August 1 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Howells asking him to locate a book at a Boston store for him. He added a short paragraph on the new baby’s progress, saying they’d hoped for twins [MTLE 5: 139].
Sam also wrote to Frank E. Bliss, forwarding a letter and enclosures intended for the American Publishing Co.
August 11 Wednesday – John Milton Hay wrote from Wash. D.C. “I sent you my speech the other day. / Please let me know where you are at this moment. I have something to send you which ought to go into your own lily-white hands. Yours…” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Col. John Hay, author of the ‘Pike County Ballads.” See Gribben p. 303 listing this work as 1871.
August 12 Thursday – Moncure Conway wrote from Easton, Pa. to Sam. “Love and greeting to you and your dear lady!” he asked where Sam was as they would be in Newport and Boston next week, then sail for Liverpool Nov. 27 [MTP].
August 14 and 15 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Dr. John Brown. The butler, Sam’s “black George” had taken a card from Dr. Stearns, who was on his way to Scotland, and forgotten to tell Sam.
August 15 Sunday – Mollie & Orion Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy. Mollie wrote about attending Judge Joseph Montgomery Casey’s silver wedding anniversary. Orion didn’t go due to the expense. Orion wrote on the letter a paragraph about writing the 454th page of his auto MS. [MTP].
August 16 Monday – John M. Hay wrote from Wash. D.C. “Here is the Meisterstück. It got into such appreciative hands among the Campfire Club that it was read into rags…it is returned with thanks and laud [1601?]. I would I might see you one day. But I have no hopes until after 4th March week, when I quit the livery of office. / I congratulate you on your new baby” [MTP].
August 17 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Moncure Conway that the new baby was “3 weeks old, & neither she nor her mother is able to sit up yet.” Sam wasn’t certain of the date the family would return to Hartford but it would be “several weeks before” Conway sailed, and they could coordinate dates for the Conways to visit [MTLE 5: 145].
August 18 Wednesday – Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), poet and prose writer, whose stories Sam admired, wrote from Winsted, Conn.
August – Sam’s sketch, “Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale” ran in the August issue of the Atlantic Monthly [Wells 23]. Wilson calls this “a humorless moral tale that satirizes several aspects of nineteenth-century American culture” [68]. $50 check from Houghton, Mifflin & Co. dated Aug. 2 and deposited Aug. 6 for this article is in the MTP, 1880 financial file.
August 19 Thursday – Sam wrote a letter from Elmira for baby Jean Clemens to Olivia Lewis Langdon for grandma’s birthday. He attached a lock of the baby’s hair.
August 2 Monday – Jane Clemens wrote from Van Buren to baby Jean.
August 20 Friday – Sophie Degen billed Sam $37.50 for July and Aug. daily milk? deliveries. Bill marked paid [MTP].
August 22 Sunday – Frank Soulé wrote from San Francisco to Sam, enclosed in Howells’ Oct. 31, asking for publishing help with a 200 page vol. of his poetry [MTP].
August 25 Wednesday – Estes & Lauriat of Boston billed Sam $150 for John James Audubon’s The Birds of America from Drawings made in the United States and Their Territories (1860) [Gribben 31]. The bill at MTP shows the plates in 1 volume folio, text in 4 volumes.
August 29 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Joe Twichell, about the baby and the family. The “stock-quotation of the Affection Board” was the priority the children put upon family and friends.
“Four weeks ago the children still put Mamma at the head of the list right along, where she had always been. But now: Jean / Mamma / Motley /Fraulein [last two are cats] / Papa.”
August 3 Tuesday – What Fishkin calls “noisy hoopla that engulfed Elmira” was the arrival and speech of Frederick Douglass. “The event drew delegations from virtually every city and town within a hundred miles. Sixty-three guns were fired at 11 A.M. Well before the parade began, the ‘excitement reached the white folks, and the streets were thronged with expectant people.’” At least four bands provided music. The parade route went around the Langdon home.
August 31 Tuesday – Mary Keily finished her July 30 letter to Sam [MTP].
August 5 Thursday – Lucy Adams Perkins wrote to Sam with congratulations and concern for Livy. She related their house being burgled “again…at the same parlor window.” A policeman heard the window slide and came to find the burglar in the parlor; he fired a shot at him as he fled into the bushes, but missed him [MTP].
August 6 Friday – Lilly G. Warner wrote to Sam, thanking him for his letter from baby Jean, and very concerned after hearing Livy was worse [MTP].
August 7 Saturday – Robert Thornton Lowery (1859-1921) wrote from Petreola, Ontario to Sam:
August 9 Monday – Sam wrote to the editors of the River Record about articles they’d referred to which he intended to publish in book form after visiting the Mississippi again. These would become Life on the Mississippi. Sam realized that since he’d left the river, new boats had come and gone. “Yours is a very good paper,” he wrote, “but it makes a person baldheaded to read it” [MTLE 5: 140].
Elmira and Quarry Farm, Summer of 1880
The family finally left for Elmira and Quarry Farm on June 15, 1880, and railed to New York, where they overnighted at the Gilsey House.
July 1–18 Sunday – Sam wrote sometime between these dates from Elmira to Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908). Norton was an American educator, writer, and editor who founded the Nation (1865). Sam declined an invitation to some event for the arts and sciences. He wrote,
July 10 Saturday – Sam ordered 100 Cortina Mora R. Chic cigars from James Lidgerwood & Co., fine groceries, New York; bill paid Aug. 11 [MTP].
July 13 Tuesday – Sam wrote to his attorney, Charles E. Perkins; the letter not extant but referred to in Perkins’ July 14 reply.
Elihu Vedder (1836-1923) painter/illustrator wrote from NY to Sam that he was leaving the country and would return in two years. He sent a package containing a “silver comic mask. Hang it on your watch chain and think of me” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the letter, “Vedder the artist”