January 17 Friday – William Roling Romoli wrote from his gallery in Florence, Italy to advise that the “two frames you ordered of me the 26th October 1878 are now quite ready to deliver to my expeditioners…to forward to Liverpool according to the directions you left me” [MTP].
January 14 Tuesday – the Clemenses saw a Munich production of François Adrien Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche, a popular light opera, partly based on Sir Walter Scott’s novels The Monastery and Guy Mannering. Sam noted: “not noise, but music” [MTNJ 2: 261].
January 13 Monday – Sam had an unwelcome American visitor who, in effect, was a beggar. the visit, along with a Jan. 4 article from the Hartford Courant, led Sam to write a long letter to the Courant editor on the problem of beggars [MTNJ 2: 260]. (see Feb. 2 entry.)
January 12 Sunday – the Clemenses loved to entertain, something expected of many Nook Farm residents. according to Twichell’s journal, a dinner was given at Sam’s for Louis Fréchette, Poet Laureate of Canada:
“M.T. never was so funny as this time. The perfect art of a certain kind of story telling will die with him. No one beside can ever equal him, I am sure” [Andrews 92].
January 5 Sunday – Susan & Charles Dudley Warner wrote to Sam and Livy, expressing that they missed them and urging them to come home—all in a nearly illegible hand [MTP].
January 4 Saturday – Sam’s notebook:
Went to Grossen Kirschof & saw 15 or 20 dead [Southern Cemetery of Munich]
January – Sam wrote a long, newsy letter sometime during the month from Munich, Germany to an unidentified person. he was working on A Tramp Abroad and mentioned that a big octavo book, “requires a long pull and an almighty steady one.” Sam missed New England weather:
“I ache for a good honest all day, all night snowstorm, with a wind-up gale of 150 miles an hour and 35 degrees below zero. that is the only kind of weather that is fit and right for January” [MTLE 4: 1].
December 31 Tuesday – Clemens gave a reading which included “The Invalid’s Story,” to the American Artists Club, Munich Germany [MTPO].
December 28 Saturday Baron Tauchnitz wrote from Leipzig.
My dear Sir, / Some time ago I had the pleasure of publishing your work “Tom Sawyer” and I shall be glad to add to my Series another of your books. / Will you be kind enough therefore to send me at your earliest convenience a copy of one or two of your books which you think most popular, that I may print my edition from them [MTP].
December 26? Thursday – Sam wrote from Munich to Olivia Lewis Langdon, thanking her for “the magnificent ‘Faust’” [book] she sent for Christmas. “Livy gave me a noble great copy of ‘Reinicke Fuchs,’ nearly as big as the Faust, & containing the original Kaulbach illustrations.” Sam also thanked Susan Crane for her gift [MTLE 3: 113].