May 8 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a cable to C.F. Moberly Bell, editor of the London Times: “I PERCEIVE YOUR HAND IN IT YOU HAVE MY BEST THANKS SAIL IN MINNEAPOLIS JUNE 8 DUE IN SOUTHAMPTON DAYS LATER. / CLEMENS” [MTP].
May 7 Tuesday – Sam wrote daughter Jean on May 14 after his return from Annapolis that he spent “the 7 to meet engagements.” He did not specify; no more is known.
Clemens gave Isabel Lyon power of attorney to sign checks for him [Hill 222]. The Lyon- Ashcroft MS contains the full text of this document, as follows:
May 6 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) who had sent a note [not extant] with Harry Rogers.
To the Shah-in-Shah of Nieces— / Greeting & salutation:
May 5 Sunday – The NY Times included a telegram supposedly sent on May 4 by Sam to Milton Goodkind in a spoof article about Sam being lost at sea:
MARK TWAIN INVESTIGATING,
———
And If the Report That He’s Lost at Sea is So, He’ll Let the Public Know.
May 4 Saturday – Sam moved into the William Voss house in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. [Hill 166]; his lease had begun on May 1. He gave a talk or a reading at a tea for the Tuxedo Club in his honor. He had forecasted the event in his Apr. 22 to Jean. Fatout lists the talk but gives no particulars [MT Speaking 676]. Note: see May 5 NYT article. Lyon’s entry below reveals the tea was held at Mrs. Harry Rogers’ house in Tuxedo.
May 3 Friday – In London Whitelaw Reid sent a momentous cable to Sam in care of Harper & Brothers, N.Y. It was received in New York at 2:40 p.m.
May 2 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Edith Elsie Baker about the Actors’ Fund Fair flap:
I am back from the South, & find your letter which has given me deep & unqualified pleasure.
May 1 Wednesday – At 4 a.m. the Kanawha got underway back to New York through the clearing fog [Baltimore Sun May 10, “Mark Twain in Clover” p.14]. Note: because the yacht could not be seen leaving from shore, it was thought for a day or more that it was lost at sea.
May – Edward A. Kimball’s article, “Mark Twain, Mrs. Eddy, and Christian Science,” ran in Cosmopolitan, p. 35-41. Tenney: “A reply to MT’s Christian Science by ‘a prominent Christian Science author’” [44].
April 30 Tuesday – On the yacht Kanawha in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka asking him to send a green cloth set of his books to H.H. Rogers to the yacht at the N.Y.C. pier, foot of E. 23 [MTP]. Note: the NY Times article of May 4, p.1, included a bit about this day: