October 7 Friday – Grace King arrived to spend a weekend at the Clemens residence. From one of the guest rooms in the house she wrote her mother, Sarah Ann Miller King, of the visit.
October 6 Thursday – Several checks below to N.Y. merchants and the Glenham Hotel suggest that Sam was in the city until this day. He may have escorted Grace King to Hartford.
Check # Payee Amount [Notes]
3836 A.P. Burbank 229.44
3837 Tiffany & Co 0.80 N.Y. Jeweler
October 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote a note to Livy on Lotos Club stationery, so was undoubtedly in New York on business (an Oct. 6 check to the Glenham Hotel confirms). He wrote of seeing a Mr. Choate, who had lost a son and now this “infinitely heavier & awfuler disaster.”
October 3 Monday – William Mackay Laffan wrote to Sam about the Dec. 7, 1886 investment in International Telegraph and Cable Co.
…as to the great cable invention…let me explain to you in person, when I see you next, what a Goddamned humiliating and degrading fizzle it proved to be…and how the first of experts are the cream of asses, and how I am now fully trying to get the money back [MTNJ 3: 262n117].
October 2 Sunday – The Brooklyn Eagle ran a short piece on page 15 echoing recent negative reviews of The American Claimant (Colonel Sellers as a Scientist) play.
DOWN ON MARK TWAIN
October 1 Saturday – Francis Wayland, dean of Yale Law School wrote to Sam, agreeing with Sam that Charles W. Johnson should “spend the coming year in earning & saving money, so that he might come to us, if he chose, at the end of that time, with money enough in hand to prevent him from being wholly dependent on charity” [MTNJ 3: 300n2]. See Sept. 29 entry.
October – about this month Sam telegraphed Alfred P. Burbank:
Dear Sir:
Go to Sheol.
Yours Truly.
P.S. No, don’t do it. Go to the other place. My future is uncertain & If the worst comes to the worst, it will be an alleviation to know that it isn’t as bad as it could have been, anyway [MTP].
Sam also wrote Francis Pratt a long complaint about the contract with Pratt & Whitney about lagging work schedules:
September 30 Friday – Henry Drummond (1851-1897), Scottish evangelical writer and lecturer, visited Hartford and spent some time at the Clemens home. Drummond assisted Dwight L. Moody in his evangelical crusades, and came to America at Moody’s request in the spring of 1887 for a Conference of Students which sought to continue a religious movement in America’s colleges like that he began in Edinburgh, Scotland. Drummond had some success at Yale.
September 29 Thursday – Francis Wayland, dean of Yale Law School, wrote to Sam, forwarding a letter of application from Charles W. Johnson. “Wayland asked Clemens, who had already provided two years’ support to another Negro student, ‘to put the writer down for your kind assistance.’” [MTNJ 3: 300n2]. See Oct. 1 entry.
September 28 Wednesday – Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder of Century Magazine, submitting Meisterschaft, a 3-act bilingual play he wrote in 1886-7 for family entertainment to. It ran in Jan. 1888’s issue with a few changes [MTNJ 3: 333n95].
I had a hell of a time reading this proof, which was set up by an Americanized Finn [MTP].