Vol 3 Section 1118

It may interest you to know that all of half of the letters I get concerning the Joan sketch are from Catholics; & are strongly (even fervently) complimentary, every time. “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” I tried to please both the British & the Boers, & didn’t succeed; I tried to please both the imperialists

      the anti’s; I tried to please both the China missionaries & the clean people; I tried to please both Mother Eddy & her enemies—& failed in all these cases. But I’ve got both sides this time,

anyway. Let me die now—it is a good time. I can’t score again [MTP].

Ralph W. Ashcroft sent a telegram to Sam from “SS Minnetonka vis SS La Touraine via Marconi Stn Sagaponack NY 3” –“This is a birthday anniversary congratulator Marconigram from Ashcroft” [MTP].

George W. Reeves wrote to Sam. “Enclosed please find bill for premium on insurance policy…on the Tarrytown buildings, expires May 1905…” [MTP]. Lyon wrote on the letter, “Mr. Clemens has no policy Mr. R. attended to it himself.”

James Careton Young wrote from Minneapolis, Minn. to Sam, once again asking for Mark Twain books for his planned library, and enclosing an article, “A Unique Library” from an unspecified magazine—all the books have inscriptions in them by the authors [MTP]. Note: See Apr. 30, 1903 from Young.

Richard Watson Gilder’s article, “Mark Twain: A Glance at His Spoken and Written Art,” ran in The Outlook (NY), p. 842-4. Tenney: “The two forms of his art overlap; both are marked by strong convictions and a dramatic presentation. On p. 843, a full-page portrait of MT, ‘Drawn from life for the Outlook by Kate Rogers Nowell’” [39].

December 4 Sunday

December 4, after – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Mr. Lee: “No, it’s lovely. I haven’t any suggestions to make” [MTP].

December 5 Monday

December 6 Tuesday – Gale puts Sam as a guest at George B. Harvey’s dinner for Henry James [Henry James Encyclopedia 683].

Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote two letters to Sam.

“I arrived here yesterday (Monday) and saw MacAlister yesterday afternoon; he is to arrange a meeting for Thursday next between Bergheim and me at which MacAlister will be present. At this meeting, the three of us will fully discuss matters.” From Ashcroft’s second, written on Midland Grand Hotel, London stationery: “I forgot to say…that Sharpe said they had asked you to attend that December 22d meeting for them. Don’t do so. Our position is that those who have called the meeting are not the legal officers of the Co. If we went to it, we would thereby recognize its validity” [MTP].

December 7 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal contains an entry for this date: “And then Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich came in to ask Mr. Clemens and Jean to go tonight to see a tragedy that he has recently written.”

Note: The play was Judith of Bethulia, a Tragedy, which was his dramatization of an earlier poem, “Judith and Holofernes” (1896); Her Journal also contained: “This has been a day of events—for this morning Mr. [Finley Peter] Dunne came for a closeting with Mr. Clemens”

[Gribben 16: 1903-1906 Diary, TS 31, MTP]. The New York Times, Dec. 6, p.6 reported Nance O’Neil’s effort in the starring role as “uneven,” the poet is aided

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