November 30 Friday – Sam’s 48th birthday. He wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster. Sam and Howells had written a new play, American Claimant, and though Sam didn’t really want to hire John T. Raymond again, he realized the benefit of doing so. Yet, he did not fully trust Raymond.
November 29 Thursday – Dora Knowlton “a stranger to you” and an actress, wrote from NYC to ask if he’d allow her to dramatize P&P [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Can’t / P&P”
November 27 Tuesday – Livy’s 38th birthday.
November 26 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, enclosing information he’d been sent about an investment. If it was “safe” he asked Webster to let him know [MTP].
November 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.
“Good—& all right. Within an hour I shall be deep in an old piece of work which always interests me, any time of the year that I take it up. So I will go down into that, & not appear at the surface again till the Howellses arrive here the 3d of December” [MTHL 1: 451].
November 20 Tuesday – George W. Cable arrived for a visit. He went with the Clemenses and the Warners to a reception. Cable wrote his wife the next day that he’d “Talked my head off; but don’t worry, there wasn’t anything in it.” At the Clemens home, Cable read for “Mark T., his sweet wife, her mother, & Clara and her sister. They were pleased…” [Turner, MT & GWC 23].
November 19 Monday – Back in Hartford, Sam telegraphed Howells. He and Livy repeated an invitation for the Howellses to visit. Sam had not received a letter from Howells written the same day expressing that he couldn’t return to Hartford for a solid week, but would come “two weeks from to-day” (Dec. 3) [MTHL 1: 449-50].
“I have told thirty lies and am not out of the Woods yet; S L Clemens” [MTP].
November 18 Sunday – Sam was in Boston and accompanied the Howellses in a social call upon the Aldriches Sam returned to Hartford directly from the Aldriches, after the Howellses left. Howells wrote him on Nov. 19 about being “half dead …from eating & laughing yesterday” [MTHL 1: 448, 450n3].
November 17 Saturday – A pink 3×5 receipt to Sam, printed “Stock Account” for a check of $5,000 is in the 1883 MTP financial file.
William Dean Howells wrote: “When I supposed you were coming to us I engaged to take you out to Cambridge this (Saturday) evening to see my play at a friend’s done by children. If you can go, come to 4 Louisburg Square by a quarter to eight, and let me know, anyway”[MTP]. (not in MTHL)
November 16–17 Saturday – Sam, Livy and William Dean Howells went to Boston sometime during this period. Matthew Arnold lectured there on Nov. 17 [MTHL 1: 449n2].