October 14 Friday – In Florence Sam wrote a short, three-paragraph note to Clara Clemens in Berlin, directing her to ask William Phelps if she should need help having her trunks delivered. In another letter to A.S. Hogue (Vice-consul) this date, Sam disclosed that two trunks with clothes were lost, though he felt they “must be in Berlin.” He also reported the family’s health to Clara:
October 13 Thursday – At the Villa Viviani in Florence, Sam wrote to Henry M. Alden of Harper’s.
I am going to send you an article entitled “A Curious Book” if I can finish it to my satisfaction; & if you like it & don’t like my price, won’t you make one yourself, so that I can see how far my arguments fail of being sound?
October 11 Tuesday – In Florence, Sam mailed a MS to C.L. Webster & Co. [MTP]. Note: This was probably the second part of Tom Sawyer Abroad.
October 8 Saturday – The Illustrated News of the World (New York issue) ran a first segment of “The German Chicago.” Follow up segments ran on Oct. 15 and Nov. 5 1892 [Willson list, Univ. of Texas at Austin].
October 7 Friday – According to Susy’s letter to Louise Brownell, written about one week after the move to the Villa Viviani, or ca. Oct. 1 (but postmarked Oct. 14), this was the day Grace King and sister Nan King arrived.
Clara expects to go to Berlin on Thursday of next week and Grace King and her sister come on Friday to spend a month with us. We are looking forward to this visit [Cotton 101171].
October 6 Thursday – Clara Clemens was off to Berlin, where she would study piano. In Florence, at 10 p.m., Sam wrote to her upon returning to the Villa Viviani;
Dear, dear Ben —
October 5 Wednesday – In Florence Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall. He’d received Hall’s August statement and was pleased with the “good showing” of “cheap P & P & Huck Finn & Claimant.” He wanted to know how many cheap HF’s had been sold to date, and warned Hall to watch out for American Publishing Co., should they issue their own cheap copies of his book. He’d write Whitmore also to be on the lookout. He would stop any such issue. The move had interrupted Sam’s progress on PW.
October 2 Sunday – Sam’s notebook in Florence: “Oct. 2, agreed to give the coachman his meals — sum reduced to L450 per m.” [NB 32 TS 27].
October 1 Saturday – B.A. Atkinson & Co., Boston, wrote to Sam offering to sell “the most novel and magnificent Railroad Palace Car which has ever been placed before the public” [MTP].
October – In Florence at the Villa Viviani, Sam noted Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1871) [Gribben 693; NB 32, TS 33].
Scott Rankin’s article, “People I Have Never Met: Mark Twain,” ran in the London Idler. Included was a cartoon of Sam in sailor’s garb on the bridge of a ship with a life-ring reading “Quaker City” [Tenney 20].