March 23 Monday – Sam’s notebook carries his travel schedule to and from Bryn Mawr, where he appeared on this afternoon:

Lev N.Y. at 11, arr 1.20 / SHAVE / Leave Phil. 8.20, arr. 10.40 [3: 611].

From Fatout, MT Speaking 659-60 we learn that Sam read at Susy’s school Bryn Mawr College, Bryn, Penn. (his prior notebook entry lists 4 p.m. for the reading). Included was “Christening,” “True Story,” “Tar Baby,” “Whistling,” “Golden Arm”, this according to the Philadelphia Record, as reprinted in the Grass Valley, California Daily Tidings, Apr. 21, 1891, Mark Twain said:

I have been elected an honorary member of the class of ‘94. I feel deeply grateful to my fellow classmates for the compliment they have done me, the more so because I feel I have never deserved such treatment. I will reveal a secret to you. I have an ambition: that I may go up and up on the ladder of education until at last I may be a professor of Bryn Mawr College. I would be a professor of telling anecdotes. This art is not a very high one, but it is a very useful one. One class of anecdotes is that which contains only words. You begin almost as you please and talk and talk until your allotted time and close when you get ready. I will illustrate this by a story of an Irish and Scotch christening…

[Note: Sam told the christening story and others This item was also reprinted in the Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1891, p.6].

Sam had promised Susy he wouldn’t tell the “Golden Arm” story, but forgot and told it. Susy rushed out in tears. (See Salsbury p.287-8; Kaplan 310.) A. Hoffman writes [367] that Sam’s trip to Bryn Mawr was “primarily to confirm what Livy had told him of what she had seen of Susy and her lover Louise [Brownell]” Note: One can only surmise that Susy felt the piece too raw for her sophisticated classmates. Powers agrees, seeing Susy’s “dread of how déclassé it would surely seem” [MT A Life 537]. Kaplan, winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, ascribes a more imaginative and speculative motivation to Susy: “She hated the story not only because it terrified her but also because there were implicit parallels that were bound to set up some disturbing subliminal vibrations. An anxious and sensitive child like Susy could easily believe that her adored and invalid mother was dying every time she fell ill; there was something unpleasant in this story of her father’s about a dead wife” [310].

Clemens did not like to read or lecture on a travel day. He may have done so in this case or may have left Hartford Mar. 22, Sunday night.

Frederick Fitzgerald wrote from Hartford announcing he would call on Sam Friday (Mar. 27) morning about eleven o’clock if it was convenient [MTP]. Note: the purpose not stated; he appears to have been Gen. Hawley’s secretary. See Apr. 7.

Blakely Hall for Truth wrote to Sam; he had recently purchased the magazine and “turned it into a weekly review.” He solicited work from Mark Twain and offered to “make it worth your while” [MTP].