January 22 Sunday – “Bloody Sunday” (or “Red Sunday”) in St. Petersburg, Russia was the impetus for Mark Twain’s “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” written shortly after this day. (See Jan. 30, and Feb. entries.) Peaceful demonstrators petitioning Czar Nicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial guard. Budd writes:

“To Twain the riots…were both enraging and heartening. He rushed into print with ‘The Czar’s Soliloquy,’ the vehement logic of which went back to 1889-1891 when he was listening raptly to [George] Kennan and Stepniak” [New England Quarterly 32.3 (Sept 1959) p.366].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Gilder came in as I was playing 500 with Mr. Clemens—later Mr. Clemens said he “did not like to be such an expense to a guest—there Carnegie sat with a stream of dollars pouring down his back”—and no one to collect them [MTP: TS 38].