Day By Day Dates

Day by Day entries are from Mark Twain, Day By Day, four volumes of books compiled by David Fears and made available on-line by the Center for Mark Twain Studies.  The entries presented here are from conversions of the PDFs provided by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and are subject to the vagaries of that process.    The PDFs, themselves, have problems with formatting and some difficulties with indexing for searching.  These are the inevitable problems resulting from converting a printed book into PDFs.  Consequently, what is provided here are copies of copies.  

I have made attempts at providing a time-line for Twain's Geography and have been dissatisfied with the results.  Fears' work provides a comprehensive solution to that problem.  Each entry from the books is titled with the full date of the entry, solving a major problem I have with the On-line site - what year is the entry for.  The entries are certainly not perfect reproductions from Fears' books, however.  Converting PDFs to text frequently results in characters, and sometimes entire sections of text,  relocating.  In the later case I have tried to amend the problem where it occurs but more often than not the relocated characters are simply omitted.  Also, I cannot vouch for the paragraph structure.  Correcting these problems would require access to the printed copies of Fears' books.  Alas, but this is beyond my reach.

This page allows the reader to search for entries based on a range of dates.  The entries are also accessible from each of the primary sections (Epochs, Episodes and Chapters) of Twain's Geography.  

Entry Date (field_entry_date)

October 23, 1883 Tuesday

October 23 Tuesday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Clemens with statement of account and book sales, royalties of £904.7.11 [MTP].

Orion Clemens wrote all about the history game research he was working on [MTP].

** Worden & Co. wrote receipt of Sam’s Oct. 19 order to buy 100 shs O.T. @ 25 [MTP].

October 29, 1883 Monday

October 29 Monday – Bissell & Co. per George H. Burt wrote they’d received Sam’s acceptances made by Osgood & Co. for $20,000, and had credited his account for that amount [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “$20,000 acceptances”

Charles Webster wrote to Clemens: Proof sheets on English History sent; negotiations for 10,000 LM with Watson Gill [MTP].

November 1, 1883 Thursday

November 1 Thursday – In Boston, Howells wrote to Sam of his plans to come for a visit on Nov. 3 [MTHL 1: 447].

Orion Clemens wrote to Sam having rec’d his Oct. 28th. Ma went to a 90 year old’s party and they were all well. He worked 4 hrs a day on the Kings [MTP].

November 3, 1883 Saturday

November 3 Saturday – After receiving Howells’ Nov. 1 letter about coming to Hartford, Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Howells for him to “Come Wednesday” [MTHL 1: 447]. Sam expected “an important telegram” the same day (from Howells? Or, possibly from Raymond or Webster) but it did not arrive (see Nov. 7 entry).

November 4, 1883 Sunday

November 4 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, further explaining his telegram of the previous day:

“…Mrs. Clemens has a menagerie on her hands from now till Tuesday Evening—the preparation & achievement of a big lunch party of old ladies to meet her mother.”

November 5, 1883 Monday

November 5 Monday – The missing telegram from Howells turned up at the telegraph office (see Nov. 7 entry).

Kate D. Barstow wrote what is now a letter too faded to read. Likely another request for funds for activities beyond her medical training, because Sam wrote on the env., “No” [MTP].

November 8, 1883 Thursday

November 8 Thursday – Francis Hopkinson Smith for Pedestal Fund Exhibition wrote about his plan to read “that letter” to a group, “ if it don’t send every mother’s son of them home with a sore back, I’m a Dutchman” [MTP].

November 12, 1883 Monday

November 12 Monday – In Hartford, Sam typed a note to Andrew Chatto, acknowledging receipt of “904 pounds, 7 shillings and 11 pence.” He expected to talk contracts on the new book (HF?) in about a month, and accepted their word on pricing their edition of TA [MTP].

November 13, 1883 Tuesday

November 13 Tuesday – Western Union per W.C. Hamstone, J.H. Lounsbury wrote in response to a report in the NY Times that a telegram had been lost/delayed. He claimed from reports he’d rec’d that “our service was properly performed,” the telegram phoned to his residence at about 4 pm Nov. 3, the date it was sent from Boston by Howells [MTP].

November 14, 1883 Wednesday

November 14 Wednesday – In the evening Sam and Livy and Howells attended a Hartford reception for Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), who was to lecture in Hartford the next day. Arnold had lectured in Boston on Nov. 7 and would repeat the talk there on Nov.

November 15, 1883 Thursday

November 15 Thursday – In the afternoon, the Clemenses held a tea for Matthew Arnold in their Hartford home [LeMaster 36]. Arnold gave his “Numbers” lecture after the tea. He also visited the Clemens home in the evening. Sam did not disclose to Howells what the two talked about [Powers, MT A Life 480]. From Twichell’s journal:

November 17, 1883 Saturday

November 17 Saturday – A pink 3×5 receipt to Sam, printed “Stock Account” for a check of $5,000 is in the 1883 MTP financial file.

William Dean Howells wrote: “When I supposed you were coming to us I engaged to take you out to Cambridge this (Saturday) evening to see my play at a friend’s done by children. If you can go, come to 4 Louisburg Square by a quarter to eight, and let me know, anyway”[MTP]. (not in MTHL)

November 18, 1883 Sunday

November 18 Sunday – Sam was in Boston and accompanied the Howellses in a social call upon the Aldriches Sam returned to Hartford directly from the Aldriches, after the Howellses left. Howells wrote him on Nov. 19 about being “half dead …from eating & laughing yesterday” [MTHL 1: 448, 450n3].

November 19, 1883 Monday 

November 19 Monday – Back in Hartford, Sam telegraphed Howells. He and Livy repeated an invitation for the Howellses to visit. Sam had not received a letter from Howells written the same day expressing that he couldn’t return to Hartford for a solid week, but would come “two weeks from to-day” (Dec. 3) [MTHL 1: 449-50].

“I have told thirty lies and am not out of the Woods yet; S L Clemens” [MTP].

November 20, 1883 Tuesday

November 20 Tuesday – George W. Cable arrived for a visit. He went with the Clemenses and the Warners to a reception. Cable wrote his wife the next day that he’d “Talked my head off; but don’t worry, there wasn’t anything in it.” At the Clemens home, Cable read for “Mark T., his sweet wife, her mother, & Clara and her sister. They were pleased…” [Turner, MT & GWC 23].

November 21, 1883 Wednesday

November 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.

“Good—& all right. Within an hour I shall be deep in an old piece of work which always interests me, any time of the year that I take it up. So I will go down into that, & not appear at the surface again till the Howellses arrive here the 3d of December” [MTHL 1: 451].