January 5 Saturday – Bermuda: the Clemens party of Sam, Joe Twichell and Isabel Lyon chartered a boat, the Nautilus, and spend two and a half hours sailing in and out of the bays and inlets. Lyon details:
Isabel Lyon’s journal: It has been a wonderful day, for this morning the King decided to go a- sailing. He sent me down to charter a boat & I found a cedar boat called The Nautilus with a young black man at her helm. We started at 10 o’clock, sailed for 2½ hours through the bays & inlets of this most wonderful water, enraptured by the beauty & the peace & the softness of the atmosphere. The King smoked & smoked & talked about Marconi & Tesla & Joe Jefferson & of how 40 years ago out in Nevada when he had prospected for gold & didn’t get it after all their hard work, it was because they had turned in the wrong direction—for years later gold enough was found close to their place—gold enough to throw away. It was a pity to come home, but we had to. After luncheon the King had an interviewer come in from the Bermuda Colonist & I went down to the town with Mr. Twichell. When I came back I found Mr. Clemens on the porch & we jumped into the same cab. We drove to the Bermuda Yacht Club where Mr. Clemens left his card. I went shopping for souvenirs for C.C. & Jean & then the King & I had a charming drive up past the Government House road & so on home. He is so gentle & gay when Mr. Twichell doesn’t make him too nervous. The roads are so hard & white & clean, the houses are so neat & nestling & now we’re sorry it isn’t going to be possible to spend the summer down here.
The King fell over his ship trunk in the dark as we were going down to dinner & skinned his shin. I had some surgeons’ plaster with me & later I fixed it up for him [MTP TS 4-5]. Note: the interview with the Bermuda Colonist is not in Scharnhorst’s Complete Interviews.
Fred Hughes wrote from London, England to Sam. “Having met with frequent allusions to the authorship of ‘Mark Twain’ in translations of your works into French, by my late cousin William Little Hughes of Paris, I am interested to know whether you were personally acquainted with him, or possess any little momentoes” [MTP]. Note: On or after this date Sam replied on Hughes’ letter: “Had no acquaintance with him[.] the business has always been attended to by my London publisher”