April 19 Thursday – In Hartford Sam responded to a letter from his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon (not extant, but from Sam’s letter, about Apr. 12), mostly about Livy, who was “getting steadily along & regaining her health by sure degrees.” Livy missed the late Dr. Cincinnatus Taft, but was “thoroughly satisfied” with the current physician, Dr. E.W.
April 17 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam finished his Apr. 15 letter to Robert Louis Stevenson. Livy was better (Sam likened her to a battered ship “slowly undergoing repairs”), and would be out of her sick room in about a week he thought.
April 16 Monday – Louise M. Madden wrote from Chicago for Sam’s autograph [MTP].
L.. Loisette for Loisettian School wrote to Sam that he was going to “reply to the unmemorial blackguards who beginning a few years ago with slight misrepresentation have advanced from my silence & forebearance to lies pure & simple” [MTP].
April 15 Sunday – Matthew Arnold died while running to catch a tram in Liverpool. He was 65.
In Hartford Sam began a letter to Robert Louis Stevenson, which he would finish on Apr. 17, in response to Stevenson’s Apr. 13 letter.
April 14 Saturday – Frederick J. Hall for Webster & Co. wrote to Sam, “sorry indeed to hear of the sickness in your family.” Hall wrote that Webster would be in Fredonia when the book was published and had volunteered to run over to Canada and register “on the other side” [MTP].
April 13 Friday – In Hartford Sam responded to Lorettus S. Metcalf, editor of Forum Magazine.
When I left you I found that Mrs. Clemens’s attack was diptheria — & that she was perilously ill. That stopped the Arnold-article on the spot, of course…. This afternoon one of the children has gone to bed ailing. These are not good times in which to write magazine articles [MTP].
April 12 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his sister-in-law, Susan L. Crane that she would be “so welcome!” Livy was ailing again with a bad throat and head; Sam too had “a most infernal cold in the head” [MTP].
April 11 Wednesday – Sam wrote to A.C. Armstrong for the New Princeton Review withdrawing from the forgotten promise to write an article [MTNJ 3: 343n134].
Susan L. Crane wrote concerned about Livy’s health and wanting to come take care of her [MTP].
M.P. Handy wrote to Sam (Pierce College of Business, Phila. To Handy Apr. 6 enclosed) seeking his speech at the school’s commencement [MTP].
April 10 Tuesday – Lorettus S. Metcalf telegraphed Sam with news of Matthew Arnold’s “Civilization in the United States,” originally published in London’s Nineteenth Century for April:
April 9 Monday – Still in New York, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
My Dear Clemens —
Don’t you go and turn Mr. Metcalf out of doors as soon as he begins to talk article to you; but you listen, and seriously. I’ve told him (what he knew) that you’ve the best head in America for a dead-in-earnest thing, that shall smile and hurt awfully [MTHL 2: 600].