Day By Day Dates

December 12 Wednesday – Sam wrote 2,600 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers].

December 13 Thursday – Sam wrote 2,100 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers]. A review of PW by the London Chronicle, p.3:

There is in this volume a good deal of Mark Twain at his best, and not a little of Mark Twain at his worst. The story is one of the strangest compounds of strength and artificiality we have read for many a day. Pathos and bathos, humour and twaddle, are thrown together in a way that is nothing less than amazing [Budd, Contemporary Reviews 360].

December 14 Friday – Sam wrote 2,000 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers].

December 15 Saturday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to his English publisher, Andrew Chatto, asking to see him on business the “very first time” he came to Paris. Sam asked for three copies of his books right away for daughter Jean, who wanted to give them for Christmas presents. Sam also noted that “a couple of years ago…you charged me full retail rates for my own books, & it didn’t seem a bit right.” If he would “modify reasonably,” then consider the three books an order.

December 16 Sunday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers, which he finished on Dec. 17, having “started the mill again 6 days ago,” on his JA manuscript, Book III. He’d written a total of 11,800 words, including “this Sabbath evening” of 2,000 words. He saw that Book III would be as long as Book I and twice as long as Book II, which he’d written in Etretat, and that the entire work would be two full volumes in the proposed Uniform Edition.

December 17 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam finished his Dec. 16 to Rogers.

Yours containing Cole’s and Paige’s letters to Brusnahan came to my bed just before I got up. By George, that wolf does seem to be approaching my door again! I wish he would apply somewhere where he hasn’t worn out his welcome. [Note: Charles J. Cole, Hartford Atty.].

December 21 Friday – In Paris, Sam sent a cablegram to H.H. Rogers:

Can you delay final action one month / Clemens [MTHHR 108].

Note: Sam explained his cable in his Dec. 22 to Rogers. Likely Rogers had cabled (not extant) that the Paige typesetter was judged a final failure at the Chicago Herald.

H.H. Rogers also wrote to Sam, the letter not extant but mentioned in Sam’s Jan. 2, 1895 to Rogers.

December 22 Saturday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, shocked by the final failure of the typesetter:

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – Sam inscribed a copy of PW to Mary B. Willard, the Berlin school teacher for Clara: To Mrs. Mary B. Willard / Merry Christmas / & best wishes from / Mark Twain / Paris, 1894 [MTP].

December 26 Wednesday – Frank M. Scott, president of The Century Co. wrote to Sam, having received a letter from a Mr. F. Fauveau of Paris, asking permission to translate and publish The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories in French. Scott asked Sam to communicate with Fauveau on the matter. See Jan. 7, 1895 letter to Chatto, forwarding the letter and chore to them, since such permission was under their authority [MTP].

December 27 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. Evidently another letter had arrived from Rogers (not extant) for Sam answered:

December 30 Sunday – The New York Times, p.2 in a display ad for the North American Review, listed January’s issue, headed by Mark Twain’s, “What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us.” 

This is a witty and trenchant rejoinder, in the famous humorist’s best style, to the Frenchman’s criticisms of Americans and American institutions now appearing in “Outre Mer.”

December 31 Monday

1895 – The MTP lists this year and unknown place for a line from Sam in the palmreader Cheiro’s Memoirs. See Aug. 8, 1894 for Sam’s meeting of Cheiro. This sentiment was likely written shortly after that meeting, possibly in Cheiro’s guest log book, not in 1895.

Sometime during the year Sam wrote to an unidentified person about why he didn’t prefer writing short stories:

January – Borderland (London) ran “Character Reading by Palmistry and Otherwise: The Story of the Tell-Tale Hands of Mark Twain,” p.60-4. The article, previewed in the Oct. 1894 issue of the magazine, contained poorly reproduced photographs of the front and rear of Sam’s left hand, and Sam’s letter to the editor commenting on the accuracy of the palm readings done in the Oct. issue [Tenney 23].

January 2 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Yours of Dec. 21 [not extant] has arrived, containing the circular to stockholders and I guess the Co will really quit — there doesn’t seem to be any other wise course.

January 3 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. Sam thanked Andrew Chatto for books received the day before. He singled out Walter Besant’s London.

January 5 Saturday – French officer Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Sam would take an active interest in the Dreyfus Affair in Vienna in 1897-8.

January 7 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing a Dec. 26 letter from Frank Hall Scott (1848-1912), president of The Century Co. The letter inquired about a Mr. F. Fauveau translating The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories to French. Sam responded:

All authorities of this sort in your hands, thank goodness!

January 8 Tuesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers about being frustrated by Franklin Whitmore not sending monthly itemized accounts as requested, and not saying a word “until his exchequer has run dry.” He’d just received Whitmore’s letter through Bainbridge Colby, with an accounting covering nine months of Hartford expenses. Sam noted he’d just written Whitmore and advised him that the current royalty check from the American Publishing Co.

January 9 Wednesday – The New York Times, rarely complimentary to Mark Twain, ran an editorial, p.4. with no title:

January 15 Tuesday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Jan. 29 to Rogers.

January 16 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam responded to Irving Bacheller of Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, also known as The New York Press Syndicate.

I shall be too busy for the next two or three months to undertake that most difficult & bothersome thing, a short story…. In my experience it costs less work to write a big book…than it does to write a little story.

January 17 Thursday – H.H. Rogers also wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Feb. 8 to Rogers; disclosed a $200 check received in New York from Frank Bliss.

January 18 Friday – Livy wrote to Annie Trumbull, a fragment of which survives:

“…of the fact that I was greatly embarrassed by her manner and at my wit’s ends as to how to meet it. I rather liked the woman. / I want very much to know how you are this winter” [MTP].

January 19 Saturday – The Athenaeum, No. 3508 p.83-4 briefly reviewed PW: “The story in itself Is not much credit to Mark Twain’s skill as a novelist,” and few of the characters are striking, but “If the preface (with its tasteless humor) be skipped, the book well repays reading just for the really excellent picture of Roxana” [Tenney 24].