December 31 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote on a card picturing a woman in a hat to Maud W. Littleton: “Happy New year / to / Mrs Littleton / from / SL. Clemens” [MTP]. Note: Martin W. and Maud W. Littleton, across-the-street neighbors.
December 30 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Carlotta Welles.
Your letter has just arrived, & is a very pleasant & very welcome surprise; I thought you had forgotten me long ago. The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.
December 29 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally; his letter informs of a short trip he took the day before, and of his dinner plans for this evening.
Ah, you dear Francesca, you & your mother gave me a pleasant surprise in that beautiful & valuable addition to my winter comforts, & I thank you cordially ; & I wish also to thank you, dear, for the fine album of Rembrandts. I am the better, bodily & spiritually, for these welcome remembrances.
December 28 Saturday – In his Dec. 29 to Nunnally, Sam wrote: “Yesterday I went with 70 other slaves of Harper & Brothers to Lakewood to lunch Mr. Howells out of the country & give him God-speed. The distance was greater than I was expecting it would be.” On Dec. 21 he had written to daughter Jean: “The Howellses sail for Europe Jan. 4; on the 2d all the Harper staff, to the number of 60, go down to Lakeville by special train & give him a send-off. Miss Lyon & Mr.
December 27 Friday – Sam and Dorothy Quick had some unspecified engagement for today; see telegram Dec. 25 to Quick.
The New York Times ran “Want Tchaykovsky Free” on p. 8, and included Samuel L. Clemens in a list of about 500 names signed to a petition plea to liberate Nicholas Tchaykovsky (Nikolai V. Chaikovsky), recently arrested for complicity in the Russian revolutionary movement.
December 26 Thursday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Miss Lyon replying to hers of Dec. 23 and would be “very glad to communicate with Miss Katharine I. Harrison in regard to the 24the and 25th Volumes of Mr. Clemens’ Works” [MTP].
Ethel Newcomb wrote to Sam, hoping she might see him before going back to Europe, as she’d missed him at Brown’s Hotel in London when he was there. Regards to the girls [MTP].
December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a telegram to Dorothy Quick, now at 63 8th Ave. “Merry Christmas and do not forget Friday” [MTP]. Note: the Friday engagement is not specified.
Sam also inscribed the verso of a photo of himself lying in bed to an unidentified person:
“Now that the horse-shoe is mounted as a pin, it has become useful as well as beautiful. Truly Yours, Mark Twain, Xmas, 1907” [MTP: City Book Auction catalogs, No. 355, 16 Nov. 1946, Item 103].
December, last week – The estimated time of Elinor Glyn’s follow-up 90-minute visit with Clemens at his NY home. This estimate is based on Clemens’ Jan. 13 A.D. See Jan. 13 entry, which also includes Glyn’s description of the meeting, and Anthony Glyn’s Elinor Glyn: a Biography, p. 143-4 which states, “She stayed for an hour and a half and for most of the time they discussed Three Weeks, which he greatly admired, both in matter and in style.” Glyn here neglects Sam’s opinion that publishing such a book was a mistake—a fact that got duly noted in the Sept.
December 24 Tuesday – William Henry Bishop, American Consul in Palermo, Italy wrote a four-page typed letter to “My dear Mr. Autobiographer”:
It is known that when one gets in front of most any kind of an Auto he is apt to be hurt, so I am not much surprised, after the impact of your current Autobiography (page 487 of the December number of the North American Review), to find myself a corpse.
December 23 Monday – Elmer Z. Burns wrote to Sam, enclosing a photograph of Twain’s cabin at Aurora. “Some of your admirers have placed decorations on this cabin in your honor, but I am sure, if all who would like to do so, could, the cabin would be buried beneath the load” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote for Sam on the letter, “The hillside & the sagebrush look just as they did before, but I think the house looks better than it did formerly”