April 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person, answering that he did not know Charles Webb’s date of birth [MTLE 1: 39].
April 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote to the editor of the Hartford Courant about heavy rains and a bad road, which had “disappeared.” The letter ran the next day.
April 6 Thursday – Annie A. Fields (Mrs. James T. Fields; 1834-1915) wrote in her diary of a visit by her and her husband to Hartford and of Sam:
April 7 Friday – Sam’s second letter to the Courant editor:
April 8 Saturday – Sam received a letter from Moncure Conway, which asked if Sam preferred to invest funds and take a percentage of the profits from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or go with a normal royalty payment. Clemens answered with a telegram and followed with a letter the next day [MTLE 1: 40].
April 9 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway answering Conway’s letter. Conway had negotiated with Chatto & Windus, the firm taken over by Andrew Chatto after John Camden Hotten’s death in 1873. W.E. Windus was a poet and a junior partner [Rasmussen 67]. Sam sought Livy’s advice and gave her answer to Conway:
April 11 Tuesday – Frank Bliss wrote to Sam, with statement showing $1,196.96 “paid to your credit”
Dr Clemens / I enclose statement of copyright to 1st Apl—if all correct will hand you ch for same when you come in send it to you if you prefer—
April 12 Wednesday – Sam wrote a postcard from Hartford to Bliss. He’d received Bliss’ statement but not the check. Sam also wanted the price estimates on the “Full set, of full plates, full size” for those cuts that would go “into that English size without cutting. Please hurry it up” [MTLE 1:42].
Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam asking what he should change on an enclosure (not in file) [MTP].
April 14 Friday - O.C. Greene wrote from Duluth, Minn. to relate a story found in the diary of a late friend in 1864 -- an old pepperbox and the head of a buffalo strung dangling from an old tree somewhere 10 miles west of the South Platte. Greene felt this did “justice to the aspersed reputation of Mr. Bemis” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env.
April 15 Saturday – Ainsworth R. Spofford confirmed copyright for Mark Twain’s Sketches New & Old entered July 21, 1875.
Francis Boott wrote from Cambridge, Mass apologizing for not sooner answering Sam’s note of Apr. 3, which reached him through Howells. “I was glad to learn that the little trifle I sent had given pleasure…” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Boott Composer”
April 16 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway. Evidently Bliss had given it to Sam straight about progress on the pictures, for Sam told Conway:
Just as I feared, Tom Sawyer is not yet ready to issue. Would not be ready for 2 weeks or longer, yet. Therefore the spring trade is lost beyond redemption. Consequently I have told Bliss to issue in the autumn & make a Boy’s Holiday Book of it.
April 17 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to John L. RoBards, now an attorney in Hannibal, responding to an old offer to move the coffins of his brother Henry and his father, John Marshall Clemens, from the Old Baptist Cemetery, a mile and a half from Hannibal, to the newer Mount Olivet Cemetery, southwest of town, which RoBards had founded.
April 18 Tuesday – The Hartford Courant announced:
Amateur Theatricals.
April 19 Wednesday – Lemuel H. Wilson wrote to Sam, thanking him again for the picture rec’d a year before and enclosing sample “articles” which he’d just acquired the patent on [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the letter, “Lot of toilet articles named for me!”
April 22 Saturday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Howells.
“You’ll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first time on the stage [in a play] next Wednesday. You & Mrs. H. come down & you shall skip in free” [MTLE 1: 46]. Note: the play, The Loan of a Lover, on Wednesday, 26 April, and Thursday, 27 April.
From Lilly Warner’s diary:
April 24 Monday – Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens, sending a check for three months.
“Livy is only about customarily well—that is to say, in rather indifferent strength. As I don’t enjoy letter writing there being such an awful lot of it to do, I will try to make up with a photograph” [MTPO].
Sam also wrote to an unidentified person who had sent him and Livy wedding invitations.
April 25 Tuesday – From the Hartford Courant, page two:
Mark Twain’s new book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” is ready to issue, but the publication has been put off for the present in order that copyright may be secured in England by simultaneous publication there and here. The English edition has suffered unavoidable delay. [Note: On Apr. 27 the Boston Globe ran the identical article, without credit to the Courant (“Table Gossip,” p3)].
April 26 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George Bentley, London publisher of the Temple Bar, who had asked for sketches when Sam met him with Joaquin Miller. Sam sent a sketch, “Carnival of Crime” that missed the deadline for the May issue of the Atlantic [MTLE 1: 48].
April 27 Thursday – The play of Apr. 26 was repeated. James T. Fields and wife came from Boston to see Sam play the slow Dutchman, Peter Spuyk in Loan of a Lover [Clemens to Howells, Apr. 26]. The Fieldses went straight from the train station to the theater. From Annie A. Fields’ diary:
April 28 Friday – The Fieldses, guests at the Clemens’ home, spent most of the day with Sam and Livy. Susy was ill again, with a touch of diphtheria. From Annie Fields’ diary:
Their two beautiful baby girls came to pass an hour with us after breakfast—exquisite, affectionate children, the very fountain of joy to their interesting parents.
April 29 Saturday – The Fieldses ended their visit with the Clemens family. Sam wrote in the morning from Hartford to Isaac White, a Hartford photographer and sculptor, about ordering photographs that White had taken of the Clemens family (two survive). Sam was waiting for “relatives” to leave Tuesday [MTLE 1: 53; MTPO & notes].
May – “Mark Twain and the Cats” ran in the May issue of the women’s magazine, The Globe. A New Musical Journal, Vol. V. No. 5, New York: Charles A. Atkinson & Co. p. 101-24. The article included an engraving of Sam and one of three cats [eBay June 6, 2009, # 200347763614].
May 1 Monday – The Hartford Courant ran this notice on page two:
Mr. Isaac White made some fine portraits of Mark Twain last week, cabinet size, which he has for sale at his place of business, 15 Pratt street. Note: “Cabinet”—“a popular sized professional portrait, with mount measuring 6⅝ in. by 4¼ in. Copies of two of White’s portraits of Clemens survive, with the sealskin coat he purchased in Buffalo in Sept. 1871.
May 2 Tuesday – Augustin Daly wrote from NYC: “Why don’t you come down here & play ‘Peter Spyk’ some Saturday night for one of my ‘Benefit’ occasions. / Would you— Will you—?—” [MTPO].
Moncure Conway wrote a postcard from Boston to Clemens about the release of TS.
May 4 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam replied to the May 2 from Augustin Daly, playwright and theatre promoter. Daly had invited Sam to play Peter Spyk in a New York production. Sam answered that he was modest enough to serve a decent apprenticeship before trying Broadway.