November 16 Thursday – Moncure Conway wrote from England, responding to Sam’s Nov. 2 alarm of the Belford piracy of Tom Sawyer. Conway wrote:
“I immediately held a council of war with Chatto, and…I send you the result of our cogitations….We considered it best to telegraph Belford yesterday with these words:—‘Tom Sawyer is English copyright. Chatto’” [MTPO Notes with Nov. 2, 1876 to Conway].
November 18 Saturday – Bill paid to A.K. Talcott for a Nov. 14 purchase, $4.80 [MTP].
November 21 Tuesday – Sam gave a reading at the Music Hall in Boston, similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn [Schmidt: See Boston Daily Globe, “The Mark Twain Combination,” November 20, 1876, p.5; Boston Daily Globe, “On the Platform,” November 22, 1876, p.8].
While in Boston, Sam stayed with Howells, who recalled the visits in My Mark Twain:
November 22 Wednesday – Sam gave a reading at the Academy of Music in Chelsea, Mass., similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn [Schmidt]. Note: MTHL 1: 166n5 lists this lecture as Nov. 23. Also notes with Oct. 19 to Tip Saunders MTPO.
November 24 Friday – Sam gave a reading in Providence, R. I., and then returned home to Hartford. The reading was similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn. Sam and Livy entertained Charles and Susan Warner for dinner. Joe and Harmony Twichell dropped by [Schmidt; MTLE 1: 144].
November 25 Saturday – In the evening Sam and Livy dined with Charles and Susan Warner. The Twichells “dropped in” as well. Sam read Winny Howells’ letter and poem, “and they were received with great & honest applause” [Nov. 26 to Howells].
November 26 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells while the rest of the family went to church, even Fanny Hesse, his personal secretary (Charles Dudley Warner’s sister-in-law). The letter touches a half-dozen topics, from Dean Sage trying to persuade Twichell to travel in Europe with him, to a sideboard Livy wanted, to Sam’s impulse shopping at D.P.
November 27 Monday – Livy’s 31st birthday. Sam gave her a copy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1876): “To Livy L. Clemens / Nov. 27, 1876. / From S. L. Clemens” [Gribben 152].
November 28 Tuesday – In London, Moncure Conway wrote to Sam:
“Chatto writes in some anxiety about your new book on the North Pole. I told him you would naturally let him have it. He has done admirably by Tom Sawyer; we shall soon send you the money for 2000…” [MTPO Notes with Dec. 13 to Conway]. Note: the “North Pole” book was a rumor published on Nov. 25 in the London Athenæum .
November 29 Wednesday – Sam, upset that he had not received a response from De Quille, wrote from Hartford:
November 30 Thursday – Sam’s 41st birthday was also Thanksgiving Day. From Twichell’s journal:
“Called on M.T.’s and found Bret Harte there again (He and M. are writing a play together) and had some talk with him” [Yale 126].
December – Sam’s story, “The Canvasser’s Tale,” was published in the December issue of Atlantic Monthly. Wilson calls the story “an extravagant burlesque of human eccentricities that depends upon hyperbole for its comic effect” [Wilson 21; Wells 22].
December 1 Friday – Isabella Beecher Hooker took a friend to see the Clemens’ home. Andrews observes that “the whole neighborhood felt free to show it to those who had not seen it” [86]. Isabella also ran into Bret Harte there, and “felt almost a dislike of him….” She had “an uncomfortable interview” during her visit with Sam that Andrews says “grew in importance as she thought about it, despite her realization that she might be oversensitively magnifying its significance.” From Isabella’s diary:
December 2 Saturday – In the evening Sam dined with “those leddy-hets till 12, then went to bed” [MTLE 1: 149]. Note: The “leddy-hets” (Clara Clemens’ pronunciation of “leatherheads”) are unidentified.
NYC temperatures ranged from 24-15 degrees F. with no precipitation [NOAA.gov].
December 3 Sunday – Sam wrote from the St. James Hotel in New York to Livy. James R. Osgood visited Sam at his hotel around noon. Mrs. T. B. Aldrich had also called and he would soon return her call. He wrote that he’d “used no whisky or other liquor to sleep on [but] was utterly tired out.” NYC temperatures ranged from 35-24 degrees F. with no precipitation [NOAA.gov].
December 4 Monday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter from Belford Brothers to Howells Nov. 29. The Belfords wanted the right to publish Sam’s future contributions to the Atlantic. “We would be willing to pay liberally for the right to publish them in the magazine, although the law allows us to pirate them.” “What answer?” Howells asked [MTHL 1: 166]. (See Dec. 5 for Sam’s answer.)
December 5 Tuesday – Sam was back in Hartford. He dictated a letter through Fanny C.
December 6 Wednesday – Christian Bernard Tauchnitz wrote from Leipzig, Germany to Sam.
My dear Sir, / In consequence of your kind letter of Sept 14 I have added your “Tom Sawyer” to my series. It filled one of my little volumes. I have printed it from the London edition, in adding the dedication you wished.
December 8 Friday – The release date for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Camfield, bibliog.]. Hirst gives this as the date “the earliest copies of the first edition came from the bindery” [“A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996]. Only 23,638 copies were sold the first year, and less than 29,000 by the end of 1879, providing only half the income of The Gilded Age [Emerson 95].
December 9 Saturday – Moncure Conway wrote to Sam offering followup in the Belford piracy matter for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Belford was doubtful Sam’s copyright was valid in Canada, but Chatto would continue the fight. Legal remedies open to Sam and Chatto would only led to a Pyrrhic victory, since penalties for violation of the 1875 Canadian copyright act were small, and the damage done to U.S.
December 11 Monday – Charles Perkins, Sam’s attorney, had advised that John T. Raymond was still waiting for a contract for the next season. Sam asked if Perkins would draw it and let him see it first; also that he had another contract to be drawn and a deed for Perkins to squint at [MTLE 1: 153].
December 12 Tuesday – William Borden, president of the New England Society in the City of New York, wrote to Sam, confirming his agreement to speak at their annual dinner on Dec. 22, and waiving their normal ten-minute rule: “…for I am quite sure that we cant get too much of the author of Innocents Abroad” [MTPO Notes with Dec. 20 to Perkins].
December 13 Wednesday – Sam dictated a letter in Hartford through Fanny Hesse to Moncure Conway. Sam had discovered that English copyright in Canada needed to be recorded in Canada within 60 days after publication in England. So, his English copyright was worthless in Canada.
December 14 Thursday – Sam acted as auctioneer at the Union’s Fair in Hartford.
“The Sale of the Jabberwocks”
December 15 Friday – Moncure Conway wrote to Sam. In part: