May 1 Monday – Sam, Cable and Harris spent the afternoon “at Cable’s red-and-olive cottage, surrounded by orange trees and a garden, on Eighth Street, on the lip of the Garden District” [Kaplan 245]. The crowd of children who’d come to Cable’s house to see their beloved Uncle Remus were shocked to find the red-haired man was white and too shy to read to an audience.
May 2 Tuesday – Dr. John Brown of Scotland, favored friend of the Clemens family died. Sam would learn of the death before he left New Orleans, in a “damp newspaper.”
Sam wrote from New Orleans to Livy:
May 3 Wednesday – Sam “lay abed till toward noon…& made Osgood go out & meet the appointments.” After Osgood returned they began a game of billiards, but Horace Bixby came by. Sam went and dined with his old mentor [May 4 to Livy, MTP]. In Ch. 48 of Life on the Mississippi, Sam wrote he encountered Bixby on the street and the two men embraced, but the May 4 account is probably the correct one.
May 4 Thursday – Sam wrote that he and Bixby “joined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug” [Ch 48 LM].
From Sam’s notebook:
May 5 Friday – Sam was quite fascinated by an ice factory he visited and described it the next day in a letter to Livy. “They make 60 tons a day in summer & 100 in winter, & sell it at a cent a pound.”
In the evening Sam received a letter from Susy and Clara and Livy [May 6 letter to Livy, MTP].
May 6 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:
Visited Armory of the “Washington Artillery”. Hanging there is an equestrian portrait of “Stonewall” Jackson & Lee (by Julio.) Also an original portrait—full length—of Andrew Jackson.
Flags of the Wash. Artillery with names 60 noted engagements embroidered thereon. Also flag of the Cross and Stars—the first one made after adoption of change from Stars & Bars.
In another room were portraits of Gen. Beauregard & Gen Owens—our chaperone [MTNJ 2: 557]
May 7 Sunday – The CBR arrived at Baton Rouge at 4:10 AM, Bayou Sara at 7:30 AM, and Natchez, Miss. at 4:15 PM [MTNJ 2: 560].
“We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half—much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water” [Ch 51 LM].
May 8 Monday – Sam’s room was over the boilers and “some idiot had closed the transoms,” the heat waking him at 4 AM. He “went on watch”; it was foggy. He noted that George Ritchie steered by compass until the watch was over, using “his & Bixby’s patented chart for crossings & occasionally blowing the whistle” [MTNJ 2: 471]. The CBR arrived in Vicksburg, Miss at 8 AM [560].
May 9 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“30 miles below Memphis tied up to the bank while they washed out the boilers and let a hurricane, thunder & hail storm pass over. The wind snapped off several forest trees near by making sounds like reports of a rifle” [MTNJ 2: 563].
Joseph P. Smyth, customs agent wrote from NYC to bill Clemens 22.30 for a case of books [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “About books from Tauchnitz”
May 10 Wednesday – The CBR arrived in Memphis, Tenn., early in the morning. The time of 2 days 20 hours and 38 minutes out of New Orleans—even with the delay at Natchez, was the fastest time since the famous race between the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez [Loges 6]. Sam recorded that he noticed “several sheds were blown down” from the storm, “& the hail stones were nearly 3 inches in circumf.
May 11 Thursday – The CBR arrived in Cairo, Ill at 11 AM [MTNJ 2: 476]. An old friend of Sam’s, John Henton Carter (“Commodore Rollingpin”) came down from St. Louis, and went aboard the CBR to escort him to his hotel upon arrival [Budd 39].
May 12 Friday – The CBR arrived in St. Louis. John Henton Carter escorted Sam and his party to the Southern Hotel, where they spent the night. Sam shared “a couple of farewell hot scotches with Bixby” [Powers, MT A Life 461]. Carter interviewed Sam about his books, the new suspender he was inventing, complaints about his image as a mere humorist, and his ability as a steamboat pilot.
May 13 Saturday – The St. Louis Globe-Democrat ran an interview with Sam on page 8, “Mark Twain’s Travels / A Round Trip on the Mississippi in Search of Book Material.” Sam recalled his “Babies” speech and discussed his planned river book [Budd, “Interviews” 2].
