Vol 3 Section 1054
Sunday May 22: At 5.50 am the fountain was still playing.
Also at 7 when I got up to dress.
Also at 8.05 when I was at breakfast & turned & looked over my shoulder.
There was never such an unimpeachable witness on the stand: he testifies right along,night & day, that there is plenty of water to preserve my invalid wife from added disease-attacks, & he proves his testimony at the same time.
8.30. The fountain has now been washing water 42 hours. [MTP DV245] Note: Sam then recorded various times throughout the day when the fountain was still working, finally, at 7 p.m., it was not.
May 23 Monday
May 24 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Telephone countess Seristori concerning tomorrow” [NB 47 TS 11].
May 25 Wednesday – R.H. Slacke wrote from Shildon, County Durham, England to Sam: “For more than twenty years it has been on my mind to tell you that heaps of your admirers would rejoice to see the history of Joseph ‘as if fell from the lips of Scotty Briggs, riddled with slang.’ / Yours faithfully…” [MTP]. Note: see Buck Fanshaw’s funeral in ch. 47 of RI.
An unidentified person wrote from Arlington, England to Sam (only the envelope survives) [MTP].
May 26 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Gov. David R. Francis, St. Louis, Mo.
Dear Governor Francis: / It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the Great Fair & get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered, & I must remain in Florence. Although I have never taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in Missouri half a century ago‘ , & I ought to be able to repeat, now, if I could have a chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling every week, & I could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn’t been so much corruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it several times by trading medals & giving boot. I am willing to give boot now, if——however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, & perhaps it is better so. Nothing ever stays the way it was, in this changeable world.
Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be represented there, anyway, by a portrait by Professor Gelli. You will find it excellent. Good judges here say it is better than the original. They say it has all the merits of the original, & keeps still, besides. It sounds like flattery, but it is just true.
I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most prodigious & in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen. Very well, you have indeed earned it; & with it the gratitude of the State & the Nation [MTP]. Note: part of this letter ran in the NY Times, June 14, 1904, p.3.
Sam’s notebook: “Villa del Pino / Mrs. McLeod” [NB 47 TS 11].
A note dated May 26, 1904 in the DV245 file, MTP by Isabel Lyon: “Dog’s head covered with oil-etc.” Isabel Lyon added a note about the Countess’s dogs rushing Clara, and when she petted them she discovered their heads were “dripping with salad-oil.”
In New York Katharine I. Harrison wrote to Sam after receiving his of May 3. She enclosed a financial statement for money paid out and received to his account, with a balance of $24,808.80 [MTHHR 567]. Note: see p.568-9 for a detailed account of monies out and in, the latter including dividends on stock held.
May 27 Friday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
I keep forgetting to say:
Forward NOTHING to me that comes to your care by either MAIL or EXPRESS.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.