April 3, 1905 Monday

April 3 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mother and I went to a delicious little restaurant, Italian—around in 10th Street. There we met Lilian Griffin. We had a friendly chat and enjoyed the Chianti and the macaroni. The Griffins’s have a studio here on 25th St. and Walter is painting portraits. Lilian is quite stout and looks matronly.

The Aphrodite is going to be placed on exhibition again. I must manage a view of it, and the exhibition of pictures too, up on 57th Street [MTP TS 49-50]. Note: see also Sam’s of Feb. 26.

April 2, 1905 Sunday

April 2 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: This morning when I was searching through the multitudious letters in the study, for the one that gives me the true history of “The Postman Who Stole from the Mails”, and so furnish the material for the chapter in the Admiral’s Story, the gong gonged and I went out in the hall to find Mr. Poultney Bigelow saying “Mr. Clemens is clamoring for Miss Lyon.” I went in to answer the simple question “Had Count Lewenhaupt [the osteopath] a settled telephone address? Mr.

April 1, 1905 Saturday

April 1 Saturday – Bambino, the cat which owned Mark Twain (no one owns a cat) was lost but later in the day came back. Sam had written an ad offering a reward, but canceled before it went into the paper. Still, the NY Herald ran this article on p.9 the following day, Apr. 2:

MARK TWAIN’S CAT CAME BACK.

——

Black Pet Mourned by the Humorist Again Brightens his Home.

April 1905

April – Review of Reviews (London) published an anonymous article, “If Emperors Were All Stripped Naked” p. 375. Tenney: “Summary of ‘The Czar’s Soliloquy,’ which appeared in North American Review in March [40]. Connecticut Magazine published “Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1872” [Tenney 40]. Note: The actual title was “Mark Twain—His Autobiography” which ran in the magazine for April-May-June, 1905. It is a reprinting of “Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography” (1871), later in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906).

March 31, 1905 Friday

March 31 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tomorrow Mother is coming up.

The pot hooks do not stay in my brain for the brain is deranged.

“Passed Michael Kelly with a load of shlabs.” That’s what the Irishman passed after he took a pill. It must be so for Katie said it [MTP: TS 49].

Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: Lewenhaupt [likely designating an osteopathic treatment for Clemens]

Mr. Clemens received a reply to his letter to Dr. Hale, & he sent the reply with a letter note to Col. Harvey to interest him as a publisher—perhaps—

March 30, 1905 Thursday

March 30 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Daniel Carter Beard.

Dear Dan Beard: / You did not stay too long. That is settled.

2. I don’t think the [War] prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth. (I am offering a very small laugh at the Rockefeller-American-Board comedy. Now, slight as it is, I would not blame Harvey if he should say it isn’t good policy to print it; for he is responsible to his Co & should not permit laughs which could injure its business.)

March 29, 1905 Wednesday

March 29 Wednesday – Sam read his essay “William Dean Howells” to the household. In April he would send this piece and the final MS of Christian Science to Frederick A.Duneka at Harper’s [Hill 101].

Sam wrote to William H. Pearson for the N.Y. Produce Exchange, Safe Deposit and Storage Co. His letter is not extant but is referred to in Pearson’s reply of the following day, Mar. 30. See entry.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Tonight Mr. Clemens read us an appreciation that he has written of Mr. Howells. It is beautiful, the strength of his pen is marvelous” [MTP: TS 47].

March 27, 1905 Monday

March 27 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

My head is full of obstetrical hooks and slants and jabs for today I began to study shorthand. I don’t see how anyone can ever put soul into that sort of writing. It would seem wrong to put down Mr. Clemens’s thoughts like that—but it’s for Mr. Clemens’s thoughts that I’m trying to learn it. It is very lonely without Saint Mother, but who am I that I should be lonely in the presence of a loveliness like Mr. Clemens’s [MTP: TS 47].

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