August 30 Friday – Sam was writing “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” averaging eighteen pages per day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 [Sept. 6 to Rogers].
To The Person Sitting in Darkness: Day By Day
August 31 Saturday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote a typewritten letter (perhaps by Jean) to H.H. Armsworth in Chicago; evidently the letter made its way there and back with a “name not in directory” marking. Sam enclosed a printed postcard for Armsworth’s use, an inquiry to R.G. Newbegin & Co. 68 Read Street, N.Y.C.
September 1 Sunday – Sam was writing “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” averaging eighteen pages per day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 [Sept. 6 to Rogers].
September 2 Monday – Sam was writing “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” averaging eighteen pages per day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 [Sept. 6 to Rogers].
September 3 Tuesday – Sam was writing “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” averaging eighteen pages per day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 [Sept. 6 to Rogers].
September 4 Wednesday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote to Harper & Brothers. All that survives is his PS in a 1902 facsimile for a Harper’s Monthly Magazine Prospectus: “P.S. Before January I shall have a story ready for the magazine” [MTP].
September 5 Thursday – Sam was writing “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” averaging eighteen pages per day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 [Sept. 6 to Rogers].
Joe Twichell wrote to Sam from Hewitt Lake, Minerva, N.Y. In part:
September 6 Friday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote, forwarding Joe Twichell’s Sept. 5 to H.H.
Rogers: “From Twichell. Needn’t return it, Mr. Rogers; —don’t need it. Waste-basket it” [MTP; not in MTHHR].
September 7 Saturday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. while Sam worked to finish “The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” the rest of the Clemens family was “away all day, on an engagement ten or fifteen miles from here” (unspecified) [Sept. 8 to Pond].
September 8 Sunday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote a short note to Frank Bliss, still haunted by the possibilities of a book on Lynching in the U.S. “After October 20 (we shall be settled at housekeeping by that time…) I want to talk with you about it.” On the lower left corner of the letter he added: “I wonder if George Kennan wouldn’t collaborate with me?” [MTP].
September 9 Monday – The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that between Sept. 9, 1901 and Jan. 25, 1908, three additional printings totaling 4,500 copies of Tom Sawyer Abroad were printed, totaling 14,500 [Welland 237]. Chatto & Windus’ Jan. 1, 1904 statement to Clemens shows 1,500 3s.6d.
September 10 Tuesday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote to Joe Twichell.
DEAR JOE,—It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling.
September 11 Wednesday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote a short compliment to his nephew Samuel E.
September 12 Thursday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka of Harper’s that his address would be in care of H.H. Rogers until Oct. 1, then Riverdale on the Hudson [MTP].
Sam also wrote to James B. Pond.
Sept. 14, 1901 – William McKinley died from his Sept. 6 gunshot wound. In Buffalo, N.Y. Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as the new President
September 15 Sunday – Sam inscribed in the front free endpaper of Great Religions of the World, by Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935), et al (1901): “S.L. Clemens / Ampersand / Saranac Lake, N.Y. / Sept.
September 16 Monday – Saranac Lake: Sam wrote to Mrs. Virginia Frazer Boyle in Memphis, Tenn.
September 18 Wednesday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers that they were packed and would leave in the morning for Elmira. The rest of the letter has to do with what he felt was “a mighty cold -blooded piece of rascality” by the R.G. Newbegin Co. in resorting “to forgery” in their pamphlet on his uniform edition. He suggested a lawsuit:
September 19 Thursday – In the morning before leaving Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote a goodbye note to Mr. and Mrs. George V. Duryee, the real estate agent who leased their house over the lake: “Hail and Farewell! / It has been Paradise to us all Summer” [MTP].
Probably this day or Sept. 18 Sam wrote a quick note to H.H. Rogers.
September 20 Friday – The Clemens family was in Elmira, likely at Quarry Farm. No letters describing their visit with Sue Crane and Charles J. Langdon are extant.
September 21 Saturday – The Clemens family was in Elmira.
September 22 Sunday – The Clemens family was in Elmira.
Sam wrote to C.F. Moberly Bell, acknowledging with gratitude his sending Dr. George Ernest Morrison’s (1862 -1920) book, likely: An Australian in China (1895). Morrison was a correspondent for the London Times in Peking [MTP]. Note: see Gribben’s listing on Morrison, p. 487.
September 23 Monday – The Clemens family was in Elmira.
September 24 Tuesday – The Clemens family was in Elmira, likely at Quarry Farm. Sam wrote to
H.H Rogers:
We shall reach town Thursday Evening—Grosvenor hotel.
If you get the umbrella, don’t send it there, let the Guaranty Trust take care of it for a day or two—get a check for it.
September 25 Wednesday – In Elmira, N.Y. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
The trouble with Tom Reed is that he don’t belong to no church & ain’t got no sympathy with suffering. How much would they allow us on an umbrella-display at the Pan-American?
You can have half [MTHHR 473]. Note: a continuation of the “missing umbrella” in-joke.