21 Fifth Ave - Day By Day

December 21 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Electric music. Bermuda.

The King is planning to go to Bermuda if Mr. Twichell can go too, & I’m to go as valet & myself. I’ve written to Mr. Twichell & now we’re waiting. Mr. Clemens would like to go there for the summer & has had me look up the temperature & other things. He thinks he’d like the isolation, but the lack of companionship would make more desolation for him than anything else, for he of all people must have companionship—mental companionship.

December 21 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean.  

December 22 Friday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to Robert K. Mackey’s Dec. 20 request for an autograph on a newspaper speech. “Cut out the speech and send it, not the entire newspaper” [MTP]. 

Mrs. Abigail M. Roach wrote to Sam [MTP]. On or just after this date Sam sent her the form letter for the occasion of his 70th, adding a short paragraph: 

December 22 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to thank Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers) for the Christmas cigars and the kind remembrance. He would come up “pretty soon” to wish a Merry Christmas in person as he’d “worked off the several-days’ engagements which Clara had piled” on [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mrs. Fiske’s play” [MTP TS 151-152].

The New York Times, Dec. 23, p.2 ran an article about Mark Twain and the telephone, quoting him from the previous day, Dec. 22:

December 22 Sunday – Sam gave a dinner speech at the Pleiades Club, Hotel Brevoort, which was literally next door to his house at 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Fatout introduces the event:  

At the Pleiades Club dinner for Mark Twain, menus were decorated with illustrated quotations from his books. Carter S. Cole, chairman, introduced the guest of honor by paying tribute to his eminence in American literature, praising so lavishly that Mark Twain began his speech with a mild protest [MT Speaking 600].

December 23 Friday – Attorney John Larkin wrote to Sam, clearing up matters of the transfer tax on the Tarrytown property on Livy’s estate. He had had “considerable correspondence with Mr. Jervis Langdon” on the matter and prepared “additional affidavits which I believe will satisfy the transfer tax appraiser” but Sam would have to swear to an affidavit before a notary and return the document to Larkin [MTP].

December 23 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied with thanks to the Dec. 18 of Helen Keller.

O, thank you for those lovely words!

Now as to your January visit: we must certainly meet then, & have a talk.

Another thing. You say,

“As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again & again.”

December 23 Monday – Elmer Z. Burns wrote to Sam, enclosing a photograph of Twain’s cabin at Aurora. “Some of your admirers have placed decorations on this cabin in your honor, but I am sure, if all who would like to do so, could, the cabin would be buried beneath the load” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote for Sam on the letter, “The hillside & the sagebrush look just as they did before, but I think the house looks better than it did formerly”

December 24 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

C.C. goes to spend tonight with the Gilders & she’ll hang up her stocking. The King wanted to be represented too in that stocking, so he sent me up to Vantine’s to buy a pin—it happened to be a jade pin & is good.

December 24 Tuesday – William Henry Bishop, American Consul in Palermo, Italy wrote a four-page typed letter to “My dear Mr. Autobiographer”:

      It is known that when one gets in front of most any kind of an Auto he is apt to be hurt, so I am not much surprised, after the impact of your current Autobiography (page 487 of the December number of the North American Review), to find myself a corpse.

December 25 Sunday – The New York Times ran a feature article on p. SM1, “Mark Twain— His Autobiography; Rescued from Oblivion After a Third of a Century,” headed by several engravings and photos. See Insert of sketch, captioned: “The latest portrait study of Mark Twain from photograph by Marceau.” The sketch also noted by J.A. Williams.

December 25 Tuesday Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam inscribed in a copy of What is Man? to Neltje Blanchan DeGraff Doubleday (1865-1918) (Mrs. Frank N. Doubleday) :  

December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a telegram to Dorothy Quick, now at 63 8th Ave. “Merry Christmas and do not forget Friday” [MTP]. Note: the Friday engagement is not specified.

Sam also inscribed the verso of a photo of himself lying in bed to an unidentified person:

“Now that the horse-shoe is mounted as a pin, it has become useful as well as beautiful. Truly Yours, Mark Twain, Xmas, 1907” [MTP: City Book Auction catalogs, No. 355, 16 Nov. 1946, Item 103].  

December 26 Tuesday – Sam and Isabel Lyon attended an afternoon song recital at Carnegie Hall by Mme. Johanna Gadski (1872-1932), German soprano who achieved worldwide success and whose recordings survive. Leaving the building Clemens spotted a young girl who later wrote she was “yearning” to speak with him. They chatted briefly about the weather, and the following day she would write him a note; they would begin an affectionate correspondence.

December 26 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. After musing over who it was that called and said her name was Mrs. Rogers, Sam offered this fictional dialogue about going to Bermuda in summer.

Naturally I came home yesterday almost entirely convinced that Bermuda-in-summer & suicide are interchangeable terms. By midnight I had almost come to the conclusion to retire from the experiment.

December 26 Thursday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Miss Lyon replying to hers of Dec. 23 and would be “very glad to communicate with Miss Katharine I. Harrison in regard to the 24the and 25th Volumes of Mr. Clemens’ Works” [MTP].

Ethel Newcomb wrote to Sam, hoping she might see him before going back to Europe, as she’d missed him at Brown’s Hotel in London when he was there. Regards to the girls [MTP].

December 27 Tuesday – William E. Benjamin wrote to Sam, enclosing the Hoyt bill for the balance of commission on the sale of the Tarrytown house amounting to $800. In case the sale fell through all would be returned [MTP].

Nathan Haskell Dole wrote from Jamaica Plains, NY to invite Sam to the Boston Authors’ Club 12 night dinner on either Jan. 6 or 7 [MTP].

December 27 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Nov. 9 from David M. Jones.

Dear Father Jones: /It is a pleasant & welcome greeting and I thank you cordially for it.

December 27 Friday – Sam and Dorothy Quick had some unspecified engagement for today; see telegram Dec. 25 to Quick.

The New York Times ran “Want Tchaykovsky Free” on p. 8, and included Samuel L. Clemens in a list of about 500 names signed to a petition plea to liberate Nicholas Tchaykovsky (Nikolai V. Chaikovsky), recently arrested for complicity in the Russian revolutionary movement.

December 28 Wednesday – Dr. Matthew Gaffney wrote from Newark to Sam. He’d written before asking for “Just a word” about Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn and Henry George, to be included in a bio of the former [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter that she’d written him saying in time his letter would be put in front of Sam, who had been ill.