Day By Day Dates

April 28 Monday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Charles Webster, directing him to call at Laurence Hutton’s “Wednesday morning, & walk up to the station with me….Remind me to give you all of Huck Finn that Howells has revised for the artist & printer” [MTBus 251].

April 29 Tuesday – Sam gave a speech at a breakfast for Edwin Booth in New York City [Fatout, MT Speaking 656]. He likely spent the night at Laurence Hutton’s house, for he’d directed Webster to meet him there at 9 AM the next morning [MTBus 251].

April 30 Wednesday – Sam wrote two notes to Charles Webster (possibly the planned meeting for this day did not take place). He wanted to retrieve the P&P dramatization from Marshall Mallory and didn’t “want any nonsense out of that man” [MTBus 251]. His second note directed a sale of “that stock at 20” [MTP].

May 1 Thursday – Sam and Charles Webster executed “some kind of informal agreement concerning the publication of Huckleberry Finn” [MTLTP 169]. Sam would be his own publisher, through Webster. The Charles L. Webster & Co. was created as a new subscription publishing house during May [Emerson 153].

May 3 Saturday – Hubbard & Farmer per Way bankers & brokers advised stock purchases [MTP].

May 4 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the Gerhardts in Paris, France. Sam disclosed the family wouldn’t be traveling to Europe this year—pleading poverty.

We have made but few investments in the last few years which have not turned out badly. Our losses during the past three years have been prodigious.

May 5 Monday ca. – In his Autobiography, Sam gives “about the 5th of May” as the date “the crash came and several Grant families found themselves absolutely penniless” from the fraud of “a brisk young man by the name of Ferdinand Ward” [MTA 1: 29-30]. This event would greatly affect Sam’s life.

Worden & Co. wrote to Sam on his account [MTP].

May 6 Tuesday – Howells had received and read Sam’s dramatization of P&P and wrote on May 4 that it was “altogether too thin and slight.” He felt Sam needed to fill in more from the book and that overall it was too short, and “the parlance is not sufficiently ‘early English’.” Sam replied:

“Well, then, some day I’ll try to remedy the play, but I’d rather take a dose of medicine. I am greatly obliged to you for reading it & telling me” [MTHL 2: 486].

May 7 Wednesday – Sam had received and approved of the cover for HF. He wrote from Hartford to Webster of his approval, with one detail: “the boy’s mouth is a trifle more Irishy than necessary.” Edward W. Kemble had been chosen as the artist for the book and had to rework many illustrations from such objections [MTLTP 174]. As always, Webster handled the details and the dirty work.

May 8 Thursday – Charles A. Dana for The New York Sun wrote: “There is no use talking. I don’t see any way but for you to write me two or three short stories not exceeding ten or twenty thousand words apiece. As for pay I will agree that you shall have more than you ever got and you can print them in a book as much as you like afterwards” and “I have got Henry James and Bret Harte, and I must have you” [MTP].

May 9 Friday – Lorenz Rohr (1846-1902) editor of the Kansas Freie Presse wrote to Sam, sending him a translation of the song, “Lorelei” [MTP]. Note: Sam replied on May 12. He wrote on the env., “Another Lorelei ass.”

May 10 Saturday – Sam had not forgotten the new Sellers play.

May 11 Sunday – Sam responded from Hartford to an unidentified person, that he could not “remember having ever been on a school committee in Virginia City…” nor did he “remember knowing a man in Virginia City named Freeborn.” Sam did know a man by that name in San Francisco and figured he’d be “quite sixty years old, now, if alive” [MTP].

May 12 Monday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Charles Webster. “Parsloe and Aldrich are not in Europe, they are playing in the West. I’m beginning to look for you here, now” [MTBus 254].

May 13 Tuesday – Mary Keily finished her Jan. 23 letter [MTP].

May 14 Wednesday – Edgar W. Howe for Atchison Globe wrote to Clemens: He’d sent Aldrich a book and all those on the list Sam furnished. He was working on another book, this one not as much a history as the first [MTP].

James B. Pond wrote to Clemens: “I have had a talk with Mr. Roswell Smith about the house for Mr Cable. He & I think it would be best for you to take charge of the affair. I am willing to pay my share…” [MTP].

May 15 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James B. Pond about Roswell Smith’s proposal:

Roswell has got up a Hartford-Cable-Lecture; & he put the Hartford end of it in my hands, & described how he was going to put the New York end of it through, himself. Do you remember how he carried out his contract? I do—& don’t you doubt it. And now Roswell would put another project in my hands! Why, it almost makes me smile.

May 16 Friday – Sam sent to an unidentified person: “Very Truly Yours / S.L. Clemens / Mark Twain / Hartford May 16/84” [MTP].

Charles E. Wilson wrote to Sam, enclosing a newsletter/flyer and an invitation. Wilson was president of a Boston club, the Amateur Journalist’s Club. He invited Sam to the “Grand Reunion and Ratification Meeting” on May 17. Sam wrote on the envelope:

May 17 Saturday – Sam telegraphed Charles Langdon: “Can I see you in New York tomorrow evening answer C.L. Clemens [sic]” [MTP]. Note: this found with Langdon’s May 21, 1884 answer in Langdon’s letter of 22 May 1885!

May 19 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, telling him he’d sold the Oregon & Transcontinental stock at 12 dollars; asking him for a copy of Rubayat by Omar Khayam published by Osgood, and that Osgood was about to sail for Europe, so “get everything squared up before he leaves” [MTP].

May 20 Tuesday – Willard C. Gompf for Connecticut Fire Ins. Co. wrote to Clemens, “yours of the 19th inst. is at hand. Of course we are sorry that you do not ‘talk’ now,” and they invited him to their meeting of writers to talk [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “answered”

May 21 Wednesday – Charles Langdon replied in NYC to Sam’s May 17 telegram: “Your message of the seventeenth to C.J. Kingdon has just accidentally fallen into my hands. I shall be here tomorrow. Start for home Saturday” [MTP]. Note: the name errors were ascribed to the telegram being sent by telephone.

May 22 Thursday – Charles Webster wrote to Clemens twice. First note enclosed John T. Raymond’s answer; Howells’ success in placing the play in Boston; how many cloth books should he contract? And how many in sheets? Second note: Crown Point trip & stock; working to settle with Osgood; paper costs; advised not to invest in stocks but in mortgages: “with all this scare here in N.Y.

May 23 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Edward House. Commenting on an old controversy about who wrote a book Bread-Winners, Sam remarked:

      Gott im Himmel! I would delight to live in Japan; for my idea of heaven itself is a place where all the issues are dead ones, & no man, not even the angels, cares a damn.

May 24 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford, the last extant business letter to James R. Osgood. He’d received the sketches left out of The Stolen White Elephant. Though business had ended between the two men with Sam forming his own publishing company with Charles Webster, friendly relations continued, as evidenced by the sharing of Sam’s off-color story, 1601.

“I have mailed you a 1601; but mind, if it is for a lady you are to assume the authorship of it yourself.