Hartford House: Day By Day

February 14? Sunday – Sam wrote to Elinor (1837-1910) and William Dean Howells, thanking Elinor for sending family pictures. Sam liked the “good old human domestic spirit” that pervaded the photograph. Livy was in bed, commanded there by the family doctor, probably Cincinnatus A. Taft. Sam told of writing anecdotes about Strother Wiley (see Feb.

February 15 Monday – Sam gave his second presentation for the Hartford Monday Evening Club on “Universal Suffrage.” For a portion of the text see MTB p.541 [Monday Evening Club; Fatout, MT Speaking 651].

Maj. General John Gibbon (1827-1896) wrote from Ft. Shaw, Montana to praise GA as “amusing and interesting, but exceedingly instructive” [MTP].

Robert Watt wrote from Copenhagen, Denmark.

February 15 Tuesday – Edward Hastings for the National Soldier’s Home wrote from Elizabeth City, Va. to ask Sam for copies of his books. Sam complied, asking Bliss on Feb. 17 [MTP].

February 15 Thursday ca. – Susy Clemens dictated a letter to Frank Millet, who stayed with the family a week and painted Sam’s portrait in mid-January. Millet may have sent the girls’ valentines.

February 16 Tuesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote with finality: “I can’t manage the trip [to New Orleans] this winter” [MTHL 1: 66].

February 16 Saturday – Sam’s short story, “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton,” ran on the front page of the Hartford Courant [Courant.com]. It also ran in the March edition of Atlantic Monthly [Wells, 22].

February 17 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Elisha Bliss asking that copies of his four books plus, Everybody’s Friend, Life Amongst the Modocs (by Joaquin Miller), My Captivity Amongst the Sioux (by Fanny Kelly), Beyond the Mississippi (by Richardson), The Secret Service: The Field Dungeon, and the Escape (by Richardson) be sent to Edward Hastings, librarian at the National Sold

February 17 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his mother, Jane Clemens. After admitting “My conscience blisters me for not writing you,” Sam wrote of the burdens causing him to seek solace out of the country:

February 18 Thursday – Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam, unsure if he’d answered Sam’s last letter. He sent a “queer batch of letters” [MTP].

February 18 Friday – William A. Seaver wrote : “Fine Old Man:— / The March No. of the Drawer opens with your ‘Riley – Newspaper Correspondent.’ It tickled me awfully. / When are you coming to York?” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Old Seaver of Harpers Weekly”

February 18 Sunday – The New York World printed Sam’s Feb. 16 letter to the editor on page five [MTLE 2: 16].

February – The second of seven installments of “Old Times on the Mississippi ” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.

February – William Dean Howells published a review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the Atlantic. Howells gave Sam high praise for the boy-mind presentation “with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree.” Howells called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a book “full of entertaining character, and of the greatest artistic sincerity.” The only thing off about the review was the unintended timing, caused by the long delay in the book’s publication.

February – In Hartford Sam wrote to an unidentified “friend in Detroit denying the charge that he is lazy. Instead of being lazy, he says, he has no less than four books under way, with the title of each nicely written out in a plain hand and the first chapters headed off” [MTPO: “Recent Changes,” Jan. 20, 2009: Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1878].
Sam signed an identification card that was either some sort of template, or for some sort of whimsy [Live auctioneers, Sept. 28, 2004, lot 0162]. See insert.

February 19 Friday – From Hartford Sam answered P.T. Barnum’s letter of Feb. 18. Barnum had saved and forwarded batches of “queer letters,” unusual letters received from people seeking fame and fortune with the circus.

February 19 Saturday – Joe Twichell wrote : “Dear Mark, / Home last night at midnight. / Here is a letter from Kojima. The news concerning House (if it be news) concerns you or his friend. / as for Kojima…we shall have yet to consider…raising the means of keeping him here till he is through college. Love to Livy.

February 19 Monday – John C. Merritt sent Sam a check dated Feb. 19 for 40 cents (see Feb. 22 entry) with a suggestion Sam buy a toddy with it [MTLE 2: 30].

February 2 and 4 Sunday – Livy and Sam wrote from Hartford to Olivia Lewis Langdon, who sent them a set of spirits glassware and a finger bowl for their seventh wedding anniversary (Feb. 2). Livy noted that it had been eight years since her engagement to Sam.

February 2 Wednesday – Sam inscribed a copy of Franz Ahn’s (1796-1865) Ahn’s First German Book (1873): “S.L. Clemens, Hartford, Feb. 2, ’76” [Gribben 13].

Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote from Camden, N.J.

My Dear Samuel / “A blue trip slip for a six cent fare”—you see I have caught the infection. The last Atlantic brought it into our family and since then it has spread throughout the house.

February 2 Saturday – Dan Slote for Slote, Woodman & Co. wrote again to Sam.

Dear Sam, / Have procured numbers of Atlantic Monthly for new Sketches of Bermuda and only await two proof copies of March number to complete volume suggested—

      Send me at once Two copies of St Patrick’s Dinner speech, or one for printer. One extra copy of each—Rogers Paper & Literary Nightmare…

February 20 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells. Sam could not go to Boston; he’d “have to give up the river trip, too.” Howells had written that he could not take the long-planned New Orleans trip.

February 20 Sunday – Edward Hastings for the National Soldier’s Home wrote to thank Sam for books rec’d [MTP].

February 20 Wednesday – Sayles, Dick & Fitzgerald’s Publishing House, NYC wrote to ask Sam’s permission to “insert a sketch called ‘Membranous Croup’ in our next issue of ‘Dick’s Recitations.” They listed those articles of Twain’s that had already been published in their periodical, mostly through the Atlantic Monthly [MTP].

February 21 Sunday – Sam wrote to Joseph H. Sprague and Others, to accept a lecture in the name of “Father” David Hawley, with all benefits going to Hawley’s charity work [MTL 6: 392-3]. Twichell recorded in his journal that “he wrote the letter of response in my study, Sunday PM Feb 21st” [Yale, copy at MTP].

February 21 Monday – Charles W. Stayner wrote to Sam enclosing papers that announced his new lecture “American Humor,” in which he included “a biographical sketch” of Sam [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “No Answer”