Day By Day Dates

October 31 Wednesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who was considering publishing a book (probably on the Quaker City excursion) and asked Sam’s advice. He answered that it was not “absurd” to offer a “best effort…to the public for trial & judgment.” Sam offered to write the introduction, and recommended Osgood if she was considering an eastern publisher. Then he dropped this jewel of writing wisdom:

November – The second of a four-part, 15,000 word article on Sam and Joe Twichell’s trip to Bermuda, ran in the Atlantic Monthly: “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion”  [Wells 22]. Note: Budd notes that “The Captain’s Story,” which was a part of “Rambling Notes,” was later printed separately in several collections; and that “The Invalid’s Story” was excluded by Howells from the piece for being “too offensive” for the magazine

November 1 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells. Sam also felt Howells’ visit was too short, and hoped when he returned in December it would be a longer stay. Sam enclosed a piece that Joe Twichell got from a “Cleveland clergyman, who said it was very recent” for Howells consideration.

November 6 Tuesday – H.W. Bergen wrote from Toronto to thank Sam for the $60 check but returned it as he had gotten a “little ahead in money matters” and had “good cities and towns to visit yet” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “Bergen enclosing ‘not used’ check for $60”

**W.D. Wells wrote from Jesup, Iowa to ask for a “short sketch” of Twain’s life [MTP].

November 7 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny Hess to Andrew Chatto. Sam repeated that he only wanted to confirm Moncure Conway’s receipt of commissions for work placed with Chatto. Sam also had received two checks, one for over seven English pounds.

“The larger a check is, the more I like it; & the more I honor & glorify the sender, & the more it stirs me up to high literary achievement in that man’s behoof” [MTLE 2:189].

November 8 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny Hesse to Moncure Conway. Sam had found an old letter of Conway’s about the cost of telegrams sent, and thought he may have forgotten to reimburse their cost. Sam wanted Conway to “take that £3.11.s out of the next Sawyer money due me from Chatto” [MTLE 2:190].

November 9 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to E.S. Sykes (Hartford druggist) evidently about some carping on a recent event to raise money for charity, which Sam had volunteered for but wished only a lesser role in, and his name kept out of the newspapers. Relating the complaints about the shortcomings of the fundraiser to a sermon by Twichell, Sam quoted:

November 12 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Thomas Nast, proposing the same plan that he had turned down in Nov. 1867—that is, to lecture together, Sam talking while Nast drew pictures. Sam listed the 75 cities they would tour, and estimated a net profit from $60,000 to $75,000 to split.

November 13 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion in Keokuk. Only the envelope survives [MTLE 2: 196]. Sam paid a bill from Osgood & Co. for a copy of Fridthjof’s Saga that he’d ordered on Mar. 20 and for Bayard Taylor’s The National Ode: The Memorial Freedom Poem (1877) purchased on Jan.

November 17 Saturday – Orion Clemens wrote of his change of offices, his being made Secretary of Republicans to publish the proceedings of the primary, thanking Livy for her account of Hall’s death, and of reading extracts of Sam’s Bermuda letters in the Atlantic Monthly [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Preserve”

November 18 Sunday – Edward Fordham Flower wrote from London: “I send you some notices of two pamphlets in one which are now published in New York by Cassells & Co. Can you do or say anything to make them known[?]” [MTP]. Note: father of Charles Edward Flower.

November 20 Tuesday – Dean Sage visited Twichell from Nov. 19 to 21. Twichell’s journal entry notes they went “to lunch at Mark Twain’s at noon” [Yale, copy at MTP].

November 21 Wednesday – E.S. Sykes, Hartford druggists wrote to Sam: “I return herewith your letter as requested. I read it to the Board as proposed. And it certainly set you right with those gentlemen who knew of yr. connection with the matter. / Feeling sure that if others were as ready to do their part as you have shown yourself to do yours that our poor would not want assistance, I remain… [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “The performance that didn’t come off”

November? 22 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles E. Flower, advising that since receiving his letter about the Shakespeare Memorial, he had corresponded with some New York newspaper men. Sam and Livy stayed with the Flower family on their first trip to London together and Sam had used his influence to help Flower raise funds in the U.S. [MTLE 2: 198].

November 23 Friday – Sam dated several story and book ideas in his notebook, including one “in which the telephone plays a principal part (the germ of the story “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton” published in the Atlantic for Mar. 1878). He wrote notes for Prince and the Pauper, which he’d worked on in the summer of 1877.

November 26 Monday – Eighteen year old William (“Will”) M. Clemens (1860-1931) wrote to Sam, the first of over a dozen he would write by 1909.

To “That Uncle of mine”

Dear Mark; / I have just finished the “Gilded age,” for the second time, and I am determined to write you, not, for the sake of the book but to form an acquaintance with yourself.

      I am a young man of 18, or a boy in his teens, just as you like it.

November 27 Tuesday – Livy’s 32nd birthday. Sam gave her Pottery and Porcelain of All Times and Nations (1878) by William Cowper Prime (1825-1905). Sam inscribed it: “Livy Clemens from S.L.C./ November 27, 1877/ Hartford” [Gribben 560].

November 29 Thursday – An unidentified “young girl” sent Clemens a poem aiming at his soul: “I gave my life for thee, / My precious blood I shed, / That thou might’st ransomed be, / and quickened from the dead; / I gave my life for thee; / What hast thou done for me?” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “From a young girl whom I do not know, but who has been trying for 7 years to save me—ever since she was 14”

November 30 Friday – Sam’s 42nd birthday.

December – The third of a four-part, 15,000 word article on Sam and Joe Twichell’s trip to Bermuda, ran in the Atlantic Monthly: “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” [Wells 22].

December 1 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person who solicited an autograph. Sam responded that the “great question of the day” didn’t disturb him because he believed there wouldn’t be any eternal punishment, “except for the man who invented steel pens” [MTLE 2: 199].

December 1-15 Saturday –During this period Sam wrote to the Chicago Union Veteran Club:

December 3 Monday – Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to congratulate Sam on his recent birthday, to make suggestions how he might purchase the Post with a thousand down and a mortgage for ten thousand. “If I got into the printing business again I should subordinate my whims to my business.” He then wrote about “how lawyers get into business,” and ended with a PS thanking for the Atlantic Monthly [MTP].

December 4 Tuesday – John Napton (1843-1917) and brothers wrote from Elkhill, Mo. to Sam.

“Mark Twain” / Dear Sir,

      Is there the slightest probability of your writing and publishing any other books. “Innocents Abroad” “Roughing It” & “The Gilded Age” have about up-set our youngest brother Frank (the youngest of nine)—a youth of seventeen, now six feet two in his stocking-feet, and like yourself, a “Missouri puke,” “and to the manner born.”

December 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to D.F. Appleton, head of the New England Society (see Dec. 22 entry). The society had invited Sam to attend their 72nd anniversary at Delmonico’s in New York on Dec. 22. Sam begged “an offensive business engagement that day in Hartford,” and so declined to attend.

December 9 Sunday – Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to Sam, enclosing a short article “A Snide Book Agent,” which perpetrated a fraud selling a book “Elbow Room,” by Max Adeler as one by Twain. Orion is mentioned in the article and his letter describes his investigations into the matter [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Dec. 9/77 – Orion’s story about Sir John Franklin,” one of Orion’s literary efforts also enclosed.