May 7 Friday – Sam finished the May 6 letter to Howells. He’d had a telephone call from Warner that Howells could not come to Hartford due to his own trip to Washington, and Sam told him that he was “doing the right thing; when one is short for time, he should be free to alter arrangements with friends, without prejudice or cussedness” –language he claimed, humorously, that Livy used (he often ascribed his language to Livy).
May 6 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, helping him with his “autobiography.” Sam added “…the elder Bliss has heart disease badly, & henceforth his life hangs upon a thread” [MTLE 5: 97].
May 5 Wednesday – Sam was invoiced $16.10 by the Put-In-Bay Island Wine Co., in Ohio for a half-barrel (24 & ½ gallons) of red wine. This company advertised N. American native varieties on their invoices: Catawba, Delaware, Norton’s Virginia, Ives, and Concord Grapes. Bill marked paid. Sam had this shipped to Cleveland, probably for the Fairbanks family [MTP].
May 4 Tuesday – Charles Howard Young wrote from Hartford, Mercier to Young Apr. 4 enclosed from Paris, thanking Sam for his autograph [MTP].
May 3 Monday – Christian Tauchnitz wrote from Leipzig. “Many thanks for your kind lines of March 15 and for the proofs of ‘The Tramps Abroad’ ” for which he agreed to pay 700 Marks [MTP].
Chatto & Windus wrote from London. In part:
“Dear Sir / We are on tenterhooks of anxiety for fear of a threatened unauthorised reprint of your ‘Tramp Abroad’ at a shilling, which we shall be powerless to oppose; but by keeping a bold front we hope to scare off intruders and so escape the danger” [MTPO].
May 2 Sunday – In Hartford, Sam inscribed a copy of A Tramp Abroad to Robert Howland: “With the affectionate remembrances of his ancient friend” [MTLE 5: 96].
May 1 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Chatto & Windus. Sam reaffirmed that he left the business end of publishing to others, to Bliss and his lawyer. He sadly explained how if he’d ordered the electrotypes in the beginning he couldn’t recall it. The TS bungle allowed Canadian pirates to bring out a cheap version two months ahead of the U.S.
May – William Dean Howells ran a very favorable review of A Tramp Abroad in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Also, Sam’s “Speech at the Holmes Breakfast” ran in a supplement.
His opinions are no longer the opinions of the Western American newly amused and disgusted at the European difference, but the Western American’s impressions on being a second time confronted with the things he has had time to think over. This is the serious undercurrent of the book… [Wells 23].
April 30 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Miss Mary Russell Perkins, confirming the identity of the “poet lariat,” a label first heard in his Nevada days, but which he later applied to Bloodgood H. Cutter (1817-1906), a passenger on the Quaker City excursion, because Dr. Edward Andrews “distorted the phrase ‘Poet Laureate’ into Poet Lariat” [MTNJ 1: 334n77]:
April 29 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells about sending a copy of the proposed Atlantic piece “A Telephonic Conversation” to an English magazine. Sam enclosed a copy “enveloped & stamped for transmission at the proper time”. Publication of an article first in America and soon after in England would cover copyright considerations.