Vol 3 Section 0739

A story attaches to a visit made by Mr. Clemens yesterday, of which no word has yet been said. When he was “Sam,” and perhaps “Tom Sawyer,” he knew a girl whose full name was Azalia Erminie Cordelia Transquilla Amelia Amerine Penn. Her father owned Mr. Clemens’s birthplace, a house in Florida, Mo.

The visiting author remembered the name Azalia, &c., Penn, and found that the lady was now Mrs.

Fowkes, seventy years old, living in Hannibal. He lost no time in calling on her.

The St. Louis Republic, ran “‘Mark Twain’ Comes Back to Missouri,” p. 1-2. Budd: “Mostly a news story

but has quotations as SLC reminisces about his cub-pilot days” [Budd, “Supplement” ALR 16.1 (Spring 1983) 70].

Budd’s no. 177a. Also in MTCI 430-35.

Other St. Louis newspapers ran articles about Sam’s return to his home. Among these:

St. Louis Globe-Democrat, p. 9 “Mark Twain’s Visit.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 1 “Mark Twain Sees the Home of His Boyhood” [MTCI 426-35].

May 31 Saturday – In the wee hours of May 31 in Hannibal, Mo. Sam wrote of the trip and the previous full day to Livy. See May 29 entry.

Later in the day Sam attended a reception for the 1901 Hannibal High School graduating class in the Windsor Hotel and told of his boyhood attempt to get measles. They gave Sam a spoon engraved with an image of his old home on Hill Street [Sorrentino 21]. Note: see MTCI p.447.

Sam’s notebook: “7.30 p.m., hotel. Meet class of 1900, High School. / 8.30 Reception” [NB 45 TS 15].

Livy’s diary: “Bessie Hall [Hull?] came, remained until Wednesday June 4th” [MTP: DV161].

Sorrentino puts the Labinnah Club gathering at this evening, calling it Sam’s “last ever in Hannibal”

         Fatout lists the event with Sam making remarks—but of course Clemens made remarks everywhere he went [MT Speaking 670].

Hastings MacAdam’s article in the St. Louis Republic, “Affection of Old Friends Moves Mark Twain to

Tears,” ran on p. 1. Budd: “SLC comments substantially on his Civil War service and on patriotism” [Budd,

“Supplement” ALR 16.1 (Spring 1983) 70]. Budd’s no. 177a.Also in MTCI 440-4.

Robertus Love’s article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Mark Twain Dines with His Sweetheart of Old Time Days” [MTCI 435-40].

The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that 6,000 copies of the 3s.6d. edition of A Double-Barrelled Detective Story were printed [Welland 238; 1904 Financials file MTP].

June – Sometime during the month Sam inscribed two photographs to Katharine Boland Clemens:“with

the love of her cousin,” and “with the love and affection of her cousin” [MTP]. Note: Katharine married Sam’s cousin

James Ross Clemens.

Sam also wrote an inscription to John Garth. “In reverent memory of John Garth, and in unbroken friendship of 55 years, June, 1902” [MTP].

Gribben writes, “Clemens returned form Hannibal and St. Louis, Missouri in 1902 with a sense of how rapidly death was winnowing his early friends; amid notes he made then for reassembling Tom Sawyer’s gang fifty years after their youth, he twice copied passages he recalled from [Oliver Wendell Holmes’] ‘The Last Leaf’” [Gribben

319: NB 45 TS 14, 18].

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.