April 4 Thursday – In London, Sam left his calling card with a note for Chatto & Windus, his English publishers. “please pay S. Gardener & Co £13:5.0. & charge to me. / S.L. Clemens / Apl. 4/95” [MTP].
Sam described his dinner with Henry M. Stanley and a crowd of “thirty or forty”:
April 3 Wednesday – On the S.S. Paris and nearing Southampton, Sam wrote two letters to H.H. Rogers. In the first (all but the first paragraph is lost) he announced they were approaching Southampton. He reported good weather and a smooth sea for the entire trip. His writing would not come, however:
But I have done no work. Every attempt has failed — a struggle every day, & retreat & defeat at night & all.
April 2 Tuesday – On the S.S. Paris en route to Southampton, Sam wrote to Clarence C. Buel, editor of Century Magazine.
Before I left I put in nearly a whole night trying to write something for the October number; but it was only a doubtful success, so I had to pigeonhole it for a future effort.
The Clemens family had been living in Europe since June of 1891 in an attempt to economize. Mark Twain had not escaped the wrath of the “Panic of 1893”, a period of economic depression in the United States. Five hundred banks closed, 15,000 businesses failed, and numerous farms ceased operation. The unemployment rate reached 25% in Pennsylvania, 35% in New York, and 43% in Michigan. Soup kitchens were opened to help feed the destitute. Facing starvation, people chopped wood, broke rocks, and sewed by hand with needle and thread in exchange for food.
April – Harper’s Monthly Magazine began publishing serially and anonymously, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which ran through April 1896 [MTHHR 144n2], publishing it as a book in May 1896 with Mark Twain’s name on the spine and cover but not the title page. See Apr. 15 to Harrison, for Sam’s condition of anonymity and penalty should it be broken. See also Feb. 23 and Mar. entries.
March 31 Sunday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.
March 28 Thursday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.
March 27 Wednesday – In New York at the Rogers home, a few minutes before leaving to board the S.S. Paris, Sam wrote a paragraph to Franklin G. Whitmore after receiving Whitmore’s letter, not extant, date uncertain.
March 26 Tuesday – An unidentified person wrote to Sam (envelope only, Keller to Dodge Mar. 29 encl.) [MTP]. Note: this is the letter of Helen Keller’s quoted in Mar. 24 entry, so the sender may have been its recipient, Mary Mapes Dodge.
March 25 Monday – Sam traveled to Philadelphia, where he gave a luncheon speech at Cramp’s Shipyard for a dedication ceremony of a new liner. Fatout’s intro to the speech, p.274, MT Speaking: