Day By Day Dates

April 17 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to David G. Croly (1829-1889), editor of the New York Daily Graphic. Sam included a list of telegraph headings to show how “dull” things had become, leading him to “get the fidgets” and want to travel. He included news of his collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The letter was published in the Graphic on Apr.

April 20 Sunday – Sam wrote a long “screed” from Hartford to Whitelaw Reid. Sam was upset by the short review in small type that appeared in the Tribune on Apr. 19.

April 21 Monday – Sam and Charles Dudley Warner wrote a note and the title page from The Gilded Age with fees for copyright to the Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth R. Spofford (1825-1908) [MTL 5: 350].

Whitelaw Reid wrote two notes to Sam. The first asking him to come to the Lotos Club for the closing dinner of the season on Saturday. The second note advising enclosed check for his “life-raft letter” [MTP].

April 22 Tuesday – Sam’s letter dated Apr. 17 to David G. Croly, editor of the New York Daily Graphic ran in that paper [MTL 5: 343n1]. The headings Sam pointed to: “solemn peacefulness” and “general stagnation, the profound lethargy that broods over the land” included:

April 24 Thursday – Livy and baby Susy accompanied Livy’s mother and cousin Hattie Lewis to Elmira. Sam remained in Hartford to finish The Gilded Age [MTL 5: 354]. What valuables did he place in his Hartford bank vault? A receipt in Sam’s financials for the year reads:

April 25 and 26 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Livy in Elmira.

April 26 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Colton Greene, a passenger on the Batavia during the rescue at sea. In relating a visit by Captain John E. Mouland earlier that month, Sam wrote:

“We talked a deal about you & your disheartening habit of cursing & swearing at the table while the ladies & the ministers needed quiet & silence wherein to coax their sustenance to go down—& stay.”

April 27 Sunday – In Hartford, Sam had lunch with Joe Twichell [Letter to Livy, Apr. 26].

April 28 Monday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, about checks sent, her St. Louis letter received, and sending Orion some English newspapers he wanted. Sam observed about Orion’s late employment to Bliss:

Dear Sister:

April 29 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Captain John E. Mouland, sending Samuel Chalmers Thompson with the letter.

“The bearer is my friend and London helpmeet…He would like to sail with us, May 17 in the ‘Batavia’ & I would exceedingly like it myself. I hope that the ship is not so full but that a shelf can be found for him to dispose himself upon.”

May 1 Thursday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Livy in Elmira. Sam asked if she was well because he’d only had two letters since she left and he figured he’d written fifteen or sixteen [MTL 5: 360]. Sam often exaggerated; Livy had only been gone a week.

Sam signed a receipt dated May 1, 1873:

May 3 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Elisha Bliss that he and Charles Dudley Warner would “be ready to talk business by about Tuesday, Wednesday, or, at latest, Thursday” (May 8). Sam also used a bit of leverage by passing on the judgment of Sheldon & Co. that he would make “a serious & damaging mistake” trying to sell a novel by subscription.

May 5 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion and Mollie Clemens.

Dear Sister & Bro:

Your letters received today—am very glad indeed for the news they brought. We finished revamping & refining the book tonight—ten days’ labor. It is near midnight & we are just through.

May 6 Tuesday – Bill paid to American Publishing Co. for IA books mailed $3.48: to Thomas P. McMurry (Pet), Colony, Missouri, and to Colonel Cooley at depot [MTP]. Notes: Pet McMurry was Sam’s old workmate and printer in St. Louis, and may have been the author of The Free Grant Lands Of Canada (1871). Col. Cooley was probably a Connecticut hero of the Mexican war.

May 7 Wednesday – Sam’s patent application for the “Improvement in Scrap-Books” was filed [MTL 5: 145n4]. Date of receipt from Hawley, Goodrich & Co. for Hartford Courant for period Oct. 6 ‘72 to May 1 ‘73; $4.56 [MTP].

May 8 Thursday – Elisha Bliss arrived in Hartford and met with the collaborating authors. He agreed to a 10% royalty, 5% for each author. George Routledge was also in Hartford that day and probably joined in the negotiations for publication in England.

May 12 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to James Redpath with his sailing date on the Batavia from New York and the possibility of him lecturing next October in “3 or 4 large eastern cities—but nowhere else.” [MTL 5: 364]. Note: Sam would not lecture in the U.S. again until Mar. 1874

May 13 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Dudley Warner about taking the 600-page requirement out of the contract with Bliss. Susy had been sick most of the night [MTL 5: 365].

May 15 Thursday – Sam, Livy, baby Susy, nurse Nellie Bermingham and Clara Spaulding, accompanied by Mrs. Fairbanks, who’d been invited by Mrs. Langdon in April to see the couple off, all left Elmira and traveled to New York.

May 16 Friday – Mrs. Fairbanks, Livy and Clara Spaulding spent the night in Livy’s cabin on the Batavia, while Sam stayed at the St. Nicholas Hotel [MTL 5: 366n1].

May 17 Saturday – Livy and Sam wrote onboard the SS Batavia to Olivia Lewis Langdon. The ship pulled away from the New York harbor in the morning. Livy wrote that Mrs. Fairbanks had just left them and that Livy’s friend Fidele Brooks also visited. Accompanying the party was Samuel C. Thompson, who was to be Sam’s secretary to take dictation using the method of shorthand he’d been teaching.

May 19 Monday – The New York Supreme Court Chief Justice George L. Ingraham (1847-1930) granted Clemens a temporary injunction against Benjamin J. Such [MTL 5: 370n5]. Sam’s attorney was Simon Sterne [NY Times, June 11, 1873 p.2].

May 27 Tuesday – The Batavia docked at Liverpool on May 27 and the Clemens party stayed one night at Captain John and Mrs. Mouland’s home in Linacre, just north of Liverpool [MTL 5: 370-1].

May 28 Wednesday – The travelers left Liverpool at 11:30 AM on the train for London. They arrived there about 5:30, and took rooms at Edward’s Royal Cambridge Hotel in Hanover Square. Samuel Thompson “took lodging in a cheaper locality near by” [MTL 5: 371]. Thompson wrote later in his unpublished autobiography:

May 29 Thursday – Sometime from this day until as late as Sunday, June 15, Sam left his card and letter (with “pages of horse-play…closing with a dinner invitation”) for Henry Watterson, the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, who had arrived in England about a week before the Clemens party. Watterson was Sam’s second cousin by marriage [MTL 5: 372].