October 25 Friday – The annual Cotillion Ball of the Tuxedo Club was held and the New York Times reported the event, Oct. 26, p.11. If Sam attended, as his letter of Oct. 23 to “Miss Anonyma” shows, he would have had to have returned from 21 Fifth Ave. for the event, since he moved back on Oct. 24. No mention of him was made in the Times article, though H.H. Rogers, Jr. (Harry) and wife Mary were listed, so he likely canceled plans to attend, returning to his N.Y.C. house. Possibly the events at the Knickerbocker Trust Co. led to the changed plans.
October 24 Thursday – Sam returned to 21 Fifth Ave. for the winter. Clara Clemens had been “domiciled in the house several days”; Isabel Lyon and servants would follow on Oct. 26 [Oct. 28 to Nunnally].
October 23 Wednesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to “Miss Anonyma.”
Dear Miss Anonyma: / This is to express my joy in the fact that you are able to go fishing, & to thank you very heartily for letting me share in the result. It is my purpose to call & say these things orally this afternoon, & so I am merely uttering them with the pen as a precaution, since it often happens—as you will have noticed—that the things we propose to do get interfered with & do not occur.
October 22 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Oh, it’s too dreadful. Every penny the King has, fifty one thousand dollars, is in the Knickerbocker Trust Co. and it has suspended payment. It has gone crashing into a terrible state. I was in town and read of the panic in the Times, and Ashcroft and I went to the bank, at 30th st and Fifth Avenue to see crowds of people there, with bank books in their quivering hands. And then I came back to Tuxedo to find the King in bed and so cheerful and beautiful and brave, and trying not to show his anxiety.
October 21 Monday – A run on the Knickerbocker Trust Co. bank in N.Y.C. caused panic elsewhere, and the bank was forced to close its doors the next day. Sam had deposits of about $51,000 at the bank. J.P. Morgan would gain the help of fellow bankers, including John D. Rockefeller, to raise funds and import $100,000,000 in gold from Europe to restore confidence. See Oct. 22. H.H. Rogers and Katharine Harrison had originally recommended the Knickerbocker Trust Co. to Sam. A business slowdown from the resulting spreading panic lasted for months.
October 20 Sunday – Alice Minnie Herts wrote for the Children’s Theatre to Miss Lyon, correcting a prior invitation [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Oct. 23”
October 19 Saturday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick in Plainfield, N.J.
October 18 Friday – Joseph B. Gilder for Putnam’s Monthly wrote to again request Sam allow their sketch artist to draw Sam for the magazine; they’d done Choate and Howells; the artist didn’t require Clemens to sit but could walk around the room [MTP].
October 17 Thursday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote a short note of recommendation for Mrs. Frances A. Ramsay as a stenographer “To whom it may concern”: I take the pleasure in saying that as a stenographer I found Mrs Ramsay competent & in all ways satisfactory” [MTP].
October 16 Wednesday – The New York Times, Oct. 17, p.18, ran an article about humor in Ashcroft v. Hammond libel case, and a deposition of Sam’s read in court this day:
SWORN JEST BY MARK TWAIN.
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Humorist Says He First Met John Hays Hammond in Jail—Ashcroft’s Suit.
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