November 14 Saturday ca. – In London on or about this day Sam wrote a short paragraph to Frederic W.H. Myers. Significantly he gave his Tedworth Square address, which heretofore he’d kept secret.
6 p.m. Tuesday the 17th will suit me exceedingly well. But it seems very unfair to make you come to me to do me a favor.
Sam suggested he might come to Myers [MTP]. The nature of the favor or Myers identity is not given.
November 13 Friday – In London Sam sent a clipping and short request to Chatto & Windus asking for a copy of A Sketch of the Natural History of Australia (1896) by F.G. Aflalo [MTP]. See Gribben 12.
In the evening Sam also wrote to Andrew Chatto Jr.
Dear Mr. Chatto junior:
You know about bicycles & I and my daughters don’t. We are going up into Regent street to lay in a couple for family use.
November 11 Wednesday – In London Sam heard Israel Zangwill lecture and entered in his notebook:
Went out to Swiss Cottages, per underground RR with Smythe, & heard Zangwill on the Jewish Ghetto. Very fine & bright. Knowledge boiled down. Pemmican in fact. Substance enough in it to furnish forth 5 ordinary lectures [Gribben 796; NB 39 TS 23].
November 10 Tuesday – Katharine I. Harrison wrote to Sam, responding to his Oct. 20 note enclosed with his letter to Rogers.
Dear Mr. Clemens:
November 8 Sunday – In London Sam wrote to Henry C. Robinson, grateful and touched by a speech Robinson made. He remarked how it would have stirred Susy.
It was a beautiful speech, dear old friend, & I am glad you thought of me & sent it to me. I could see you — see you plainly, & hear every note of your voice, every inflection [MTP].
November 7 Saturday – Two copies of Tom Sawyer, Detective were received by the U.S. Copyright Office. The earliest copies of the first edition were published in Nov. or Dec. 1896 [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” The Stolen White Elephant and Other Detective Stories, Afterword materials, p.27 1996 Oxford ed.].
November 6 Friday – In London Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
I am very glad indeed that the contract is accomplished at last, both for your patient indomitable sake and for my sake — I can work the better now. And I am glad of what you say of Harry Harper. He always seemed to me to be a frank and straightforward man and a man of a good heart and an obliging disposition.
July 31 Friday – The Clemens family arrived in Southampton. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers what may have been meant as a PS to his July 22 letter:
We are just arrived, 16 days out from the Cape, and now I will telegraph London to send down the letters. Love to you all. / SLC [MTHHR 228].
August – The first of two installments of the 23,400 word Tom Sawyer, Detective first appeared in the Aug. issue of Harper’s Magazine. 21 illustrations were included by A.B. Frost. It would be included by Harper’s in book form, together with the 34,000 word Tom Sawyer Abroad in November, 1896. The latter had first appeared in book form in 1894 by Webster & Co., after being serialized in St. Nicholas.
January – Sometime during the month Sam wrote to Will Clemens (no relation, see Nov. 18, 1879 entry) who had asked for a humorous biography of Sam.
“I haven’t any humorous biography—the facts don’t admit of it. I had this sketch from Men of the Time printed on slips to enable me to study my history at my leisure” [Clemens, W. 20].
Will did write a 200-page biography of Sam and published it on July 1, 1892 as “No. 1” in a paperback series called “The Pacific Library.”
Sam also wrote to Whitelaw Reid sometime during January: