennial next week. Hurra! Hurra!!” Joe heard that Clemens would be given an honorary degree, L.H.D. (Doctor of Human Letters), which was Yale’s “only literary decoration.” He advised that Dr. William Scott Ament had been in Hartford the past week, had made a “most noble address” without reference to “the adverse criticism of which he has been the target. He is a big fine fellow, Mark, and you would have felt it before you had listened to him five minutes.” (Joe pasted a Courant clipping here on Ament). “My day with you on the “Kanawha” was a solid delight. But did you ever hear such a yarn as “The Sun” built up on it?”[MTP].
W. Van Benthuysen for the N.Y. World wrote to Sam, detailing the way the payment for his Reichsrath riot cable was calculated (583 words, cable tolls, etc.), and was willing to “come up and see you and go over it all” [MTP]. Note: The World had not fully reimbursed Clemens for his cable fees.
October 16 Wednesday – William Dean Howells replied to Sam that he would “gladly come to your feast of acorns tomorrow evening,” but was concerned they might “poke” him out without an invitation. He also poked Sam about the upcoming Yale event publicity:
“In the notice of the Yale guests, as I noted with my usual grouch where you are concerned, your name came first, with some laudatory type round it, and mine followed with the “and others,” and nothing attached to it. So I think there is some mistake” [MTHL 2: 731].
Samuel M. Bergheim wrote from London on Plasmon letterhead to Sam, advising that “the allotment of shares from the International Plasmon to the Plasmon Syndicate has not yet been completed….the
allotment will be made, and we will at once communicate with you” [MTP].
Clarence Gordon of the East Side House Settlement, NYC wrote to Sam, with arrangements to transport him with a carriage from 125th Street at 7:46 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7 for his promised reading
[MTP].
The New York Times, p.9, “Twain’s Attack on Missions” reported that the Christian Foreign Missionary Society “held Mark Twain responsible for a falling off of its receipts.”
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.