December 24 Tuesday – The Prince and the Pauper stage play opened at the Park Theater in Philadelphia, managed by Daniel Frohman and staged by David Belasco. Elsie Leslie, the child actor, starred in the dual roles. The engagement ran about four weeks. Fatout writes:
December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – Sam inscribed a copy of CY to Susan Corey: Miss Susan Corey with the compliments of the Author, Xmas, 1889 / Yours Truly Mark Twain [MTP].
Sam also inscribed a half-morocco copy of CY to Maria C. Gay: Mrs. Julius Gay with the compliments of the author. Xmas, 1889 [MTP]
December 27 Friday – In Hartford, Sam & Livy thanked Olivia Lewis Langdon for books sent and for her usual generous Christmas check:
]Sam:] Mother Dear, accept my very best thanks for the noble volumes. The valuable part of our library is complete now.
December 28 Saturday – Sam’s notebook entry suggests travel:
[Chk #] 4399. Dec. 28. Ticket office RR, for 2000 miles, $40 [3: 537].
John (“Jock”) Brown, son of the late Dr. John Brown, wrote to Sam from Edinburgh:
December 29 Sunday – In Boston, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam:
I have just heated myself up with your righteous wrath about our indifference to the Brazilian Republic. But it seems to me that you ignore the real reason for it which is that there is no longer an American Republic, but an aristocracy-loving oligarchy in place of it. Why should our Money-bags rejoice in the explosion of a Wind-bag?
December 30 Monday – Kingsland Smith of the St. Paul Roller Mill Co. wrote to Sam about dividends forthcoming and a reorganization of the company. Sam would stand to get about $5,000 in stock of the new company. Smith wrote, “Please advise if you wish to withdraw entirely or if you would like to continue” [MTP] Note: Sam would not have received this notice until after the new year, since it was postmarked from St. Paul, Minn.
December 31 Tuesday – Sam attended the Author’s Club Watch Night event in New York City and told a story. George Cary Eggleston had invited Sam on Dec. 19 and recalled the event:
Yankee Inspires Praise and Invective – Legal Tangles and Slippers for Elsie Leslie
House Wins Lawsuit – Livy’s Eyes are Bad – Goodman Stumps for Typesetter
Summer in Onteora – Susy Enters Bryn Mawr – Jane Clemens Dies
Jean’s Mystery Illness – Olivia Lewis Langdon Dies – Frauds & Liars!
January – William Dean Howells, in Harper’s Monthly, “Editor’s Study,” p.319-21, praised CY.
Mr. Clemens, we call him, rather than Mark Twain, because we feel that in this book our arch-humorist imparts more of his personality than in anything else he has done. Here he is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences of the tale. …
January 1 Wednesday – Sam likely returned to Hartford after his night at the Author’s Club’s Watch Night.
Daniel Frohman wrote to Sam: “yes, the child named in Mr. Chatto’s letter is the one I am thinking of and who has already been written to” [MTP]. Note: relating to the P&P play; child actor not specified.
Joe Goodman wrote at 3 p.m. from N.Y. on Hoffman House stationery to Sam:
January 2 Thursday – Desmond O’Brien reviewed CY in the London weekly Truth, p.25, calling it,
…a bizarre book, full of all kinds of laughable and delightful incongruities — the most striking of its incongruities, however, being unconscious, grim, and disenchanting…. His fooling is admirable, and his preaching is admirable, but they are mutually destructive [Tenney 19].
January 3 Friday – In Hartford Sam met Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888). Sylvester Baxter accompanied Bellamy at Sam’s invitation [MTHL 2: 622n2]. Bellamy and Baxter shared political sentiments.
Sam also wrote to Isabel Von Oppen, who had sent a manuscript. Sam wrote that he was “not connected with a magazine or other periodical” and would not be able to use her submission [MTP].
January 4 Saturday – The Hartford Courant of Jan. 6, p.8 reported in “The Cliff Dwellers”:
January 5 Sunday – The New York Times, p.11 ran a long description of the life and biography of ex-senator from New York, Roscoe Conkling (1829-1888). Conkling’s biography was published by Webster & Co. Interestingly, Conkling and Sam had both opposed the 1876 candidacy of James G. Blaine.
