March 30 Monday – The Clemens family was en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. The Wardha anchored in the bay at Madras, India at 8 p.m. [Budd, “Interviews” 69].
Livy wrote to her sister, Susan Crane.
March 29 Sunday – The Clemens family was en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. During the Mar. 28 to 31 voyage Sam wrote a short essay burlesquing missionaries in a parody of Sir John Lubbock’s Ants, Bees, and Wasps: A Record of Observations on the Hapbits of the Social Hymenoptera (1882). Gribben writes,
March 28 Saturday – En route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, Sam wrote in his notebook:
Our captain (Robinson) is a handsome Hercules; young, resolute, manly … he cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. He is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway of the table: he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way [NB 37 TS 8-11].
March 27 Friday – The S.S. Wardha negotiated the last stretch of the Hooghly River and by 11:15 a.m. was in the blue of the Bay of Bengal. Again Sam was nursing a cold. Sam’s notebook:
Mch. 27. We have slept on deck these 2 nights. Very hot, & mosquitoes troublesome elsewhere.
10 a.m. The Hoogli here is 5 miles wide, the shores a low fringe of forest — a ribbon….
March 26 Thursday – At 7 a.m. the Clemens party sailed from Calcutta on the S.S. Wardha bound for Ceylon. Before reaching the sea, however, they had to negotiate the Hooghly River. Sam’s notebook:
March 26. At anchor at Garden Reach all night. When wind blew in, icy cold; the moment it stopped, blistering hot & mosquitoes. We all went up & slept on deck….
March 25 Wednesday – In Calcutta at the Hotel Continental, Clara Clemens was confined to her room by a touch of malarial fever. Both cholera and malaria were rampant in the city. Sam had recovered from the trip enough to submit to an interview by a journalist from The Indian Daily News, which ran Mar. 26.
March 24 Tuesday – The Clemens party reached Howrah and crossed the Hooghly River by way of a floating bridge, arriving in Calcutta at sunrise. They took rooms at the Hotel Continental [Parsons “MT India” 92; NB 36 TS 59].
March 23 Monday – A travel day on the cars for the Clemens party, en route to Calcutta.
March 22 Sunday – At 10 a.m. the entire Clemens party left Lahore on a 1,443 mile train trip to Calcutta [Ahluwalia 19].
March 21 Saturday – At 12:45 p.m. Sam and Carlyle G. Smythe left Rawalpindi and returned the 174 miles to Lahore [Ahluwalia 19].