December 17 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Ralph David Blumenfeld.
December 19 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Debating Club, 8.15. Pipes & tobacco” [NB 44 TS 19]. Fatout lists this appearance and talk by Sam at a Debating Club, N.Y.C. but offers no particulars [MT Speaking 669].
Elisabeth Marbury wrote to Sam:
December 20 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “Must be at home–Clara” [NB 44 TS 19].
In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Elisabeth Marbury’s Dec. 19, his letter not extant but noted on hers:
“Dec. 20/01. / Wrote her to give them 80% & me 20%” [MTP].
Sam inscribed a copy of FE to Robert B. Cone: “To / Mr. Robert B. Cone / with the compliments of / The Author. / Riverdale, Dec. 20, 1901. / S.L. Clemens / [cross-signed:] Mark Twain” [MTP].
December 21 Saturday – Sam’s old friend and enemy, Edward H. House, died in Tokyo, Japan, where he had been living and writing since 1892. Days before his death the Japanese emperor bestowed upon House the Second Order of Merit of the Sacred Treasure. At his memorial service he was called “the most brilliant writer ever connected with journalism in the Far East” [Huffman 18]. Note: see entries on Edward (Ned) House in Volumes I & II.
December 23 Monday – Elisabeth Marbury wrote to Sam that she had his letter and that he was “more than generous to the Mayos. I conveyed to them this proof of your kindness” [MTP].
December 24 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote on a postcard, the verso containg a printed: “A Bright and Happy Christmas,” to niece Ida Langdon.
—‘sh! Ida dear, do not let these sweet maids beguile you of the shivery shuddery secret, known to none but you & me, of the fate of the Tale, the Tear & the Joke That Went Out Seeking the Truth and Met Up With a Bryn Mawr Girl.
Remember the Great Oath of our Order:
“Silence should be seen, not heard.”
December 25 before – The New York Sun, p.8, January 25, 1901 ran a squib about Mark Twain, which appeared on Christmas Day in Vienna’s Neues Wiener Tagblatt:
Prosperity and happiness to my friend in the Emnira. The same to my enemies—on Christmas Day, but not after that date. Mark Twain.
December 26 Thursday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Jules Hart, responding to a letter not extant.
“I realize that you are perfectly right: to publish the letter would do harm, not good. If I could spare the time I would gladly write another, but I am away behind with my work, & must try to keep my mind from getting side-tracked from it” [MTP]. Note: See Dec. 16 and Dec. 17 to Hart.
December 27 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “Leave 7.27 arr. 7.55, Mr. Rockefeller will meet me. Read 2 stories Mrs. Clemens has an engagement” [NB 44 TS 19]. Note: Sam’s reading at Mr. Rockefeller’s monthly Bible class was postponed until Jan. 28. See entry.
In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
December 28 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “Write Wm. E. Dodge—or call at his house if I should go to town” [NB 44 TS 19]. Note: William E. Dodge, Jr. was a Riverdale neighbor.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Sam:
Praise from Sir Hubert, my dear Doctor! (Loomis Nelson tells me you resent, since our Yale experience, the failure to give you your proper title). [Doctor]
December 30 Monday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, wishing they could come to Boston but “must put the temptation by; that seductive holiday is not for slaves.” Sam related the blissful state of his work—he was having “a noble good time,” with all his days his own, taking “no engagement outside the city & not more than 2 per month in it.”
December 31 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “The Players—Midnight Speech. Joe Jefferson to introduce me & flatter the Club, I to respond & refute” [NB 44 TS 19].
In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Chester Sanders Lord for the Lotos Club.
Small & Maynard Scheme – Oesophogus:“It is a joke & you are an ignoramous!” Juggernaut Club – Double Barrelled – Christian Science Humbug – West Indies Cruise
Charleston Fair Resembled a Funeral – Tarrytown Bargain – Defense of Funston Clara’s Escape – Pallbearer for Stockton – Hannibal Revisited – LL.D.
