May 23 Saturday – In Johannesburg, Adele Chapin arrived to help Sam pack, and with her husband Robert Chapin took him to the train station. The trio left with Carlyle G. Smythe at 10:46 a.m. and traveled the 46 miles to Pretoria, Transvaal, S. Africa, arriving in the early afternoon. In his May 24 letter to Joe Twichell he wrote:
May 22 Friday – Close to midnight in Johannesburg, S. Africa, Sam wrote to daughter Clara:
Dear Ash-Cat:
I got your rattling good letter yesterday, you must relieve Mamma often of the task of writing me.
May 21 Thursday – In Johannesburg, S. Africa Sam finished a letter to Livy he began May 20.
Livy darling, your dear letters are arriving now & glad am I to get them. It is noon, & I am not yet dressed or shaved. I got to bed (from a lovely supper given to Smythe & me by the theatre manager at one oclock this morning & slept like a log until eleven. Am refreshed. I was dreading lecture No.3. But it came out just as handsomely as the others [MTP].
May 20 Wednesday – In Johannesburg, S. Africa Sam began a letter to Livy he added to on May 21.
Livy darling I love you, & that is about all I can find time to say this morning. I am driven — driven — driven — & without you to save me from blunders I make them all the time. I think I have engaged myself to lunch with 2 different crowds at 1 o’clock today. This would not have happened if you had been there….A visitor is announced [MTP].
May 19 Tuesday – In Johannesburg, S. Africa, Sam wrote at 12:30 p.m. to Livy:
Livy dear, I have just finished bathing & shaving — I slept straight through ten hours — for the fatigue of that sleepless night in the train had arrived at last, though there had been no suggestion of it before [MTP].
Sam wrote a second letter to Livy later in the afternoon, as he waited for Mrs. Adele Chapin’s carriage to drive him out.
May 18 Monday – In Johannesburg, a journalist from the Johannesburg Star interviewed Sam in bed for an hour at the Grand National Hotel. The interview was taken in the forenoon; it ran this same day [Scharnhorst 300]. A. Bonamici of Bonamici & Co. was Sam’s manager in Johannesburg gave Sam a small, engraved gold brick. At 3:30 in the afternoon Sam took a drive with Mrs.
May 17 Sunday – Sam and Smythe arrived in Johannesburg at Park Station at 8:50 p.m. and were greeted by a “large number of admirers and curious spectators.” They took rooms at the Grand National Hotel at Rissik and Pritchard Streets. Journalists from the Johannesburg Times and the Standard Diggers’ News interviewed Mark Twain, these published on May 18 [Philippon 16].
May 16 Saturday – At 10 a.m. in Pietermaritzburg Sam wrote to Livy:
I have just had my bath & coffee, Sweetheart, & am back in bed again. My proposed program is the one I used in Calcutta:
First Night. Dead Man, Plug, Ram, Smallpox, Christening.
Second. Watermelon, Duel, Crusade, Interviewer, Poem, Whistle.
Third. Punch, McWilliams, Sandpile, German. (And possibly Golden Arm.)
May 15 Friday – In Peitermaritzburg, S. Africa, Sam was awakened at 7 a.m. He bathed and had coffee and shaved, then rested in bed rehearsing for the night’s lecture. Before lunch he wrote to Livy:
May 14 Thursday – Sam and Carlyle G. Smythe left Durban at 6 p.m. on the Natal Govt. Railway for “the heat and turmoil” of the Transvaal. They were seen off at the station by David Hunter and A. Milligan. They traveled 71 miles to Pietermaritzburg, arriving at 10 p.m..