The St. Louis Missouri Republican ran a descriptive article about Sam on page 5 titled, “Mark Twain / The Famous Humorist Pays a Flying Visit to St. Louis”; Sam refused to be interviewed [Budd, “Interviews” 2].
May 14 Sunday – The Gem City arrived in Hannibal, Mo. at 7 AM [Ch 53 LM]. Kaplan writes it was “a still Sunday morning. The town seemed deserted.” Sam later wrote Livy that “Everything was changed, but when I reached Third or Fourth street the tears burst forth, for I recognized the mud” [Kaplan 246].
Sam registered at the Park Hotel.
May 15 Monday – Sam was the guest at the summer home (“Woodside”) of John Garth, “A popular schoolmate of Sam’s, beginning at Mrs. Horr’s…son of a tobacconist who taught the boys at Sunday school in the Presbyterian church” [Wecter 144]. Garth had married another childhood friend, Helen Kercheval and made his fortune in New York [Rasmussen 163]. He returned in 1871 to live in Hannibal, now a town of 15,000.
May 17 Wednesday – Roswell H. Phelps left Hannibal and returned to Hartford. Sam left Hannibal alone aboard the Minneapolis, which stopped at Quincy, Ill. and stopped at Keokuk, Iowa. Sam wrote from Quincy to Livy:
May 18 Thursday – The Minneapolis arrived at Muscatine, Iowa. Osgood rejoined Sam at Davenport, Iowa.
“We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylight view of it from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago, but the place, now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it has clear outgrown the town which I used to know” [Ch 57 LM].
May 19 Friday – The Minneapolis arrived at Dubuque, Iowa.
We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the Mississippi was olive-green—rich and beautiful and semitransparent, with the sun on it….The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through this region, charm one with the grace and variety of their forms, and the soft beauty of their adornment…And it is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it—nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon [Ch 58 LM].
May 20 Saturday – The Minneapolis arrived at Lake Pepin, Minn. Sam and Osgood saw a “wretched poor family on boat going to the frontier—man on deck with wagon; woman & several little children allowed in cabin for charity’s sake. The slept on sofas & floor in glare of lamps without covering. Must have frozen last night.” Sam told how he and Osgood took pity on the family and got them hot meals and blankets [MTNJ 2: 480n164].
May 21 Sunday – The Minneapolis arrived at St. Paul, Minn. at 7 AM after a “hideous trip” where Sam and Osgood spent the night at the Metropolitan Hotel. It was cold and snowing [Kaplan 246].
May 22 Monday – “Snowed a few flakes. We left at 1.45 east” [MTNJ 2: 480].
Sam and James Osgood left St. Paul, Minn. by train, bound for home [Powers, MT A Life 462].
The St. Paul and Minneapolis Pioneer Press ran a brief article on page 7 paraphrasing Sam’s mistrust of interviewers and the reasons for his current trip. There were no direct quotations [Budd, “Interview” 3].
May 23 Tuesday – Judge Caleb F. Davis, President of Keokuk Savings Bank & Trust, wrote to Clemens:
I write to remind you of my request, and your promise to send me your photograph, and the published sketch you mentioned. … /
May 24 Wednesday – On entering Philadelphia, Sam and Osgood observed a crowd had formed to gaze at an Italian laborer whose foot had been severed by a train.
“Our tracks ought to be fenced—on the principle that the majority of human beings being fools, the laws ought to be made in the interest of the majority” [MTNJ 2: 481].
May 25 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam inscribed The Poetical Works of Robert Browning to Susy Clemens: “These volumes, (in place of a promised mud turtle,) are presented with the love of / Papa / May 25, 1882. / N.B. The turtle was to have been brought from New Orleans, but I gave up the idea because it seemed cruel” [MTP].
F.A.O. Schwartz, New York, billed Sam $1.05 for “2 nurse bottles, 2 puffbones [?]” [MTP].
May 28 Sunday – In Lexington, Mass., William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
I hope you are safely and triumphantly at home again, and that you are bulging at the new book. I have heard from Osgood what a glorious time you had.—I suppose you got my letter at St. Louis [not extant]. We have been here for a month, and we expect to spend June at Belmont; then we go to see my father at Toronto, and we sail from Quebec July 22d….I’m going to write your life for The Century. When and why were you born? [MTHL 1: 403-4].