April 19 Wednesday – Lemuel H. Wilson wrote to Sam, thanking him again for the picture rec’d a year before and enclosing sample “articles” which he’d just acquired the patent on [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the letter, “Lot of toilet articles named for me!”

April 22 Saturday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Howells.

“You’ll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first time on the stage [in a play] next Wednesday. You & Mrs. H. come down & you shall skip in free” [MTLE 1: 46]. Note: the play, The Loan of a Lover, on Wednesday, 26 April, and Thursday, 27 April.

From Lilly Warner’s diary:

April 24 Monday – Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens, sending a check for three months.

“Livy is only about customarily well—that is to say, in rather indifferent strength. As I don’t enjoy letter writing there being such an awful lot of it to do, I will try to make up with a photograph” [MTPO].

Sam also wrote to an unidentified person who had sent him and Livy wedding invitations.

April 25 Tuesday – From the Hartford Courant, page two:

Mark Twain’s new book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” is ready to issue, but the publication has been put off for the present in order that copyright may be secured in England by simultaneous publication there and here. The English edition has suffered unavoidable delay. [Note: On Apr. 27 the Boston Globe ran the identical article, without credit to the Courant (“Table Gossip,” p3)].

April 26 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George Bentley, London publisher of the Temple Bar, who had asked for sketches when Sam met him with Joaquin Miller. Sam sent a sketch, “Carnival of Crime” that missed the deadline for the May issue of the Atlantic [MTLE 1: 48].

April 27 Thursday – The play of Apr. 26 was repeated. James T. Fields and wife came from Boston to see Sam play the slow Dutchman, Peter Spuyk in Loan of a Lover  [Clemens to Howells, Apr. 26]. The Fieldses went straight from the train station to the theater. From Annie A. Fields’ diary:

April 28 Friday – The Fieldses, guests at the Clemens’ home, spent most of the day with Sam and Livy. Susy was ill again, with a touch of diphtheria. From Annie Fields’ diary:

      Their two beautiful baby girls came to pass an hour with us after breakfast—exquisite, affectionate children, the very fountain of joy to their interesting parents.

April 29 Saturday – The Fieldses ended their visit with the Clemens family. Sam wrote in the morning from Hartford to Isaac White, a Hartford photographer and sculptor, about ordering photographs that White had taken of the Clemens family (two survive). Sam was waiting for “relatives” to leave Tuesday [MTLE 1: 53; MTPO & notes].

May – “Mark Twain and the Cats” ran in the May issue of the women’s magazine, The Globe. A New Musical Journal, Vol. V. No. 5, New York: Charles A. Atkinson & Co. p. 101-24. The article included an engraving of Sam and one of three cats [eBay June 6, 2009, # 200347763614].

May 1 Monday – The Hartford Courant ran this notice on page two:

Mr. Isaac White  made some fine portraits of Mark Twain last week, cabinet size, which he has for sale at his place of business, 15 Pratt street.  Note: “Cabinet”—“a popular sized professional portrait, with mount measuring 6⅝ in. by 4¼ in. Copies of two of White’s portraits of Clemens survive, with the sealskin coat he purchased in Buffalo in Sept. 1871.

May 2 Tuesday – Augustin Daly wrote from NYC: “Why don’t you come down here & play ‘Peter Spyk’ some Saturday night for one of my ‘Benefit’ occasions. / Would you— Will you—?—” [MTPO].

Moncure Conway wrote a postcard from Boston to Clemens about the release of TS.

May 4 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam replied to the May 2 from Augustin Daly, playwright and theatre promoter. Daly had invited Sam to play Peter Spyk in a New York production. Sam answered that he was modest enough to serve a decent apprenticeship before trying Broadway.

May 5 Friday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Moncure Conway (answering his May 2 postcard) about Bliss sending The Adventures of Tom Sawyer pictures to Chatto by the end of May. Sam enclosed the new picture of the children and told of Susy’s brush with death from diphtheria. Sam closed with the news that James T.

May 6 Saturday – Moncure Conway wrote from London, England that TS was close to publication there: “The last revise of the last proof of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, By Mark Twain’, passed out of my hands three days ago and it cannot be long before that hero walks into my study in a dress neat enough to excite the Huckleberrian disgust” [MTP].

May 7 Sunday – Sam traveled to Boston along with Joe Twichell; Livy stayed home to nurse Susy, who was recovering from “about the savagest assault of diphtheria a child ever did recover from” [MTHL 1: 117; 133; 136]. They probably met at the Parker House as planned and enjoyed dinner.

May 8 Monday – Sam invited the Howellses and the Aldriches to join the Clemenses and Joe Twichell to share his box for Anna Dickinson’s “disastrous performance” of A Crown of Thorns, or Ann Boyleyn in Boston [MTHL 1: 134]. Neither Livy nor Twichell made the trip, the latter canceling due to arriving house guests, Dean and Sarah Sage.

May 9 Tuesday – No further Boston activities were found.

Mary (Mollie) B. Shoot  (stage name: Florence Wood) wrote from NYC, enclosing a playbill for her upcoming appearance there. She’d noticed Sam’s recent stage role:

      I saw in the “Herald” that you were a grand success as “Peter Spyk”. Pray accept my congratulations (though it is late in the day to offer them.)

May 10 Wednesday – Sam returned home at midday [Twichell to Sam May 8; Lilly Warner to George Warner May 9 and 10; cited MTPO].

Sam wrote to E.B. Hewes, warden at the Conn. State Prison at Wethersfield, inquiring about one Ira Gladding, whom he’d been encouraged to underwrite with a second chance. Sam’s letter is not extant but referred to by Hewe’s reply of May 12. See Hewe’s reply and also A.H. Mead’s request of May 12 and reply of May 15.

May 11 Thursday – James R. Osgood wrote, having missed Sam when he was in Boston on Monday. He’d just read Sam’s “conscience article” [Carnival of Crime; see May 16] and, like everything he wrote, seemed to be the best. “Why don’t you let me put some of your short articles into our Vest Pocket Series? It would do us both good” His “object” was to invite for an excursion by rail where they “can play euchre all night Friday!” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on top of the letter, “Request granted for Vest Pocket Series”

May 12 Friday – Reginald Cholmondeley wrote on the S.S. Argo. “When you come to England next year I wish you would be kind enough to bring me a collection of live North American birds & you had better on your arrival come on straight to me in March or April” [MTP]. Note: evidently Reginald was serious; see July 2 letter.

May 15 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Casey in Ireland. Casey was the supposed president of the “Mark Twain Club” of Pollerton Castle, Carlow, in Ireland. Casey had even sent detailed “official proceedings.” Sam saw through Casey’s “club” and guessed that he was the only member.

May 16 Tuesday – Sam sent a postcard from Hartford to Elisha Bliss, asking if the pictures were ready to ship and giving Moncure Conway’s London address. Sam received a postal card reply, sometime shortly thereafter as mentioned in his next letter to Conway [MTLE 1: 61-62].

The front page of the New York Evening Post of May 16, 1876:

The Atlantic Monthly.

May 17 Wednesday – Eighteen-year-old Charles S. Babcock wrote from Cambridge, Mass:

Mr. Clemens / Dear Sir, / I am going to make bold to ask of you a great favor. I wish to publish a small sheet, say, about 16×22 inches—divided into four pages of three columns each.

May 18 Thursday – A.H. Mead wrote from New Haven to say he was going to “let the law take its course in Gladding’s case.” He theorized that Ira Gladding had intercepted Sam’s letter and took the money [MTP].

May 20 Saturday – A.H. Mead wrote for The Prisoners Friends’ Corp., Hartford, to Sam.