April 12 Wednesday – Sam wrote a postcard from Hartford to Bliss. He’d received Bliss’ statement but not the check. Sam also wanted the price estimates on the “Full set, of full plates, full size” for those cuts that would go “into that English size without cutting. Please hurry it up” [MTLE 1:42].
Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam asking what he should change on an enclosure (not in file) [MTP].
April 11 Tuesday – Frank Bliss wrote to Sam, with statement showing $1,196.96 “paid to your credit”
Dr Clemens / I enclose statement of copyright to 1st Apl—if all correct will hand you ch for same when you come in send it to you if you prefer—
April 9 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway answering Conway’s letter. Conway had negotiated with Chatto & Windus, the firm taken over by Andrew Chatto after John Camden Hotten’s death in 1873. W.E. Windus was a poet and a junior partner [Rasmussen 67]. Sam sought Livy’s advice and gave her answer to Conway:
April 8 Saturday – Sam received a letter from Moncure Conway, which asked if Sam preferred to invest funds and take a percentage of the profits from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or go with a normal royalty payment. Clemens answered with a telegram and followed with a letter the next day [MTLE 1: 40].
April 7 Friday – Sam’s second letter to the Courant editor:
April 6 Thursday – Annie A. Fields (Mrs. James T. Fields; 1834-1915) wrote in her diary of a visit by her and her husband to Hartford and of Sam:
April 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote to the editor of the Hartford Courant about heavy rains and a bad road, which had “disappeared.” The letter ran the next day.
April 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person, answering that he did not know Charles Webb’s date of birth [MTLE 1: 39].
April 3 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells about his proposed Atlantic review of Tom Sawyer:
“It is a splendid notice, & will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, & will modify or shut up the unfriendly. To ‘fear God & dread the Sunday school’ exactly describes that old feeling which I use to have but I couldn’t have formulated it.”
April 2 Sunday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote a short note to Sam, sending a song (now unidentified) from Francis Boott (1813-1904), written “in a key suitable for your voice” [MTHL 1: 128]. Note: Boott composed at times under the pseudonym “Telford.”