January 19 Monday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to Moncure Conway. He acknowledged receipt of funds from Chatto. “Dod-rot the new book—as John the Baptist would say—it hangs along drearily.”
January 18 Sunday – Robert Green Ingersoll, whom Sam had met at the Chicago banquet of Nov. 14, 1879, wrote to Sam about attendance at a festival for Robert Burns:
January 15 Thursday – William Mackay Laffan wrote again to ask Sam if he’d not just attend but “participate” in the Tile Club dinner on the 24th [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote the date, place & time on the env.
January 13 Tuesday – William Mackay Laffan (1848-1909) wrote to invite Sam to dine with the NYC Tile Club on the 24th, at 3.30 in the studio of Mr. Chase, 51 West 10th. Laffan had tiny handwriting [MTP].
January 9 Friday – William Hooker Gillette (1853-1937) was back in Hartford in a play he’d written, which Andrews calls “miserable” [99]. The play was “The Professor” and Gillette lost all the money that Sam had lent him [257n56]. Though by 1880 it was no longer considered shameful to attend the theater in Hartford, Joe Twichell retained reservations about acting and faith mixing. From his journal:
January 8 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.
January 7 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his mother, Jane Clemens, who had not been well. This was a serious, comforting letter. He wrote that Livy had “been running down & getting weak, in consequence of overwork in re-arranging the house.” Sam planned to take Livy to Elmira to let Livy’s mother nurse her back to health.
January 1-7? Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Andrew Dawson about being interrupted from attending “at the honors of the 26th.” This is the same “stranger” whose invites Sam had expressed frustration with late in 1879.
January – Sam was reading Robert Green Ingersoll’s Ghosts and Other Lectures, which the writer had sent him in Dec. 1879. Sam used an incident from Ingersoll’s book in The Prince and the Pauper about a woman and her nine-year-old daughter “selling their souls to the Devil” and “raising a storm by pulling off their stockings” [Schwartz 187].
Sam inscribed Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, 1802-1808 (1880) for his library [Gribben 574].
December 29 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Robert Howland, trying to arrange a planned visit for “the early part of next week,” because Livy “succumbed this afternoon & took to her bed…” [MTLE 4: 186].
Scribner’s & Sons receipted Sam for subscriptions purchased Dec. 23 (see entry).