Day By Day Dates

October 24 Friday – After a seventeen month absence, the Clemens family returned home to Hartford and their Farmington Avenue house [MTLE 4: 111, 115]. From Twichell’s journal:

“Dear Mark Twain and his family are home again. We called on them in the evening. It seems only yesterday that we parted in Switzerland” [Yale, copy at MTP].

October 25 Saturday – Richard Stanley Tuthill (1841-1920) wrote from Chicago, on The Illinois Club notepaper to invite Sam to the annual meeting of the Army of Tennessee Nov. 12-13. Would Sam agree to be on the program? [MTP]. Note: he did agree and gave the famous “Babies” speech.

October 27 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George Baker, the merchant who had sold Sam the music box in Geneva Switzerland. The wrong box arrived, damaged. He’d wanted the one shown to him that only used violin sounds and vox humana tones; what arrived had drums and bells and “tinklings.” The damage was slight and repairable.

October 28 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William E. Strong (1808-1895), who invited him to speak at the Army Reunion in Chicago. The invite was sent to Elmira, and so was received late. Sam declined the invitation, at least initially.

“I wanted to see the General [Grant] again, anyway, and renew the acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office” [MTLE 4: 121].

October 29 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to L.T. Adams, enclosing the draft of a letter he’d written to George Baker, regarding the music-box shipment from Geneva, Switzerland [MTLE 4: 122].

October 30 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Joseph Blackburn Jones. Sam related his decline of the invitation to the Army Reunion in Chicago, the letter from Colonel Tuttle and his desire to give a different toast to Grant. He had telegraphed Colonel Tuttle again. Sam was waffling about coming—the distance, the weather, the time it would involve, etc. [MTLE 4: 123].

October 31 Friday – Sam wrote a check drawn on George P. Bissell & Co., Bankers, Hartford, to Water Commissioner, $22.50 [MTP].

November – Sam sent a correspondence card to an unidentified person with this maxim, altering “the great & good Franklin”:

“Never put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day after tomorrow just as well” [MTLE 4: 123].

November to December 15, 1879 – Clemens wrote to unidentified. Cue: “I consider it slander…”; not found at MTP though catalogued as UCCL 13217.

November 1 Saturday – Sam wrote a check drawn on George P. Bissell & Co, Bankers, Hartford, to Patrick McAleer, the family coachman, for $52.45 [MTP].

November 4 Tuesday – Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog to Sam.

November 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to U.D. at the W.K. Carson Co., Baltimore, Maryland. U.D. had evidently asked for a biographical sketch. Sam referred him to the listing in Men of the Time, by Routledge, or Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors  [MTLE 4: 125].

November 6 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Hjalmar Boyesen of Ithaca, New York. Boyesen and family had been in Paris at the same time as the Clemens family. Sam listed the letters he had written Boyesen after being informed by a “fine young fellow” named Bacon that he hadn’t answered Boyesen’s letters. Sam wrote that their “unpacking room looks like a furniture hospital” [MTLE 4: 127].

November 7 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Thomas Bailey Aldrich. After some playful prose and jabbing at Aldrich, Sam wrote of the impending trip to Chicago:

November 8 Saturday – Sam left Hartford with George Warner, both bound for Chicago [MTLE 4: 130]. He stopped in New York, where Dan Slote told him that the scrapbook business was “booming—can’t fill the orders” [134].

November 9 Sunday – Sam wrote en route (“In a hotel-car, 300 miles west of Philadelphia, 11.30 Sunday morning”) from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, to Livy. He would telegraph her from Pittsburgh, he wrote. He liked the sleeping car and his breakfast, and hoped she had slept well, but was afraid she didn’t. “You must have Emily Perkins or some other quiet body with you.” George wrote on the note: “He is a jolly travelling companion” [MTLE 4: 134].

November 10 Monday – Sam and George Warner arrived in Chicago and took rooms at the Palmer House [MTLE 4: 129]. The pair:

November 11 Tuesday – Sam wrote two letters from the Palmer House in Chicago to Livy. The first letter recounted activities of the prior day (Nov. 10). The second letter told of meeting…

“…an elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to me—hurt in the Chicago fire & lay menaced with death a long time, but the Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude.”

November 12 Wednesday – Sam was on the stage at Haverly’s Theatre in Chicago. Fatout’s description of the scene where Sam offered impromptu remarks:

November 13 Thursday – Sam delivered a “snapper” in his speech, “The Babies” (See Fatout, MT Speaking 131-3) for the Army of the Tennessee Reunion Banquet, Palmer House, Chicago, Illinois—the snapper that finally broke Grant’s cast-iron expression into waves of laughter. For Sam it was a complete and devastating triumphal victory, as high as the debacle on Whittier’s birthday had been low. In a letter written at 5 AM the next morning (Nov.

November 14 Friday – In Chicago, Sam wrote from the Palmer House to Livy at 5 AM.

November 15 Saturday – The Chicago Times, on page 3, ran an article mainly on Sam’s activities during the Grant reunion.

November 16 Sunday – Orion and Mollie Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy, Orion stories enclosed.

November 17 Monday – Sam arrived home at 2:30 A.M. Later in the day he wrote from Hartford to Howells. He hadn’t had much sleep in Chicago and somehow didn’t feel tired, but knew fatigue would come. He waxed eloquent about the Chicago event and especially Robert Green Ingersoll’s speech.

November 18 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William (Will) M.

November 20 Thursday – Charles B. Campbell wrote from Newark, NJ to ask Sam for the late William L. Garrison’s autograph, should Sam have one to spare [MTP].

William W. Kellett wrote from Boston to offer Sam a tardy (by 3 years) thanks for his writing which lifted him while suffering cold in England [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Good letter"