And so, the morning of July 15, 1895, Twain slouched into Buffalo for a two-hour layover. This was the last time he ever visited Buffalo, where he once lived as a newlywed, a first-time father and a newspaper owner and managing editor. His old Buffalo friend Charles M. Underhill collected Twain, his wife, Olivia, and daughter Clara by carriage at the Exchange Street station.
Sam and Cable read at the Congregational Church, Washington, D.C.
Note: Fatout gives figures from Pond’s cashbook, listing $789 as the take from this reading [Circuit 218]. Thus ended the “Twins of Genius” tour: total gross receipts, $46,201, from which Cable’s salary and expenses took more than $20,000. Cable earned $6,750, Sam approximately $15,000, and Pond’s commissions “a modest $2500 to $3000” [228].
See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.
Sam wrote from Philadelphia to William Dean Howells:To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon & night in Washington, & my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable’s gifts of mind are greater & highter than I had suspected. But— That “But” is pointing toward his religion. You will never know, never divine, guess, imagine, how loath-some a thing the Christian religion can be made until you come to know & study Cable daily & hourly.
Sam saw Nat Goodwin, actor and vaudevillian, on the train going to Philadelphia. Goodwin told Sam he was “very anxious to play” the Sellers as Scientist [Feb. 27 to Howells]. In the evening Sam and Cable gave a reading to an audience of about 3,000 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Penn. Clemens included: “A Dazzling Achievement,” “Tragic Tale of the Fishwife,” “Incorporated Company of Mean Men,” and “The Bluejay’s Mistake” [MTPO].
Fatout, citing Pond’s finance records says the $918 take reflected a crowd of one thousand [Circuit 218].
Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Opera House in New Haven, Conn. [New Haven Evening Register for Feb. 18, 21 and 23].
Wednesday, February 25, 1885:
Upon arriving in New York, Sam and Cable breakfasted with Ozias Pond and his wife, Nella. He inscribed a copy of the newly published Huck Finn for Ozias, whose health had improved [Cardwell 64]. Sam then immediately made his way to the home of General Grant, hopeful that Grant’s memoirs would be given to Webster & Co. [Perry 137]. Grant confirmed that he, his son, and George W. Childs had been negotiating with Webster, since Sam’s last call (see Nov. 20, 1884 entry). “I mean you shall have the book—I have made up my mind about that,” Grant said [138].
En route from Montreal to New York City Sam wrote to Livy. He’d sent a toboggan for the children but cautioned, “They better not try to use it till I come.” He wrote just as the train left the Lake Champlain area.
They were welcomed upon their arrival in Montreal on February 18 with a reception hosted by the Athenaeum Club at the Windsor Hotel that lasted until 6:00 p.m. and, Cable reported, “was the most elaborate affair I have ever had part it. I don't think I could have shaken less than two hundred and fifty hands.” He and Sam read that evening and the next before capacity audiences at the Queen’s Hall, and the Gazette reviewed their performance the first night, noting that “only one Mark Twain in the world...
We had an immense snowstorm yesterday—snow the entire day & all night. We were 111⁄2 hours making a 7-hour trip.
To-day we are likely to be all day going 3 hours. We’ve got 3 cars & 3 engines. Alongside us, out here in the snowy plains is a Pacific RR train standing still, whose engines cannot budge it a peg.
“He [Twain] informed Livy on the seventeenth that his companion was the 'pitifulest human louse' he had ever known” (pg 62 Cardwell)
After another Sunday layover, they “came within an ace of missing’ their engagement in Brockville, Canada, spending “11½ hours making a 7-hour trip" there for an appearance Monday evening. [From page 448 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]