Day By Day Dates

December – Sometime during the month Sam wrote through Livy to Chatto & Windus asking if they’d send him Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, and charge it to his account [MTP].

Sam also inscribed a copy of Tom Sawyer, Detective (Chatto & Windus 1897) to Bram Stoker: To B.S. from M.T. with warm regards. London, December, 1896 [MTP].

December 1 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook entry: Slam at Geoffrey Hamlyn [Gribben 374; NB 39 TS 29]. Note: see Jan. 8, 1896 entry about this book of Henry Kingsley. Another entry: Trials of Mutinous Convicts (book) [Gribben 713; NB 39 TS 28]. Note: this is an unidentified book titled, Trials of Mutinous Convicts.

December 5 Saturday – In London Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper:

You lately mentioned “Merry Tales.” If is isn’t too late, please squelch that title & call the mess by some other name — almost any other name. Webster & Co. invented that silly title [MTP].

December 9 Wednesday – In London Sam wrote per Livy to Franklin G. Whitmore.

Mr. Clemens wants me to ask you if you will inquire at Bundy’s old photograph shop and ask if they have the negative of a picture that was taken of Susy in 1891. …

      Mr. Clemens is working every day but he finds it rather up-hill work [MTP].

December 12 Saturday – In London Sam wrote to Col. Andrew Burt whom he’d met at Ft. Missoula on the American leg of his world tour. As were most of his letters from this period, the stationery bore a black mourning border.

We are miserable in our oldest daughter’s death. She died while Mrs. Clemens and Clara were flying (a figure of speech) to her across the Atlantic. She would not have died if we had been there [Koelbel 64].

December 13 Sunday Sam’s notebook for this day:

December 18 Friday – In London Sam wrote through Livy to Chatto & Windus.

Will you kindly send me eight cloth copies of “Joan” two of The Prince & Pauper & two of the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur & charge to my account [MTP].

Sam also wrote to H.H. and Emilie R. Rogers, now blaming Hartford people for Susy’s death.

This is a line to wish you Merry Christmas.

December 19 Saturday – In London Sam added a PS to his Dec. 18 letter to Franklin G. Whitmore, that he’d forgotten to direct the disconnection of certain electric lights on the ombra and in front of Patrick McAleer’s quarters at the Farmington Ave. house.

December 22 Tuesday – In London Sam wrote to Laurence and Eleanor V. Hutton.

I am powerful glad you have spared that poor girl [Helen Keller] over the shoal place. I had every confidence that Mr. & Mrs. Rogers would be found ready for business when the watch was called. 

Sam also expressed surrender about the piece, “The Californian’s Tale”:

December 23 Wednesday — Livy wrote to Chatto & Windus, “Will you kindly place to my credit in the City Bank, Old Bond St. one hundred pounds (£100.) deducting the same from the four hundred pounds I have in your hands” [MTP].

December 24 Thursday – In London Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus:

December 25 Friday – Christmas – In London Sam wrote in his notebook:

LONDON, 11.30 Xmas morning. The Square & adjacent streets are not merely quiet, they are dead. There is not a sound. At intervals a Sunday-looking person passes along. The family have been to breakfast. We three sat & talked as usual, but the name of the day was not mentioned. It was in our minds, but we said nothing [MTB 1027].

December 28 Monday

Livy wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks in Providence, R.I., a letter which seems like a response to one not extant from Mary.

We are going on as well as we can. We even talk to each other and smile and perhaps a stranger coming in would not see that we are a broken-hearted family, yet such we are and such I think we must always remain. This is of course the first terrible staggering blow that we have had and I realize that for me there can be but one worse.

December 30 Wednesday – A man with an indecipherable signature from Ad. Goerz & Co. of Berlin (in London) wrote to Sam noting he was sorry to have missed him “the other day” when Sam called.

Sam wrote on the envelope, “New Zealand & Austral. / unpubl.” [MTP].

1896- 7 Winter – Several write-ups of an anecdote exist for James Abbott McNeil Whistler being taken in by Mark Twain over a painting. This by Wientraub places it during this winter and does not see it as their first meeting, as some do:

The Human is a Fool, Hypocrite & Humbug – Contract at Last
London: “Chartless, Adrift Derelicts”– Victoria’s Jubilee – Orion Dies
N.Y. Herald Fund – Twain’s Death an Exaggeration – Peaceful Weggis & Writing Vienna &
“Leschy” for Clara – Stirring Times in Austria – FE Published

1897 – Sam recorded he was paid $11,398.65 this year by the American Publishing Co and
noted “Equator” by the entry. He estimated the Co. “cleared say $3,000” [NB 46 TS 17].

January – Sometime during the month Sam inscribed a copy of JA to Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob (1841- 1917), English architect, engineer, and writer; active in India: Colonel Swinton Jacob

Now if I could only foregather with you again! There is no such good fortune for me; but neither I nor the rest will forget that we have had that privilege once. / Sincerely Yours / Mark Twain

London, January 1897 [MTP].

Sam’s notebook entries:

January 2 Saturday – The London Academy, p. 18 reviewed TS,D: “On the whole, this is a bright, readable book, with nothing of the detestable tendency to parody the wrong things which we have occasionally regretted in the author” [Tenney 26].

January 3 Sunday – Sam’s notebook from Jan. 7 about this day:

London — / Last Sunday [Jan.3] I struck upon a new “solution” of a haunting mystery. Great many years ago (20?) I published in the Atlantic “The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.”

That was an attempt to account for our seeming duality —the presence in us of another person; not a slave of ours, but free & independent, & with a character distinctly its own.

January 4 Monday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam cabled to H.H. Rogers: “CONTRACTS SIGNED.” Not extant but quoted in his letter this day to Rogers.

January 5 Tuesday – Colonel Andrew S. Burt wrote to Sam (four half pages, typed) from Ft. Missoula, Mont., having rec’d his two-page letter and inscribed copy of LM . Burt sent family sentiments, told of opening the wrapped book at Christmas and asked when Sam might return to Ft. Missoula.

January 6 Wednesday – From Gribben p.140 : “On 6 and 7 January 1897 Mark Twain amused himself with working notes ‘for a farce or sketch’ (or perhaps ‘an Operetta’) which would employ ‘pilgrims to Canterbury’ accompanied by Chaucer himself’” [NB 39 TS 43; NB 40 TS 1].

January 7 Thursday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, who had complained to Orion that Sam answered his letters but not hers. Sam explained he was in the habit of writing Orion “about 8 times a year,” paying Orion “one for six” of his letters. Then he confessed the real reason for not writing to her:

January 11 Monday – Sam’s notebook:

January 12 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Cook gone—another come; 4 in 3½ months. More than we had in 18 yrs at home” [NB 41 TS 4].