December 28 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, thanking him for his letter of Dec. 25 which “was a godsend.” Sam was particularly grateful for Howells:
“…consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston—rightly, too, for my offense was yet too new, then”
December 27 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam wrote individual apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes for his embarrassing speech at Whittier’s Dec. 17 birthday party. He claimed he’d given the speech “innocently & unwarned,” and spoke of his mortification. He wrote of Livy’s “distress”; that:
December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – William Dean Howells wrote to Charles Dudley Warner about Sam’s letter of Dec. 23: “This morning I got a letter from poor Clemens that almost breaks my heart. I hope I shall be able to answer it in just the right way” [MTHL 2: 212n3].
He then wrote to Sam that being in the Atlantic would “…help and not hurt us many a year yet…” He then began to repair Sam’s wounds:
December 24 Monday – This is the date Sam gave as having returned Bret Harte’s I.O.U.’s totaling $3,000, only to receive an indignant reply that “permanently annulled the existing friendship.” As Duckett explains, “If Mark Twain’s date is correct, the return of the notes occurred within a week after Mark’s humiliation at the Whittier Birthday Dinner. During this period, Mark Twain felt increasingly penitent and friendless” [168].
Sam Bernard wrote to Sam; not found at MTP, but catalogued as UCLC 48597.
December 23 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.
My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies—a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, & which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.
December 22 Saturday – Sam’s “Letter of Regret” was read to the Seventy-Second Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society in the City of New York at Delmonico’s. Sam dated the letter Dec. 5 from Hartford (see Dec. 5 entry) [Fatout, MT Speaks 109].
December 21 Friday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam a note announcing he’d sent him a present of several books. No mention was made of the Whittier birthday dinner [MTHL 1: 211].
December 20 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Follen Adams (1842-1918) in Boston. Sam thanked Adams and wrote that “several of the pieces are familiar to me, & I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of the rest” [MTLE 2: 206]. Adams had sent his Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems (1878; preface dated 1877) [Gribben 7].
December 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, who had given Sam an idea for a book (see Dec. 15 from Orion). Sam’s answer sounded more like a put-upon father than a brother, which is the way he often answered Orion. But then, Sam did not suffer fools lightly.
“Dr Bro—If I write all the books that lie planned in my head, I shall see the middle of the next century. I can’t add another, until after that. I couldn’t write from another man’s ideas, anyway. But go ahead & write it yourself—that is, if you can drop other things” [MTLE 2: 205].
December 18 Tuesday – Sam was still in Boston. (See Dec. 20 entry to Starbird.) Sam and William Dean Howells did some window-shopping. Howells sent Sam a one-liner, addressed to the Parker House: “All right, you poor soul!” Sam returned to Hartford either this day or Dec. 19, when he wrote Orion. Charles E. Perkins wrote to advise Sam he’d credited him $360 interest from Burnham [MTP].