January 15 Friday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam wrote a general letter about several matters to H.H. Rogers: He liked the contracts they’d signed. He supposed Harry Rogers (H.H. Rogers, Jr.) had turned sixteen in October (actually his birthday was Dec. 28) and that he’d tried to vote in November.

January 12 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Cook gone—another come; 4 in 3½ months. More than we had in 18 yrs at home” [NB 41 TS 4].

January 11 Monday – Sam’s notebook:

January 7 Thursday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, who had complained to Orion that Sam answered his letters but not hers. Sam explained he was in the habit of writing Orion “about 8 times a year,” paying Orion “one for six” of his letters. Then he confessed the real reason for not writing to her:

January 6 Wednesday – From Gribben p.140 : “On 6 and 7 January 1897 Mark Twain amused himself with working notes ‘for a farce or sketch’ (or perhaps ‘an Operetta’) which would employ ‘pilgrims to Canterbury’ accompanied by Chaucer himself’” [NB 39 TS 43; NB 40 TS 1].

January 5 Tuesday – Colonel Andrew S. Burt wrote to Sam (four half pages, typed) from Ft. Missoula, Mont., having rec’d his two-page letter and inscribed copy of LM . Burt sent family sentiments, told of opening the wrapped book at Christmas and asked when Sam might return to Ft. Missoula.

January 4 Monday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam cabled to H.H. Rogers: “CONTRACTS SIGNED.” Not extant but quoted in his letter this day to Rogers.

January 3 Sunday – Sam’s notebook from Jan. 7 about this day:

London — / Last Sunday [Jan.3] I struck upon a new “solution” of a haunting mystery. Great many years ago (20?) I published in the Atlantic “The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.”

That was an attempt to account for our seeming duality —the presence in us of another person; not a slave of ours, but free & independent, & with a character distinctly its own.

January 2 Saturday – The London Academy, p. 18 reviewed TS,D: “On the whole, this is a bright, readable book, with nothing of the detestable tendency to parody the wrong things which we have occasionally regretted in the author” [Tenney 26].

January – Sometime during the month Sam inscribed a copy of JA to Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob (1841- 1917), English architect, engineer, and writer; active in India: Colonel Swinton Jacob

Now if I could only foregather with you again! There is no such good fortune for me; but neither I nor the rest will forget that we have had that privilege once. / Sincerely Yours / Mark Twain

London, January 1897 [MTP].

Sam’s notebook entries: