Clemens, Samuel L.

Autograph letter signed ("Father"), 6 pages on Dublin, New Hampshire, stationery (6 7/8 x 4 1/2 in.; 1175 x 113 mm), Dublin, 2 October 1906, to his daughter Clara.  Together with: autograph envelope; soiled, loss to upper right corner.

"I was planning to give up what is left of my life largely to idling & holidaying, to make up for 65 years of continuous work." Clemens has just returned from a visit with his friends the Rogers in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.  His secretary Isabel Lyon is recovering from an illness;  Jean is running the Dublin household while Clara recuperates at the Fifth Avenue apartment. (Clara was the designated house manager). "Jean is strong, hearty, & very sweet & demonstratively affectionate. But it is pretty plain that she has to have at her elbow an indisputable authority. And so I realize that I must stop junketing & stay at my post & not try to delegate its duties & large responsibilities to another. I realize it just in time; for I was planning to give up what is left of my life largely to idling & holidaying ..." Earlier in the year, during an epileptic seizure, Jean tried to kill longtime servant Katy Leary. While Jean appears to be sedate in this letter, she entered a private institution in Katonah, New York, on 20 October.