Day By Day Dates

May 15 Tuesday – Sam was en route on the S.S. New York for Southampton, London and Paris and spent a “large part of the time” writing “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” and possibly other pieces.

May 16 Wednesday – Sam was en route on the S.S. New York for Southampton, London and Paris. He wrote to Livy.

Livy darling, I shall reach London this evening, no doubt; & then I shall seem very close to you & those others. It makes me joyful; & pretty impatient, too. The voyage makes a long, long interval, & conspicuously blank one, on account of the absence of letters from you. …

May 17 Thursday – In London Mark Twain gave the speech of the evening at a dinner by Poultney Bigelow for the officers of the US cruiser Chicago. The N.Y. Times, p.5 “Her Troops” reported the dinner and Sam’s speech but did not report its content.

Dr. Halstead Boyland wrote to Sam, inviting him and Livy for dinner on May 26 [MTP].

May 18 Friday – Sam spent two days in London. Mary Anderson’s agent offered him £2,000 to lecture ten nights in London, but he declined because the season was over in three weeks and there’d be no time to advertise. He promised to consider a fall or winter engagement including a few two-night stands in other cities. He tried to locate Rogers’ daughters at the Brown Hotel, Mrs. Cara Rogers Duff and May Rogers, in order to deliver a letter sent them by Mrs.

May 19 Saturday – Sam left London and traveled to Paris, where he joined his family at the Hotel Brighton.

Saturday Review (London) LXXVII, p.535-6 printed a brief summary of Tom Sawyer Abroad, with a few critical remarks, calling the humor “genuine and characteristic, but it is thin.” The Review condemned the ending: “anything more flat and unprofitable or more shabby to the reader was never devised” [Tenney 22].

May 20 Sunday – Sam and Livy examined a cottage in Etretat, France and rented it for the summer [May 22 to Rogers].

May 21 Monday – Abbie Gifford Rogers, wife of H.H. Rogers, died. Sam wrote of her last days on July 17 to Livy. He would get the news on May 31. Dias writes,

“On May 21, 1894, Rogers’ wife, Abbie, died after undergoing surgery in New York. She had for days been suffering intolerable pain (from an unsuspected tumor). Consequently, she submitted gladly to the operation. After the surgery, however, she began to sink and never rallied” [MT Letters to Rogers Family 14].

May 22 Tuesday – In Paris at the Hotel Brighton Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. He told about trying to chase down Rogers’ two daughters, Mrs. Duff and Miss May, who had gone to Switzerland. He wrote about his two-day stopover in London and his offer from Mary Anderson’s agent to speak ten nights for two thousand pounds. Then he related the family’s plans and his forecasted return:

May 24 Thursday – Frederick Blackwood (1st Marquis of Dufferin) wrote to Sam at the Hotel Brighton:

My dear Mr. Clemens / How very kind of you to have remembered my request. I am indeed most grateful especially for the charming autograph inscription which the book contains. Very shortly we are having a garden party, and I hope you will still be in Paris when it takes place.” Sam wrote on the envelope, “Lord Dufferin” [MTP].

May 25 Friday – In Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, wondering if the two Rogers girls had gone home, because there was no sign of them and they were not at the Hotel Victoria in London. He repeated that he would take the family to Aix-les-Bains toward the end of June, then sail back from Southampton. If by chance the newest Paige typesetter was completed, would Rogers please cable him in care of Drexel, Paris.

May 26 Saturday – The Athenaeum, No. 3474 p.676 printed a brief review of Tom Sawyer Abroad. Tenney quotes: “A dull book, and ‘a grievous disappointment to admirers of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and of his friend Huckleberry Finn…it is a pity that [MT] should squander himself on such a book as this’” [22].

May 30 Wednesday – In Paris, Sam wrote a short note to Robert Underwood Johnson:

My dear Johnson: I reminded Dr. Boyland the other day to forward his MS. to you (about the Commune I think it is) and he said he would. It is the MS. I spoke to you about. Yours in a hell of a hurry. S.L. Clemens [MTP: Am. Art Catalog, Feb. 17, 1926, Item 97]. Note: Dr. Halstead Boyland; “the other day” may have been in London or since in Paris.

May 31 Thursday – In Paris Sam wrote to Henry H. Rogers, minutes after hearing from his secretary, Katharine I. Harrison, of the death of Abbie Gifford Rogers (Mrs. Rogers).

June – The final serial segment of Pudd’nhead Wilson ran in the Century, and was called “resplendent as ever in faultless typography and unsurpassed engravings” by the N.Y. Times, June 2, p.3 “New Publications”. Sam was anxious to get the book published.

Sam inscribed a photograph of himself to Mrs. Hapgood: To Mrs. Hapgood / With the kindest regards of / S.L. Clemens. / June 1894 [MTP].

June 1 Friday – In Paris, France Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall.

Mrs. Clemens & I have read your letter & are sincerely sorry for your hard situation. I wish I could make it better; I certainly would if I could. But the whole business being now in the hands of the creditors, I have no authority & can do nothing.

If the assignment was a put-up job I knew nothing of it, & never in the least suspected it.

June 2 Saturday – H.H. Rogers wrote again to Sam, relating a minor dust-up with James W. Paige over signing patents. Paige had delayed signing, arguing he was not quite prepared to take out foreign patents.

June 5 Tuesday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam that they’d been unable to secure a copy of Lownsbury’s Life of James Fenimore Cooper, but they would send for one “from the other side without delay” and hoped he would call on them when in London [MTP].

June 6 Wednesday – John J. Read wrote from Paris thanking Sam for being able to look at life through the eyes of Mark Twain. “What a pity it is that you cannot teach Professor Fiske to play. It requires genius, however, to play well, and the knowledge of Sanskrit or any other outlandish tongue is worse than useless” [MTP].

June 8 Friday – Clara Clemens’ 20th birthday.

June 11 Monday – In Paris, France, Sam made a “short address” at the Countess de Kessler’s Musicale. Livy was in the audience. The gala was reported later by the N.Y. Times, June 28, 1894 p.2, “The Social World.”

June 16 Saturday – In Paris, Sam responded to H.H. Rogers letter, writing about the Clemens family’s changed plans.

June 17 Sunday – William Walter Phelps, the ex-Minister to Germany and close friend of the Clemens family, died in Teaneck, N.J. only one year after returning to the US to take a judgeship. His funeral procession was lined with hundreds of people; the trees he had planted himself lined the path. At the time of his death, Phelps owned half of what is presently Teaneck.

June 18 Monday – In Paris Sam responded to a note from Eben Alexander, US Minister to Greece, writing that his “kind favor of May 8th” (not extant) had just arrived.

I am very glad of the compliment of being translated into Greek, notwithstanding the lack of international copyright, & I am much obliged to you for trying to convey the result to my hands [MTP].

June 19 Tuesday – In Paris, Sam wrote “only a line to say howdy” to Eleanor V. Hutton (Mrs. Laurence Hutton). Sam hoped they wouldn’t have left for Onteora, N.Y. before he arrived in New York July 6th. He told of the family’s plans; they were to leave day after tomorrow (June 21) for La Bourboule, where Sam would spend a week with them. Sam would then leave for N.Y.

June 20 Wednesday – Livy attended a French wedding where Clara was a bridesmaid [June 21 to Orion].