December 15 Sunday – In Boston, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam mentioning Baxter’s notice in the Boston Herald and graciously declining Sam’s invitation of Dec. 13 due to Elinor’s health.
It is not likely now that she can go anywhere this winter; but I want nothing but a pretext. — We have dumped ourselves down here for eighteen months (which I wish over, as if I had a thousand years to live) and we have a hole in the wall where we can put you to sleep when you like to come.
W.D. also asked how the typesetter was coming along [MTHL 2: 623-4].
From this last citation, note 1:
“Mark Twain’s Masterwork, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court” was spread over four columns of the Boston Sunday Herald of 15 December 1889 (p.17) with six cuts from the book. In his unsigned review Baxter emphasized Mark Twain’s “abundant fun” and his ridicule of “the claims of aristocratic privileges and royal prerogatives that yet linger in the world.” He pointed as well to Dan Beard’s “strong and spirited” illustrations, especially one of an “arrogant slave-driver” which “shows in its face the unmistakable portrait of a celebrated American billionaire and its stock gambler.” The face of Beard’s slave driver …is clearly that of Jay Gould.
See Dec. 19 to Baxter for Sam’s reaction to the notice.
December 15 Sunday ca. – In Hartford, Sam sent a proof of a descriptive circular for CY to Chatto & Windus:
It is very good indeed — but why not add to it a lot of Beard’s most picturesque pictures?
Sam advised his English publishers not to be too delayed by the addition of five or six pictures [MTP]. In his interview first published in the N.Y. Times Dec. 10, “MARK TWAIN AND HIS BOOK,” Sam expressed fears that English hypocrisy might prevent all of Beard’s illustrations from making the book there.
December 15-31 Tuesday – Sometime during the latter half of December, Sam and Livy sent a calling card with invitation to Annie Eliot Trumbull. Sam inserted his comments in parentheses:
Dear Miss Trumbull (Oh my land, how formal & perfunctory S. L. C.) Will you give us the pleasure of your company b’gosh, on Friday evening Jan. 3 at 8 o’clock? Going to have a Halifax of a time. / Affectionately Yours / Olivia L. Clemens / (To my mind this note is too formal & familiar. — S. L. C.) [MTP]. Note: Annie was the 32 year-old daughter of James Hammond and Sarah Trumbull.