December 6 Friday – The official publication date for Connecticut Yankee in London [Aug. 20 to Hall].
Sam’s notebook: 8.03 am — leaves Spr. 9.50 — get to Buf 8.35 pm [MTNJ 3: 534].
Sam traveled to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada to protect his English copyright. Laws required him to be on Canadian soil the day the book was published in England, in order to protect both English and Canadian copyright. In Canada, at Rosli’s Hotel, Sam mailed his calling card to Chatto & Windus. On the back of his card Sam wrote:
Rosli’s Hotel, / Niagara Falls, Ontario, / Canada, / Dec. 6 /1889. / A true date, duly set down. /Very Truly Yours / S L Clemens / ~ [MTP]. Note: See Sam’s interview of Dec. 10 — he may have simply registered at this hotel without spending the night.
Lilly Warner sent Livy a short note and included her husband George’s note about Susy Clemens and the Thanksgiving play she had written and produced:
Dearest Livy: George put this note in a letter to me — not to give you, but to let me see what he had thought. He is apt to think what he does isn’t worth while, but I generally believe in impulse. Anyhow I think this will please you a little.
[From George:] Dear Mrs. Clemens: Instead of merely thanking you for the pleasure of Thanksgiving evening [Nov. 28] I ought to have told you what I was thinking about it; and what you said as we were walking over to your house on Sunday [Dec. 1] — that Susy was pleased by what I said to her — reminded me. As I sat there it seemed to me that this was a new drama and a good one and, of course, that as there are so many fine and noble things to say and do, why do the coarse and ignoble ones at all. And then this expression came into my mind — this is the “consummate flower” of civilization — and to have girls do naturally and of their own accord so fine a thing.
When I get rich I shall found a school for girls with this as Prospectus. Teach all noble thoughts of antiquity to be played upon by the emotions of the present [Salsbury 271].
Andrew Chatto notified Sam that he’d deposited a copy of CY in the British Museum and sold a copy to secure copyright “although the bulk of the copies in our edition will not be ready for delivery to the general public before the 13th of this month” [MTLTP 255n2].
Samuel Moffett wrote a one-page letter to Sam having recd the royalty certificate for the Paige typesetter; he was glad to hear that the machine was “making such good progress” and felt it “ought to create a sensation” when Sam could “get it on the market.” He’d received and forwarded the two letters for Joe Goodman [MTP].
Eli Thayer wrote from Philadelphia to Sam advising he’d ordered a pamphlet of abstracts of his lectures on the Kansas struggle for the overthrow of slavery sent to Sam; he claimed “300 letters from very prominent men sustaining the views of the pamphlet,” and named a few. Thayer had called on Fred Hall about a book made from the pamphlet [MTP].