Vol 3 Section 1092

I send my love, & I hope you & Mrs. Rogers are having pleasant times & will come back to the consecration ceremonies well rested & refreshed. To-day it is 12 weeks since I lost the life of my life, it is 8 years to-day since we lost Susy [MTHHR 579-80].

Howard W. Coggeshall of the Berkshire Gleaner wrote from Pittsfield, Mass. to Sam. “Mr. Gessford informs me he is going to send you some copies of the photographs in question, and I hope you will accept them. His views on the subject seem to have changed, and he is anxious for you to have the pictures.” Did he receive the copies of Berkshire Topics? [MTP].

Roi Cooper Megrue for Elisabeth Marbury wrote to Sam. “I have been hoping to hear from you in regard to that letter which I wrote you recently asking for permission for a French author to dramatize ‘How I Became Editor of a Agricultural Paper.’ Will you please let me know about this?” [MTP].

Wellington Smith wrote from Lee, Mass. to Sam. “Referring to our conversation, when I had the pleasure of meeting you at the R.R. Station here last week Tuesday, relative to giving you a drive about Lenox, some afternoon, I would like very much to show you that part of Berkshire, & you can rest assured there will be no social functions connected therewith.” He suggested Monday afternoon or Tuesday [MTP]. Sam wrote to Lyon on the env. “Tell him Thank him but I have little heart for these things.”

The New York Times, p.7 noted Sam’s new lease:

“MARK TWAIN” LEASES HOUSE.

———

Gets Lower Fifth Avenue Residence for a Term of Years.

Samuel L. Clemens, “Mark Twain,” has taken a lease of the four-story brick and stone dwelling 21 Fifth Avenue, at the southeast corner of Ninth Street. Mr. Clemens evidently intends to make his residence in this city for some time, as he has secured the house for a term of years. He will occupy it early in the Fall.

Negotiations with the owner of the property, James A. Renwick, were conducted by Douglas Robinson, Charles S. Brown & Co.

August 19 Friday – Albert Bigelow Paine wrote to Sam. “Proofs with two extracts from your letters to Nast just came in. I enclose slip— / I think there are one or two more, later” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “These are unobjectionable”; the enclosed sheets with MT’s letter excerpts to Nast, are not dated in the text, but from the cues are:

      “Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigous victory for Grant,” which is letter of Dec. 10, 1872; and

      “The Almanac has come,” letter of Dec. 17, 1872.

August 20 Saturday – In a letter of July 14 Cecilia Beaux, the famous portrait artist, wrote to her friend Dorothea Gilder (dau. Richard Watson Gilder) asking to arrive this evening “for a few days.” Beaux had met Sam in London on June 1, 1900 when traveling with the Gilders (see entry). No mention of Twain appears in correspondence between the two friends, but if Beaux did in fact visit, it’s likely Sam and Cecilia saw each other sometime during the next few days [Cecilia Beaux to Dorothea Gilder Aug. 14, 1904: Smithsonian Archives of American Art online 1904, Box 1, Folder 18].

August 21 Sunday – Miss Ella McMahon in NYC wrote a short letter of condolence to Sam, enclosing a typed verse, “Not Thou But I,” by blind English poet Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887) [MTP]. File says

Margaret McMahon; Ella may have been a nickname.

August 22 Monday – By this day Sam had returned to Lee, Mass. where he wrote to Susan Crane.

Susy dear, you are right: put just the dates, as you suggest—or, add “Florence, Italy” to the “June 5, 1904”— for there is a deep pathos in that far-from-home-&-friends in the simple mention of that beyond-ocean name.

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