Day By Day Dates

March 20 Wednesday – From the Clemens home on Farmington Ave. in Hartford, Sam began a letter to Livy in Paris, which he finished on Mar. 21. He headed the letter “At Home, Hartford, Mch.20/95.”

Livy darling, when I arrived in town I did not want to go near the house, & I didn’t want to go anywhere or see anybody. I said to myself, “If I may be spared it I will never live in Hartford again.”

March 21 Thursday – In Hartford at Joe Twichell’s, Sam finished his Mar. 20 to Livy:

March 21. (Uncle Joe’s.)

I was to dine there at 6.30, — & did. It was their first day, & their first meal. I was there first, & received them. Then John sent in the roses & your card, which touched Mrs. Alice [Day] to the depths. Good-bye dear sweetheart, good-bye. / Saml [LLMT 312].

March 22 Friday – Sam returned to New York and the Rogers’ home at 26 E. 57th, where he wrote a short note to Laurence Hutton.

O, I am unspeakably sorry that I am to miss seeing that dear & marvelous child. I have just returned, after an absence of many days, & am leaving again to-day to be absent till Monday. Give her my love; & the like to Mrs. Hutton [MTP].

March 23 Saturday – In New York, Sam wrote a letter to John Elderkin, secretary of the Lotos Club. The letter was printed in the N.Y. Tribune for Apr. 25, 1895, p.11, along with a notice that “Mark Twain has been elected a life member of the Lotos Club.”

March 24 Sunday – In New York, fourteen year old Helen Keller (1880-1968), the first deafblind person who would graduate from college, met Sam and William Dean Howells at Laurence Hutton’s. (Sam’s Nov. 26, 1896 to Emilie Rogers mentions that H.H. Rogers was also present.) Keller wrote to her friend, Mary Mapes Dodge on Mar. 29 (using a new script typewriter, a “Remington”) of the meeting on the previous Sunday (Mar.

March 25 Monday – Sam traveled to Philadelphia, where he gave a luncheon speech at Cramp’s Shipyard for a dedication ceremony of a new liner. Fatout’s intro to the speech, p.274, MT Speaking:

March 26 Tuesday – An unidentified person wrote to Sam (envelope only, Keller to Dodge Mar. 29 encl.) [MTP]. Note: this is the letter of Helen Keller’s quoted in Mar. 24 entry, so the sender may have been its recipient, Mary Mapes Dodge.

March 27 Wednesday – In New York at the Rogers home, a few minutes before leaving to board the S.S. Paris, Sam wrote a paragraph to Franklin G. Whitmore after receiving Whitmore’s letter, not extant, date uncertain.

March 28 Thursday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.

March 31 Sunday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.

April – Harper’s Monthly Magazine began publishing serially and anonymously, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which ran through April 1896 [MTHHR 144n2], publishing it as a book in May 1896 with Mark Twain’s name on the spine and cover but not the title page. See Apr. 15 to Harrison, for Sam’s condition of anonymity and penalty should it be broken. See also Feb. 23 and Mar. entries.

April 2 Tuesday – On the S.S. Paris en route to Southampton, Sam wrote to Clarence C. Buel, editor of Century Magazine.

Before I left I put in nearly a whole night trying to write something for the October number; but it was only a doubtful success, so I had to pigeonhole it for a future effort.

April 3 Wednesday – On the S.S. Paris and nearing Southampton, Sam wrote two letters to H.H. Rogers. In the first (all but the first paragraph is lost) he announced they were approaching Southampton. He reported good weather and a smooth sea for the entire trip. His writing would not come, however:

But I have done no work. Every attempt has failed — a struggle every day, & retreat & defeat at night & all.

April 4 Thursday – In London, Sam left his calling card with a note for Chatto & Windus, his English publishers. “please pay S. Gardener & Co £13:5.0. & charge to me. / S.L. Clemens / Apl. 4/95” [MTP].

Sam described his dinner with Henry M. Stanley and a crowd of “thirty or forty”:

April 5 Friday – The dinner and gathering at Henry M. Stanley’s ran past midnight into this day. Later in the day Sam likely traveled on to Paris and 169 rue de l’Université to reunite with his family.

April 6 Saturday – Sam’s letter of Apr. 7 reveals he was in Paris, when he wrote “Clara and I thought we had discovered exactly the flat” for Mrs. Clarence Rice, “last night” (Apr. 6). Sam also saw Mr. Macgowan and Mr. Southard, according to his Apr. 7 to H.H. Rogers.

April 7 Sunday – In Paris at 169 rue de l’Université, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. He was “in a sweat” and spent a page or two wondering how his royalties from Frank Mayo’s dramatization of PW might be calculated. As per the contract, Sam should have had no worries:

April 8 Monday – Frank Mayo inscribed a publisher’s copy of PW: “Yours truly, Frank Mayo. First representation of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Hartford, Conn., April 8th, 1895”. The occasion was the Hartford opening of the dramatization of PW at Proctor’s Opera House. At some later time Sam wrote under Mayo’s inscription: “The above signature is genuine & is that of a genuine man, too. Truly yours, Mark Twain” [MTP; Fatout, MT Speaking 276]. Note: see Sept.

April 9 Tuesday – In Paris, France Sam wrote to his nephew Samuel E. Moffett after receiving Samuel’s book, Suggestions on Government (1894). Moffett was still on the San Francisco Examiner staff.

April 10 Wednesday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam sending an address of a N.Y. boarding house (Mrs. Rufus McHard, 61 West 17th St.) advising Sam to apply some time in advance at $25 per week. Joe referred to a “longish letter” he’d sent Livy, but he didn’t want her to answer it, just to know he’d mailed it. Joe offered cheer:

April 14 Sunday – In Paris at 169 rue de l’Universite, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Yours of the 2d [not extant] has come, and it is a very genuine pleasure to me to know that I am missed. I had such a good homelike time there that I missed the house and everybody in it and found it lonesome in the ship and hard to reconcile myself to the change.

April 15 Monday – Sam signed the agreement with Harper & Brothers sent by Henry M.Alden on Apr. 3 to publish JA and TS,Detective. At the foot of the third page Sam wrote,

If at any time during the serial publication of Joan of Arc my nom de plume should be appended to it as author, I am to receive, after that, $15 per 1000 words additional, thence to the end. This is the only omission I notice in the above [contract] S.L. Clemens, Paris Apl. 15/95 [MTP].

April 20 Saturday – The New York Times, p.3 “Literary Notes,” ran the following, which shows how quickly Sam’s style was recognized by readers of PW in serial form in Harper’s Monthly:

April 23 Tuesday – In Paris at 169 rue de l’Universite, Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper, about the planned Uniform Edition of his works, about a 3,000 word short, “Mental Telegraphy Again,” he was sending to Henry Loomis Nelson for Harper’s Weekly, and about a contract he was about to sign: 

April 25 Thursday – At 4 a.m. in Paris at 169 rue de l’Universite, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow: