August 17 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook about hearing the great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892):

August 15 Friday – Bill paid to M. Fentum, wood turner and carver £5.12.6 for misc. [illegible items] [MTP].

August 14 Thursday – Sam went to the Royal Aquarium “with Rosa, J[ohn] & the ch[ildren]” and made notes of what he’d paid John the courier.

August 13 Wednesday – Henry Lee inscribed a copy of his book, The Octopus (1875) “To / Saml. L. Clemens / from his friend / The Author. / Henry Lee / Augt 13th 1879” [MTP].

August 10 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:

“We still have to have fires every few days—had one to-night. We have had fires almost all the time, in Rome, Munich, Paris, Belgium, Holland, Condover Hall & London, from the 1st of last September (Florence) till the present time—nearly 12 months” [MTNJ 2: 337].

August 6 Wednesday – Sam inscribed a copy of the National Gallery of London’s A Complete Illustrated Catalogue (1879): “S.L. Clemens / London, Aug. 6 ’79” [Gribben 417].

August 4 Monday – Sam and Livy traveled on to London.

August 3 Sunday – The Clemens family ended their visit at Condover Hall and went to Oxford, arriving at about 6 PM. There they sent the children on to Brunswick House Hotel, London with Rosa and were shown the colleges by Edward Wyndham [MTNJ 2: 337&n93].

August 1 Friday – Duckett cites Walter Blair’s Mark Twain & Huck Finn, p.114 for a notebook entry not found in MTNJ 2. Sam’s chief criticism of Bret Harte’s fiction at the time was that it “aroused in the ‘upper classes’ too much sympathy for ‘whore’ and ‘burglars.’ ” Blair cites Notebook #14, 18, MTP: “Harte’s saintly wh’s and self-sacrificing sons of b’s” [Duckett 191].

August – Sam’s notebook entry “New Pepys Diary,” shows he was reading Samuel Pepys’ Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq., in 6 volumes (1875-79) [Gribben 539]. Paine writes that “Pepys’ Diary was one of the few books that [Sam] read regularly every year or two” [MTLP 489]. Sam jotted “Our Old Nobility” from articles in the Echo by Howard Evans which attacked hereditary aristocracy and also criticized the