February 3 Monday – Sam returned to Hartford [Livy to her mother, Feb.2, MTP].
In Boston, William Dean Howells answered Sam’s Jan. 31:
All right: I return both your letter and B.’s [Burbank’s] so that you can have the true text before you. I haven’t heard from Herne since he carried off the play. It’s well to get it out of B.’s hands anyway, if he’s willing [MTP] Note: See Jan. 28 from Howells.
February 2 Sunday – Sam and Livy’s 20th Anniversary, which they both seemed to have overlooked — from a letter to her mother, Livy wrote:
Until I wrote the date… I had not remembered that this is my wedding day. Mr. Clemens is in New York for the day, he went yesterday and will I think return tomorrow…. Susy has gone to church Clara is in New York with Miss Foote attending to her teeth, Jean is upstairs reading. / It is a grey Sunday and looks like snow [Salsbury 273].
February 1 Saturday – Sam went to New York City and would return Feb. 3. Clara Clemens also went for an appointment with her orthodontist. Miss Lilly Gillette Foote, the Clemens’ governess accompanied them [Livy to her mother, Feb.2, MTP].
Sam’s notebook:
February – Harper’s Magazine, Number 477, p.439-44 included Sam’s story, “A Majestic Literary Fossil,” which was collected in 1893’s The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories.
St. Nicholas magazine for children, p.309-13 ran “A Wonderful Pair of Slippers,” which included Sam’s letter to Elsie Leslie.
January 31 Friday – In Hartford Sam answered Howells’ Jan. 28 letter. Since Howells’ visit, Sam had received Burbank’s Jan. 27 inquiry about playing Hank Morgan.
This seems to arrive opportunely. Return it to me & I will send it to Howard Taylor & suggest that he might do worse than put the “Yankee” drama into Burbank’s hands.
January 30 Thursday – Sam wrote on a card to an unidentified person:
If I had ever made such a resolution I would break it now. Yours truly Mark Twain. Jan. 30/90 [MTP].
Daniel Whitford wrote to Sam that the gross receipts of P&P for the week beginning Jan. 20 were $5,433.25 and he enclosed a check for Sam’s portion with statement (not extant). Whitford had called on Frohman to again discuss foreign rights to the play — no agreement was reached [MTP].
January 29 Wednesday – Mary Greening, cousin of Sam’s, wrote from Hunnewell, Mo. asking why she never got answers to her letters . “Why don’t your children write?” [MTP].
January 28 Tuesday – Howells, back in Boston, wrote to Sam regarding the play, The American Claimant (which had been Colonel Sellers as Scientist and licensed to Alfred P. Burbank in 1886).
January 27 Monday – The New York Times, p.5, ran a long article on Edward House’s lawsuit, “MARK TWAIN HAULED UP,” which cited from Sam’s Dec. 17 & 26, 1886 letters to House about dramatizing P&P. Also quoted were affidavits in the suit, and House’s Aug. 29, 1887 letter to Sam. There is little doubt as to the sentiments of the Times (see Whitford’s reason for a Times grudge, Jan. 31):
January 26 Sunday – In the evening William Dean Howells left the Clemenses and Hartford, catching the train “just as it began to move” [MTHL 2: 628]. Howells wrote his father on Feb. 2, apologizing for failing to write “last Sunday,” this day: “I had been at New York, and I stopped to see Mark Twain at Hartford and we talked much all day” [MTP: Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, p.1 Doubleday, 1928].