April 25 Friday – Sam wrote from the Hotel Normandy in Paris to Andrew Chatto.

“While we wait for Mr. Girdlestone’s book, can’t you send me immediately, Mr Whymper’s book? It contains his ascent of the Matterhorn (about 1865,) when young Lord Douglas & a guide or two lost their lives. I don’t know who published it” [MTLE 4: 52]. Note: Arthur Gilbert Girdlestone: The High Alps Without Guides, etc. (1870); see Gribben 262.

Sam liberally borrowed illustrations and paraphrased from Edward Whymper’s book, Scrambles Amongst the Alps, for chapter 41 of A Tramp Abroad. (For an interesting analysis of the two books, see Beverly David’s “Tragedy and Travesty, etc.” Mark Twain Journal, Vol 27.1, Spring 1989.)

Spring – Though Sam hated the dismal weather, he enjoyed congenial company in Paris. Besides Frank Millet and his new bride Lil, Thomas Bailey Aldrich was in the city, and dinner parties included Hjalmar Boyesen and wife, and the artists Sam had met in Italy, Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlaine. Others came to call: Turgenieff (Turgenev), Baron Tauchnitz (who had published Innocents and paid royalties though not required to by law), Richard Whiteing and other young American artists as well [MTB 643]. Other visitors from home also stopped by [MTNJ 2: 487n188].

The American consul to Paris at this time was Lucius Fairchild (1831-1896), a Civil War veteran who lost an arm at Gettysburg, and a former governor of Wisconsin (1866-1872). Afterward, he was the consult at Liverpool for six years, then at Paris for a two-year stint. Sam met Fairchild at this time. The two would maintain a long friendship. Fairchild left diary entries that included times with Sam [Rees 8].

One evening Sam gave a talk, “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism” (masturbation) at the Stomach Club in Paris. The master illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) was at this meeting, as was Charles Edward Dubois, American painter [MTNJ 2: 350n107]. The talk was not published in Sam’s lifetime. Fatout describes the Club as “an unpublicized group that relished the belly laughs of bawdy humor…. [that a few of Sam’s] notebook entries imply that he was more than once a guest at these sub rosa sessions, one item observing that the funniest things are the forbidden ones” [MT Speaking 125].