Day By Day Dates

August 16 Thursday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. An article published Sept. 9, 1894, p.5 and datelined August 22, described the voyage and the weather:

On one day only rain interfered with deck amusements and promenading, a dense fog enshrouded us off the banks and at subsequent short periods further eastward. …Aside from this disagreeable feature, we have had an exceptionally smooth voyage, the glassy surface of the ocean disturbed alone by swells from our huge steamship.

August 17 Friday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The second day at sea the Paris made 423 miles distance [Ibid.]

August 18 Saturday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The third day at sea the Paris made 429 miles distance [Ibid.]

August 19 Sunday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The fourth day at sea the Paris made 430 miles distance. In the evening, Rev. A.J.F. Behrends gave a brief sermon in the grand saloon [Ibid.]. Sam may have attended.

August 20 Monday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The fifth day at sea the Paris made 455 miles distance [Ibid.]. The Brooklyn Eagle article (Sept. 9, 1894 p.5 “A Mid-Ocean Letter”) wrote up a charity concert event that included a reading by Sam:

August 21 Tuesday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The sixth day at sea the Paris made 447 miles distance [Ibid.]

…an entertainment was given in the second cabin, consisting of songs, recitations, an illusion act and minstrel performance, realizing about $25 for the benefit of a steward, who met with an accident on Sunday last [Aug. 19]. Eighty dollars in addition was raised for him among the first cabin passengers [Ibid.]

August 22 Wednesday – At 4 p.m., the S.S. Paris docked at Southampton. The seventh day at sea the Paris made 441 miles distance, within 67 miles to Southampton [Brooklyn Eagle, Sept. 9, 1894 p.5 “A Mid-Ocean Letter”].

H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, the letter not extant, but mentioned in Sam’s Sept. 2 to Rogers.

August 23 Thursday † – Sam reached Etretat, France on the Normandy coast by this day, reuniting with his family [Sept. 2-3 to Rogers].

Mrs. James French-King’s article, “Character Reading of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain),” ran in Freedom, a weekly Boston paper, p.3. This was a journal devoted to “Mental Science” [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1980) 172].

August 24 Friday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam (the letter is not extant but is mentioned in Sam’s Sept. 9 to Rogers) that they’d sent a typed copy of JA, express paid. Sam still had not received the MS itself by Sept. 9.

Rogers signed a contract for Livy with Frank Bliss for the publication of PW by the American Publishing Co. [MTHHR 71-2].

August 25 Saturday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers:

I find the Madam ever so much better in health and strength; but disappointed, for she hoped you and Mrs. Duff would come and let her take care of you as she proposed; but I told her I didn’t get the letter, which was true. But I don’t see how she would take care of anybody in this little Chalet des Abris, which is such an incredibly small coop that the family can’t find room to sleep without hanging their legs out of the windows.

August 26 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam worked this day and the next on an unspecified magazine article, which he did not finish.

August 27 Monday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam about delays in receiving a duplicate set of illustrations to use in PW [MTP].

August 28 Tuesday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, concerned about the mix-up in the publication date for PW. Publication had to be coordinated between England and the US to ensure copyright.

Oh, my God, this is a state of things! Mr. Hall, & the Assignee [Bainbridge Colby] & everybody else knew, away back yonder the last of April, & you ought of course to have been told that at the time.

September – The North American Review published the final segment of Sam’s essay, “In Defense of Harriet Shelley” (July–Sept.).

September 1 Saturday – At the Chalet des Abris in Etretat, France, Sam wrote to Charles W. Dayton, New York Postmaster about a notification of a registered letter sent from Austria.

I am all in a tremor & a sweat to get that registered letter from Austria, for I feel almost certain it is the Emperor resigning in my favor. Do shove it right along…[MTP].

September 2 Sunday – In Etretat, France (“In bed — noon”) Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Sept. 3.

The facts are distorted in that “Sun” squib. (When you see it in the Sun it ain’t so.) [See Aug. 15 for Sun article, which is possibly the one Sam referred to.]

September 3 Monday – Sam finished his Sept. 2 letter to H.H. Rogers.

Monday morning, Joan. I hadn’t any trouble there. That is a book which writes itself, a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen.

Sam had written ten or eleven thousand more words for six days of work so far in Etretat, and planned it as a two-volume work:

September 4 Tuesday – In Etretat, France Sam added 1,500 words to his JA manuscript [Sept. 9 to Rogers].

September 5 Wednesday – In Etretat, France Sam added another 4,500 words to his JA manuscript, for an aggregate of 6,000 words for the two days [Sept. 9 to Rogers].

September 6 Thursday – In Etretat, France, Sam felt burned out after his two-day output for JA. He wrote on Sept. 9 to Rogers, “My head hasn’t been worth a cent since.”

September 9 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers that he’d overdone it.

September 11 Tuesday – In Etretat, France Sam began a letter to J. Henry Harper which he finished Sept. 12.

The MS [JA] arrived to-day [See Sept. 9 to Rogers], & I am sending word to Mr. Du Mond.

September 12 Wednesday – In Etretat, France Sam finished his Sept. 11 to J. Henry Harper. He wrote but a few lines about inserts to the MS and of missing later segments that he suggested the French custom house might have taken:

…still, they wouldn’t want literature that isn’t indecent, would they? [MTP].

Bainbridge Colby, the assignee of Webster & Co., cabled Sam:

September 14 Friday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to his old friend William Dean Howells upon learning of the Aug. 28 death of Howells’ father, William Cooper Howells (1807-1894).

I have heard of your bereavement, & am aware through talks with John [Mead Howells] how heavy a stroke it was for you. It was a happy thing you went home; you would have reproached yourself else. Sympathy is for the living; & sincerely you have mine. Envy is for the dead [MTP].

September 16 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote a note to Bainbridge Colby authorizing H.H. Rogers to endorse checks for the first $500 from American Publishing Co. to Colby’s law firm of Stern & Rushmore [MTP].

Sam then wrote H.H. Rogers referring to the note sent Colby and if it wouldn’t do he would have Livy repeat the note. Sam also wrote of his writing woes: