November 20 Sunday – Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Wrote to Sam, calling his attention to a circular issued by the Treasury Dept. about the importation of books copyrighted in the US [MTP].
Home at Hartford: Day By Day
November 20 Tuesday –Grace King wrote to her sister May King McDowell of the excursion to New York with the Clemenses:
November 20 Wednesday – Webster & Co. sent Sam the first copies of Connecticut Yankee, albeit unbound set of stitched sheets [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.28, Oxford ed. 1996].
November 20 Thursday – Stillman & Co., Agents, Hartford, billed $10 for re-dying seal coat: Livy wrote on bill: “Dear Sirs/ My absence from town must be my excuse for this bill’s remaining so long unpaid / O.L. Clemens”; Paid Dec. 21, 1890 [MTP].
Sam wrote to William J. Bok for Bok Syndicate Press, N.Y., objecting to a published paragraph in “Bok’s Literary Leaves” about Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher. Sam’s letter not extant but referred to in Bok’s apology of Nov. 28 [MTP].
November 21 Friday – “Twain’s Best Joke,” a story purportedly published the first time in this edition of the Hartford Courant, ran on page 2. This was the tale of Sam applauding himself by mistake at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. (See Nov. 9, 1872 entry.)
H.W. Bergen wrote from Newark, NJ to ask for a $400 loan from Sam, since the recent death of his wife and the illness of his child had left him bereft. Bergen was a road agent for Sam [MTP].
November 21 Sunday – Mollie Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy. Arguments over family spoons with Kate Lampton open the letter, then “No loving parents could have done more kindly or generously than you have done,” helping them financially, then more family nits. She enclosed a clipping poem from Walt Whitman for Livy, “My Picture Gallery” from The American:
November 21 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, who evidently had caught a grammar error in one of Sam’s letters. “It is not my instinct to care whether I am or not in a private letter,” he answered [MTBus 177].
November 21 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster about cleaning up loose ends with Sam’s ex-lawyer, Charles Perkins.
“About Christmas you may go to Mr. Perkins & get all documents & everything connected with my business—so that Mr. Perkins’s salary can stop with the year.
November 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.
“Good—& all right. Within an hour I shall be deep in an old piece of work which always interests me, any time of the year that I take it up. So I will go down into that, & not appear at the surface again till the Howellses arrive here the 3d of December” [MTHL 1: 451].
November 21 Friday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in Association Hall in Philadelphia. Included: “King Sollermun,” “Tragic Tale of the Fishwife,” “A Trying Situation,” and “A Ghost Story” [MTPO].
Sam wrote from Philadelphia to Livy:
“Livy darling, a most noble big audience, & a most prodigious good time.
We are to be here again Wednesday afternoon & evening, 26th —the day before thanksgiving.
November 21 Saturday – In New York City Sam wrote to Livy after telling Webster to send her a telegram that he was planning on spending Thursday and Friday (Nov 26-7) at home, taking “the 11 oclock train, reaching Hartford at 2.21.” Sam thought he might be able to stay home until Monday (Nov. 30) but was unsure. He was just on his way to Fred Grant’s and would “stop in & hurry up Mrs.
November 21 Sunday – Charles Hopkins Clark wrote “Personal” on a note to Sam about the “private and none of my business” libel suit of Albert H. Walker against the Courant. “…if you could see… [the] application ….you’d be cured of all ills that may afflict you.” Clark suggested Sam “could accidentally get her [Mrs. C.D. Warner] to show you” but didn’t wish Sam to say it was his idea [MTP].
November 21 Monday – On or about this day Sam returned to New York, probably on business. He wrote of just returning from the City on Nov. 24, Thanksgiving.
Check # Payee Amount [Notes]
3909 Meyrowitz Bros 2.56 N.Y. Opticians
3910 J.P Griswold 100.80
November 21 Wednesday – In New York, the Clemens family (less Susy) and Grace King, and also possibly William Dean Howells, spent the morning looking at the paintings of a Russian realist of warfare, Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904). From Grace’s Nov. 22 to her sister May:
November 21 Thursday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam:
The only thing you have to do on the day of publication is, to cross the Canadian line, at any point, and register in some hotel in Canada and remain there during the hours of publication in England. ….P.S. If there are no hotels at which you can register at Niagara Falls in Canada, if you will post a letter or send a telegram from there that will be sufficient proof [MTP].
November 21 Friday – Sam and Livy arrived in Elmira and went to Olivia Lewis Langdon’s bedside [Nov. 27 to Howells].
Thomas F. Shields, the fired N.Y. horse-car conductor, wrote to Sam after receiving his telegram several days before. Shields, upon applying back to the Horse-Car Co., was reinstated, albeit as an “extra conductor”; he wrote it would “take some time before I get a steady car again” [MTP].
November 22 Friday – In Hartford, Sam again wrote Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald, who he wanted to come out with an early review of CY. He wrote he was telegraphing his publisher to verify they’d sent Baxter an unbound copy. He also confided he’d asked Howells to write and tell Baxter he had no objections to a notice coming out before his, in Harper’s. His last revelation is interesting — knowing that aspects of the book might be objectionable, he wrote:
November 22 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the editor of the Hartford Courant. After a long harangue against new postal regulations, which required street addresses, Sam concluded:
November 22 Monday – Sam purchased a copy of Charles Carleton Coffin’s Old Times in the Colonies from Brown & Gross, Hartford booksellers. Sam paid $2.40 [Gribben 150].
Empire Dyeing and Cleaning Co. of N.Y. charged $1.90 to clean a shawl [MTP]. Note: This may have been left on Livy & Clara’s visit.
November 22 Tuesday – Now clearly impatient for success at the Kaolatype-brass casting process, Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Webster.
“PERFECT THE ENGLISH PATENT. MY BRASS PATIENCE IS RUNNING LOW. PUT A HUNDRED MEN ON IT AND TELEGRAPH ME A RESULT OF SOME SORT OR OTHER IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS—S.L. CLEMENS” [MTBus 177].
Sam could demand the impossible. Webster’s answer:
“SO IS MINE. IT’S JUST AS HARD TO REPORT RESULTS YOU CAN’T GET AS TO GET 100 SKILLED MEN IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS” [177].
November 22 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster asking him to come up from New York City “on a matter of business here upon which” he wanted Webster’s advice [MTP].
November 22 Saturday – Sam and Cable left Philadelphia and traveled to Brooklyn, where they gave two performances at the Academy of Music. The Brooklyn Eagle called it “The Literary Event of the Season” [p.5]. Henry Ward Beecher and Dean Sage and wife were in the audience.
November 22 Monday – Henry B. Barnes of the N.Y. publishing house of A.S. Barnes & Co. dictated a typed letter to Sam, thanking him for agreeing to attend the Stationers Board of Trade dinner on the second Tuesday of February (Feb. 8) [MTP].
November 22 Thursday – The Clemens family returned to Hartford sometime between Nov. 21 and 23, probably this day.
November 22 Saturday – Katy Leary (1856?-1934), the Clemens family’s longtime maid, wanted to telegraph Livy to return home. Young Jean Clemens was seriously ill; Dr. Kellogg agreed that Livy’s return was needed. Clara Clemens, now sixteen, overruled Katy and the doctor, arguing that Livy could not withstand such an arduous trip home from Elmira while her mother lay dying [Nov. 26, 27 to Livy].