Piloting & Christening – York Harbor & “The Pines” – Huck on Stage – Livy’s Crisis Barred from the Sickroom – Omaha & Denver Ban Huck – Invalid Car to Riverdale Birthday Bash: “I cannot make a good mouth” – Reed’s Last Speech
January – Sam inscribed a copy of Songs of Nature (1901) by John Burroughs (1837-1921): “S.L. Clemens, Riverdale, Jan. 1902” [Gribben 117]. Note: Burroughs was a naturalist and essayist important to the movement of conservation in the U.S. His books were enormously popular in his day. He was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1905.
January 1 Wednesday – Sam went to N.Y.C. and stopped at the Rogers’ home. He “found only one little chappy on deck,” and wrote the following day to wish the family Happy New Year [Jan. 2 to Rogers].
January 2 Thursday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Horace N. Allen, American Minister to Korea:
“It is a beautiful box, & I cannot tell you how much I prize it and thank you for it.
With my kindest regards to you & the boys…” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
Jaccaci, of McClure’s came up yesterday, and said Miss Tarbell would be only too glad to have both sides, and I told him she could have free access to the Standard Oil’s archives.
January 3 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka, asking for a Christmas Harper’s, which he’d lost. He disclosed he’d written two articles for the Weekly but had put both in the fire, then wished Duneka a Happy New Year [MTP].
Sam also wrote to W.R. Dunn Photographers in England, thanking them for another set of photographs taken at Dollis Hill [MTP: Sotheby’s, London catalog: Dec. 17, 1998, Item 128i; MTP].
January 4 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Joe Twichell, that, having declined five public functions pleading he did not go outside of the city, he could not very well accept Twichell’s to come to Hartford “upon any invitation to a function there.” Therefore, he would not let Twichell know if he was coming and if it got into the newspapers that he was, he would stay home.
January 5 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:
Diving for mussels—found a great pearl in one, got it yet—quarrel. Huck: “they eat ‘em guts & all!” Work it in. & in “50 Years Later.” That cheat of a wood-cutter who cut the cat’s tail off.
Chipping old mortar from bricks at so much a brick [NB 45 TS 2]. Note: story ideas for putting Huck & Tom back in Hannibal 50 years later—a story never finished. Hill claims the MS “is one of the very few that, in his entire life, Mark Twain actually may have destroyed” [43].
January 6 Monday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Virginia F. Boyle, “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy” that he was unable to thank her in verse but “in the heartiest of prose” did so [MTP]. Note: see Feb. 14, 1901.
January 7 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Brander Matthews: “There’s not a blamed thing in the way, except I’m mortgaged for a lunch already, on that day” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Francis H. Skrine in London:
“Although the Sir William biography, through the (possibly criminal) neglect of your publishers continues to not arrive, that doesn’t prevent these Clemenses from shouting Happy New Year in this most cordial voice across the Atlantic to those well-beloved Skrines.”
January 8 Wednesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to William Dean Howells that he’d lost the letter from Thomas Bailey Aldrich; he still had it the day before but now he couldn’t find it anywhere. He would keep looking [MTHL 2: 738]. Note: see Jan. 3.
January 9 Thursday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam sent 16 form letters to writers (25 were named in the publisher’s list) to determine if they had been asked and did contribute a story to a proposed book (A House Party) by Small & Maynard, a Boston publisher. He was concerned that his name had been advertised as one of the writers without his permission. The recipients all answered in the affirmative: they had been invited to contribute. Thirteen responses survive;. These writers were: John K.
January 10 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, explaining his grievance against the Boston publisher Small & Maynard, and the letters he’d sent Jan. 9 to the 25 writers to determine which twelve had agreed to be contributors:
The publishers, without my consent, used my name to help advertise a book to which I had neither contributed nor been asked to contribute.
January 11 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote a postcard to Ernest Howard Crosby of the New York Anti-Imperialist League, N.Y.C. “Make it 11 a.m. any day, but give me 24 hours’ notice by post, so that I may make no interfering arrangement” [MTP].