March 25 Wednesday – In Calcutta at the Hotel Continental, Clara Clemens was confined to her room by a touch of malarial fever. Both cholera and malaria were rampant in the city. Sam had recovered from the trip enough to submit to an interview by a journalist from The Indian Daily News, which ran Mar. 26.

Mr. and Mrs. S.L. Clemens and Miss Clemens arrived in Calcutta yesterday morning [Mar. 25] and put up at the Hotel Continental. During the afternoon they embarked on board the B.I.S. Co.’s steamer Wardha, en route to Ceylon, the Mauritius, and Cape Town, where the great humorist will make a somewhat lengthened stay. One of the members of our staff called on him yesterday, and found him in the office of the hotel, comfortably ensconced in an easy chair and smoking a Meershaum, black with age. In answer to a question, Mr. Clemens said he had recovered his usual health. Miss Clemens, however, was suffering from a slight attack of malarial fever, but was much better. Their medical attendant had advised their immediate departure from Calcutta, where the heat was very trying, to sea, the breeze of which would soon restore her to her usual health. Questioned as to a statement made by a local contemporary that he had parted with the copyright of his forthcoming work for £10,000, Mr. Clemens said there was no truth in it, and he did not know how it had got abroad. It was unlikely, he added, that he would sell, outright, the copyright to any of his works, as he claimed and readily obtained a royalty on the sale of every copy of his works. It was all a gamble, he went on to say. For instance, when he was an almost unknown author, an American publisher offered him £2,000 for the copyright of The Innocents Abroad; he refused the offer, as he did not know how the book would take, and he had now no desire that any publisher should lose through him [Scharnhorst, Interviews 290-1].

Sam’s notebook: March 25. Went aboard the s.s. Wardha (British India Co.) in a customhouse launch lent by Mr. Skrine — 5.30 p.m. [NB 36 TS 60]. Note: Francis Henry Bennett Skrine.

Also on or just after this date: New Guinea in ’77-85’ written by a missionary [NB 36 TS 63]. Note: the book is unidentified.