Happy Birthday Mark Twain

November 30th, 2011 is Sam Clemens' (aka Mark Twain) birthday. For fun I looked up the last person to write him on his birthday using the Mark Twain Project website.

The answer is...

Margery Hamilton Clinton
Margery (a.k.a. "the plumber") visited Clemens at Stormfield at least three times -- in July 1908, October 1908 and February 1909.

"The plumber is coming Feb. 23d; a girl you would greatly like. She isn't a M.A. [angel-fish], but is not without good qualities, nevertheless. She is official plumber of Stormfield, by her own request, but doesn't know how to plumb. Name, Margery Clinton (Cooley, p. 249)."

Margery Hamilton Clinton was the daughter of renown New York architect Charles William Clinton and his wife Emily de Silver Gorsuch.

-----------------------------------------

So who did Twain write to on his birthday from Stormfield?

1909:

Nobody

1908:

Elizabeth Wallace, Frederick A. Duneka, Jean Clemens, H. P.
Wood, F. N. Otremba

Stormfield Guestbook

Guestbook's Opening Pages-

I bought this farm of 200 acres three years ago, on the suggestion of Albert Bigelow Paine, who said its situation and surroundings would content me- a prophecy which came true 3 years later, when I arrived on the ground. John Howells, architect and Clara Clemens and Miss Lyon planned the house without help from me, and began to build it in June 1907. When I arrived a year later it was all finished and furnished and swept and garnished and it was as homey and cozy and comfortable as if it had been occupied a generation. This was the 18th of June in the present year [1908] I only came to spend the summer, but I shan't go away anymore.

We installed a guest-book June 27th and used it until four days ago, when this new and more satisfactory one arrived from the hand of my niece Mary Rogers and put it out of commission. I have transferred the names from that one to this one. The autographing of signatures will now be resumed. Has been resumed, I should say: that charming Billie Burke was the first guest to arrive after the coming of the book, and she inaugurated the resuming, her signature heads the page under the date of December 27.
S.L. Clemens
Dec. 29, 1908



In peace and honor rest you here, my guest; repose you here,
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grows no damned grudges; here are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep:
In peace and honor rest you here, my guest!

Titus Andronicus, Act I, Scene I

Helen Keller's entry January 11, 1909:



"I have been in Eden three days and I saw a King. I knew he was a King the minute I touched him though I had never touched a King before."
-A daughter of Eve.
Helen Keller Jan. 11

The guestbook at the Mark Twain Library is in fair shape and it is a copy. It is noted as being given to the library in 1935. The original is with UC Berkeley.

He [Sam] notes and writes about Angelfish in the book. He notes them with an M.A. for Members of the Aquarium. More on them will come in the next post...the dog wants a walk.

Brent
HistoryofRedding.com