The Charleston, S.C. Sunday News, p.5 under “New Books” praised CY:
January 6 Monday – George W. Cable wrote to Sam from Northampton, Mass.
I have asked my publishers…to send you a copy of my Strange True Stories of Louisiana [Gribben 124]. Note: Strange True Stories of Louisiana by Cable was published in 1889.
January 7 Tuesday – A.E. Pattison for Pope Mfg. wrote to Sam asking where he might buy a “paper covered collection of short sketches” of Sam’s which included his “Bermuda paper,” by Slote, he thought. (“Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion”) [MTP].
The Manchester Guardian, p.6 in “Books of the Week” wrote:
We owe sincere and large thanks to “Mark Twain” for writing and publishing this book [Budd, Contemporary 299]. Note: CY.
January 8 Wednesday – From Hartford Sam wrote to his brother Orion Clemens of a Hartford epidemic of the grippe (flu or influenza). Even the doctors in town were laid up.
The cases in our house were Clara (now slowly convalescing,) four servants (all out of bed but one, now,) & one of Patrick’s [McAleer] children. Susie seems to be attacked since dinner, & the doctor has been notified [MTP].
January 9 Thursday – The Post Orders, Circular No. 2 at West Point announced the January 11th appearance at 7:45 p.m., of Mark Twain [Leon 77].
On or just after this day Sam answered through Whitmore that Pattison’s Jan. 7 request was for a paper now out of print, but that the “Bermuda paper” (“Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion”) was in Stolen White Elephant [MTP].
January 10 Friday – Sam wrote to Webster & Co. asking for books to be shipped. His letter not extant but referred to in Webster & Co.’s Jan. 14. Hall was out of the country [MTP].
Charles Ethan Davis telegraphed Sam: “Pump to be made if not delayed any more by La Grippe can be ready without pump in eighteen working days” [MTP].
January 11 Saturday – Sam read selections from CY at the USMA, West Point, New York. Philip Leon writes:
“While West Point and the cadets are by no means the central metaphor for the novel, he clearly intended for West Point to play an important role in representing an egalitarian institution in which merit counts above heredity” [81].
Not all reviews of CY were glowing: An unsigned article, “Didactic Humorists” ran in Speaker p.49-50 and included a review of CY:
January 12 Sunday – The New York World on page 14 ran a long interview and feature article, “‘Mark Twain’ at Home.” A brief excerpt about Sam’s writing habits:
“I don’t know how much copy I write each day in those three summer months. The amount varies. ‘Do a little every day’ is my rule. Stick to it and you find the pile of manuscript growing rapidly. If on reading it over I find things I don’t like I simply tear up twenty or thirty pages and there is no harm done. Don’t be in a hurry to do too much, but work regularly.”
January 13 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles W. Thomas (1849- ), attorney, editorial writer and president of the Mutual Club of Woodland, Calif. Thomas evidently had written a review of CY for a Western newspaper. He also wrote Sam a question (not extant):
Yes, you are right — that is the book’s purpose. In your notice — for which I cordially thank you — you have divined its intent exactly.
January 14 Tuesday – In Hartford on or just after this date, Sam answered K.C. Tapley’s Jan. 13 query with the address of Slote & Co. and noted on Tapley’s envelope (later?) “They’ve failed” [MTP].
January 15 Wednesday – Eli H. Chandler of Kansas City, Kansas wrote at sea, returning from London to Sam, and enclosed clippings from the Jan. 13 London Daily Telegraph, which he claimed had the highest circulation in the world. Chandler observed that the editor of the Telegraph “totally misunderstands and misconceives the scope and intention of your book” (CY). The article called the book a “travesty…that tries to deface our moral and literary currency” [MTP].
January 16 Thursday – Edmund Hudson, editor of the National Democrat Weekly (Washington) wrote after hearing about the Thorne typesetters from Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald.