Day By Day Dates

June 28 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster, who evidently had passed the idea of travel to California to invest in vineyards. Joe Goodman was involved in vineyards but he isn’t mentioned in this letter, although Samuel Webster writes that Goodman may have inspired the interest in vineyards [217]. Sam answered that no way should Webster go to “all that trouble for a thousand vineyards…The idea of you going to California to find a wa

June 29 Friday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster.

“All right. I will wait till Duncan goes for me individually before I bother. I guess he will not see his way to tackling me at all if Whitford gives his lawyer a hint of what my defense would be.”

June 30 Saturday – Worden & Co. Sent a statement with a balance for June 30 of $13,852.47 [MTP].

July – Sam invented the English history game with pegs up the Quarry Farm driveway for different years from 1066. He then made the commercial board game and involved Charles Webster.

This was also a period of continuous outpouring of productivity in Sam’s writing, especially on the HF manuscript. Howells returned from a year in Europe and collaborated with Sam on several stage play projects. The next eighteen months were quite productive for both men.

July 1 Sunday – Dr. Titus Munson Coan (1836-1921) of The Bureau of Revision, wrote that he’d sent “the circulars as you kindly request” [MTP].

July 2 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Karl & Hattie Gerhardt. He was hard at work on Huck:

“We have been here on the hill a week or more & I am deep in my work & grinding out manuscript by the acre—stick to it the whole day long, allowing myself only time to scratch off two or three brief letters after they yell for me to come down to supper” [MTP].

July 5 Thursday – “An American on American Humour” appeared in the St. James Gazette. Thomas Sergeant Perry’s article reported Sam’s humor as “representative of a democratic, serious, ironic quality in American national character, reacting against Europe, though not independently and perhaps not in hostility” [Tenney 12].

July 6 Friday – Charles A. Collins in Elmira wrote a long legal opinion to Sam’s questions, which were pasted to p. 1 of Collins’ letter. See ca. July 1 entry.

July 7 Saturday – John H. Garth wrote from Hannibal “thoroughly ashamed of myself for my neglect in not acknowledging long ago the receipt of your new book…” [MTP].

July 8 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote of the “great interest” taken in him by Dr. Augustus F. Beard of the American chapel, a brother of “the artist Beard of New York animal painter I think.” More expense accounts sent and thoughts of going to Florence to study [MTP]. Note: because such a sojourn in Florence would require him to leave wife and child in Paris, Gerhardt struggled with it for some time. Beard had been pastor of Plymouth Church, Syracuse, NY.

July 9 Monday – An unsigned favorable review to LM ran on page 3 of the New York Times.

Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, wrote to Sam on a mysterious opportunity. The letter implies a recent answer by Sam to an invitation to come to New York to confer with Dana:

Dear Mr Clemens:

I’m sorry you can’t come sooner; but don’t make any new contracts in the mean time.

I think I can put you in the way of making more money out of your brains than you have ever made.

July 10 Tuesday – Aboard the S.S. Parisian on his way home, Howells wrote to Sam, reporting on their visit to the Gerhardts in Paris. He described their living quarters as “primitive and simple as all Chicopee, and virtuous poverty spoke from every appointment of the place.” Howells observed that Karl Gerhardt seemed “a little worn with overwork,” suggesting he might learn while resting in Italy [MTHL 1: 434].

July 11 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Samuel E. Dawson, his Canadian publisher, thanking him again for his visit to Rideau Hall and apologizing for being “miraculously, dull, stupid, silent, & unentertaining…” He praised his hosts and confided that “When anybody wants Canadian-copyright information,” he never wasted ink and paper on him but “cut him off with a curt ‘Go to Mr. Dawson’” [MTP].

July 12 Thursday – Edward H. House wrote “a dreary letter” of failing under the curse of gout for the past 10 months, and of Koto’s seizures, which explained their infrequent letters [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Give [word torn away] account of the Reid interview / Hist game"

July 14 Saturday – Sam wrote to the Hartford Engineering Co.,  letter not extant, but referred to in the Co.’s July 17 reply.

An old letter of Sam’s, written July 6 1859, appeared in the Arkansaw Traveler. See July 6, 1859 entry) [MTL 1: 91-2, n2].

July 15 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote to Sam & Livy: more about their progress & expenses [MTP].

July 16 Monday – Samuel E. Dawson wrote “to assist any of your friends about copyright” [MTP].

July 17 Tuesday – Hartford Engineering Co.  wrote having rec’d his of the 14th and asking again if he would renew his endorsement on the $10,000 bond [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Can’t do it”

Joe Twichell wrote, having read Sam was “getting up from an attack of rheumatism and malaria…how sick have you been?” He told of a gathering where the ex-president Hayes asked about Twain and also about himself [MTP].

July 18 Wednesday – Sam measured off the winding driveway up to Quarry Farm, and began a game.

July 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. Dana wrote Sam on July 9 and 14.

July 20 Friday – In Elmira, Sam wrote  to Joe Twichell, telling more about the pegs-in-the-driveway memory game. Twichell indiscreetly allowed the letter to appear in the Hartford Courant for July 24, much to Sam’s consternation. To compound the error, the letter was printed with two errors [MTNJ 3: 28n47]. It also ran in the July 26 edition of the New York Times, p 3.

July 21 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Orion, Mollie and Jane Clemens, relating his current “booming” productivity at writing HF, and his new passion, the English history game, which began with pegs up the driveway in Elmira and was translated into an indoor board game:

Private.

July 22 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Mr. Krueger: 

Dear Mr. Kreuger— / I enclose it; & if it ain’t the thing, give me the points & I’ll do it over again; for we want you to go Cornell, & hope you will. The Sages are there, temporarily—till they go to heaven where they belong—& there are other good & great folks there.

July 23 Monday – In Elmira, Sam drafted a “confidential” reply to friend and journalist Noah Brooks’ June 19 letter. Brooks, of the New York Times, had been subpoenaed in the Duncan libel suit, and assumed that Sam would be anxious for the Times to win the suit. Sam’s reply may not have been sent, but revealed his defection to Duncan’s camp as the best defense of being named in the suit [MTNJ 3: 58n135].

July 24 Tuesday – The Hartford Courant ran an account of Sam’s history-memory game from information supplied by Twichell, much to Sam’s consternation. Howells noted the article in his letter of Aug. 12 [MTHL 1: 437 & n2].