March 18 Wednesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine, who had written asking if Sam wanted to contribute to the upcoming “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” series. Sam wanted to be in series, which he wrote was “the greatest thing of these modern times & nobody who is anybody can well afford to be unrepresented in it,” but he wouldn’t know till August after he’d been at Quarry Farm a month and tried a book which he’d “begun in my mind…” [MTP]. Note: According to Perry, Johnson was the first to approach Grant about his memoirs [in photo insert after p.218].
Sam also wrote to Charles Webster, about the banning of Huck Finn by the Concord, Mass. Public Library:
Dear Charley— / The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass., have given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the country. They have expelled Huck from their library as “trash & suitable only for the slums.[”] That will sell 25,000 copies for us, sure [MTP].
The book was controversial upon release, as it remains. Sam well understood this meant sales.
Howells wrote accepting Tuesday, Mar. 24 as a date for Sam and Livy to visit Boston:
We have just got your dispatch naming Tuesday for Mrs. Howells’s tea-fight, and so that is all right. Now I want you personally to give me Wednesday night for dinner at the Tavern Club, of which I’m President. It is mostly young fellows of 30 or 35, but some good old heads, and we always have a good time. We dine, and then we go up stairs into a painter’s studio, where we have singing, piano-playing, fiddling and other jinks [MTHL 2: 522-3].
Howells added that he’d never heard of D.W. Howland (see Mar. 13 entry). In 1884, Howells was chosen the first president of the Tavern Club, a group of artists, musicians, writers and professional men who met at the Carrolton Hotel in Boston [MTHL 2: 523n1].
The Boston Evening Transcript (and likely other newspapers) ran adds for Babcock fire extinguishers, which included an extract from a letter from Mark Twain to an unidentified person (probably a vendor) for this date. “We have had a fire in the billiard-room this morning. The Babcock Extinguisher saved the house from destruction—a service which it has rendered us four times since we lived in Hartford. Be sure and send me a box of ammunition for the extinguisher right away.” See ad insert.
Brander Matthews wrote: “Here is a page of the Saturday Review just rec’d. I don’t know who wrote the article. But I suspect that it is the work of our Kinsman, Mr. Andrew Lang. I think he ought to be asked over to lecture at Concord” [MTP].
Rodney K. Shaw wrote from Marietta, Ohio enclosing a tribute to Gen. Grant [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “answer dam fool”
Charles Webster wrote that 42,000 HF’s had been sold to date, in the first month [MTP].