February 7 Friday – The Clemens party changed trains at Moghalserais at 2 a.m. and arrived in Calcutta at 7 a.m. [NB 36 TS 39]. They took rooms at the Hotel Continental [Parsons “MT India” 85]. FE:
Like Bombay, it [Calcutta] has a population of nearly a million natives and a small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British achievement — military, political, commercial; rich in the results of miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud-kissing monument to one Ochterlony.
It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingham is the only large monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep Ochterlony in mind [ch LIV 517].
Parsons writes that although Sam “kept to his room…for about thirty hours,” in the afternoon he received journalists from The Friend of India & Statesman and The Englishman [“MT India” 85]. The interview first appeared in The Englishman and in the Statesman on Feb. 8. Scharnhorst lists this plus an interview with the Calcutta Asian for this date [281].
Sam wrote to daughter Susy, in care of Susan Crane, Elmira:
Mamma is busy with my pen, declining invitations. And all because we haven’t you or Miss Foote or Miss Davis here to argue some of our stupid foolishness out of us and replace them with healthy thoughts — and by consequence physical soundness. I caught cold last night, coming from Benares, and am shut up in the hotel starving it out; and so, instead of river parties and dinners and things, all three of us must decline and stay at home. It is too bad — yes, and too ridiculous. I am perfectly certain that the exasperating colds and the carbuncles came from a diseased mind, and that your mental science could drive them away, if we only had one of you three here to properly apply it. I have no language to say how glad and grateful I am that you are a convert to that rational and noble philosophy. Stick to it; don’t let anybody talk you out of it. Of all earthly fortune it is the best, and most enriches the possessor. I always believed, in Paris, that if you could only get back to America and examine that system with your clear intellect you would see its truth and be saved…I wish I hadn’t declined the grand river-party down the Hoogly. I know I shall be well by noon to-morrow [LLMT 316]. Note: Lilly Foote was the Clemens’ former governess. Willis writes of Susy: “she practiced her mental science treatments on John Lewis’s daughter, also named Susy, and her cousin Julia Langdon” [231].
Note: Rodney has Sam giving “four engagements in rapid succession” in Calcutta, one at Dhurrumtolah House and three at the Theatre Royal, though he gives no date for the former, [183] which is not given by Ahluwalia.