Submitted by scott on

August 11 Tuesday – At Highfield House, Portsmouth Road, Guildford, England, Sam wrote to Andrew Chatto:

We’ve got ourselves located here an hour from London, for a month: & in the meantime we are spying around for a house for the winter. Mrs. Clemens is out on that quest to-day, in the neighborhood of London.

Sam anticipated Chatto coming for a visit and explained that “ours is a mighty plain cook” but that any time he might “run down” from London he could expect a chop or a steak. Evidently it had been very hot the past few days, as he wrote the “weather had been ordered from hell,” but that it was “ordered from heaven to-day” [MTP]. Note: From the Aug. 10 and this letter it is clear the Clemenses took possession of the Guildford house on this day; Sam’s Aug. 14 to Anna Goodenough gives the rental five weeks. Powers calls Guildford “a graceful 12th-century farming village southeast of London, where Lewis Carroll was living out his final years” [MT A Life 576].

Sam also wrote a short note to Ainsworth R. Spofford, the Librarian of Congress, applying to re-copyright IA. This was referred to in his Aug. 12 to H.H. Rogers as enclosed.

In Hartford Sue Crane wrote to Sam; the letter not extant but mentioned in Sam’s Aug. 26 to Livy.

August 11-14 Friday – At Highfield House on Portsmouth Road in Guildford, England, sometime during these three days, Clara Clemens wrote for her father to Andrew Chatto.

My Father has asked me to write his notes for him this morning as he is unable to use his right hand owing to a cut in the left, his leg was also injured trying to walk to the village the other day, & his hair is falling out fast. These he considers causes enough to be shoving all his affairs onto the shoulders of another.

The letter ended that the family would be “very glad indeed” to see Chatto on Monday (probably Aug. 17). Note: the tone and whimsy of the letter suggests a dictation by Sam. MTP lists this letter as Aug. 7-14 week in Guildford, but as of Aug. 10 in his letter to Pond, Sam was still in Southampton, so the possible dates are here reduced.

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Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.   

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