July 26 Friday – Jean Clemens’ fifteenth birthday. (Jean was at Quarry Farm in Elmira.)

The train trip from St. Paul to Winnipeg was about 600 miles. The Clemens party arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba a little after noon [Scharnhorst 163]. They took rooms at the Manitoba Hotel.

Allingham writes of Winnipeg then:

“Twain had played in the heat of summer to reasonably good houses in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but as he crossed over the 49th parallel that July day he must have wondered about the continuing success of his enterprise. He was bound for ‘Mud City,’ as Canada’s rapidly-growing, seventh-largest metropolis was affectionately known twenty-two years after its incorporation and some eighteen years before extensive paving programs would compel its detractors to call it ‘Winterpeg’ instead. …Winnipeg and its environs in 1895 had a population of perhaps 37,000” [2].

Sam gave two evening performances, on July 26 and 27, in Selkirk Hall, Winnipeg [Allingham 3].

Fatout writes of the evening lecture appearances on July 26 and 27 and quotes the newspaper for the latter day:

“Winnipeg, despite the heat, turned out large numbers for two rousing nights. To a [Winnipeg] Free Press reporter he made wryly humorous capital of his carbuncle. On the platform, he said, a good thing to have was an alert expression.”

Perhaps I have that naturally, or perhaps it’s the carbuncle. Yet, although we are at present inseparable, we are hardly friendly, and I shall not be sorry…when we part.

Allingham takes exception to the observation of heat in Winnipeg:

“Although Twain complains in his letters of the sweltering heat his party and audiences had to endure during the central portion of the North American tour, the temperatures in Winnipeg were moderate; for example, on July 26th, the high for the day occurred at 5:00 p.m., 71° F; the reading dropped by four degrees by curtain time that evening. Although the high for that week was 78.6° this was recorded on the Thursday” [3].

J.B. Pond’s diary:

We have had a most charming ride through North Dakota and southeastern Manitoba. It seems as if everything along the route must have been put in order for our reception The flat, wild prairies (uninhabited in 1883) are now all under cultivation. There are fine farmhouses, barns, and vast fields of wheat — “oceans of wheat,” as “Mark” said, as far as eye can reach in all directions, waving like as the ocean waves, and so flat! Mr. Beecher remarked to his wife when riding through here in 1883: “Mother, you couldn’t flatter this country.”

We had a splendid audience. “Mark” and I were entertained at the famous Manitoba Club after the lecture — a club of the leading men of Winnipeg. We did not stay out very late, as “Mark” feared Mrs. Clemens would not retire until he came, and he was quite anxious for her to rest, as the long night journey in the cars had been very fatiguing. On our arrival at the hotel we heard singing and a sound of revelry in the parlors. A party of young gentlemen of the lecture committee had escorted our ladies home. They were fine singers, and, with Miss Clara Clemens at the piano, a concert was in progress, that we all enjoyed another hour [Eccentricities of Genius 206-7].

Allingham cites a W.E. Sterner article for this day in the Winnipeg Daily Tribune, p.5 “A Brief Interview”, which he writes, “makes reference to Twain’s having visited Winnipeg some time before” [2].

Also in the article:

Probably the only people who have not read some of Mark Twain’s stories are those who can’t read, and as this class is a very small one in Manitoba, there are but few who are not deeply interested in the personality of the most original mirth-maker since the time of the lamented husband of Mrs. B.J. Ward, Artemus, the “amoozin” showman.

Note: the July 26 interview is not in Scharnhorst’s Interviews, though a July 27 interview by the same paper is (p.160-1); both articles are based on the actual July 26 interview. The July 27 article involved a discussion with Sam about IA. It ends with this interesting paragraph:

In speaking about the spirit of adventure which led people to discover new countries and try new processes, Mr. Clemens suddenly came out with the sentence that the fools in the world were not half appreciated. Going on to explain his meaning, he pointed out that those who put their money into the telegraph, the telephone, and other revolutionizing inventions were always the fools of the age. “Behind every advance you will find your patient and underestimated fool.”