Day By Day Dates

November 17 Thursday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Katharine I. Harrison, asking her to place 3,500 lire for him with the Manhattan Trust co. for the credit of Haskard & Co., Ltd, Florence. He suggested any future Florentine accounts be paid this way [MTHHR 581].

Sam also wrote to Sebastiano V. Cecchi, letter not extant but referred to in Cecchi’s Dec. 16.

November 18 Friday – An unidentified person wrote from NY to Sam, only the envelope survives [MTP].

November 20 Sunday – Sam also wrote to Sebastiano V. Cecchi, letter not extant but referred to in Cecchi’s Dec. 16.

November 22 Tuesday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Katharine I. Harrison. “This Aeolian bill is correct. Will you please send a check for it to the Co. for me, & greatly oblige …. A week from to-day I expect to move into the house, & shall expect to have Jean with me two days later. Then I shall be glad!” [MTHHR 582].

Sam also wrote to William Hawk that the border (mourning) of his note explained why he could not come; he’d mislaid the invitation after answering it promptly, and so was answering it again [MTP].

November 23 Wednesday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Susan Crane.

November 24 Thursday – In Lee Mass. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Tabitha “Puss” Greening (Quarles) in Palmyra, Mo. that Sam was in New York but had said he was sorry for her “sad loss” and asked Lyon to send the enclosed check for $25 to help with funeral expenses [MTP]. Note: Greening had written on Nov. 19, letter in the Vassar collection, but not listed by MTPO.

November 25 Friday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Lee, Mass.

November 26 Saturday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote thanks to an unidentified man.

“I hardly need to say that your letter has given me great pleasure—you would know that,yourself—& I thank you very very much” [MTP].

Harper’s Weekly in “A Constant Reader,” ran “The God of Battles,” p. 1814. Tenney: “Incorrectly ascribes to MT a letter in the previous issue. Also, p. 1820, a brief MT anecdote on an occasion when he missed his steamboat and made no excuse in his report: ‘My boat left at 7.20. I arrived at the wharf at 7.35 and could not catch it’” [39].

November 27 Sunday – In N.Y.C. Sam inscribed Hillcrest Edition sets of his books to daughters Clara and Jean. Only two volumes to Jean are given by MTP. The set to Clara was sold by Sotheby’s auction, Apr. 13, 2004, Lot 27, for $96,000. Like the two sets with aphorisms given on Oct. 29, 1904 to William R. Coe and William F. Benjamin (H.H. Rogers’ son-in-laws), Sam used mostly maxims from FE, “Puddn’head Wilson’s New Calendar” (in Clara’s set, nineteen of 23 aphorisms were from FE) [MTP].

November 29 Tuesday – On or about this day Sam moved into his new home at 21 Fifth Avenue in N.Y.C. and daughter Jean arrived as well.

November 30 Wednesday – Sam’s 69th Birthday.

C. Brereton Sharpe wrote from International Plasmon Co., London to Sam, asking him to act as their proxy for the planned American Plasmon Co. shareholders meeting of Dec. 22 [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s diary: “Tonight at dinner Mr. Clemens was talking of Moncure D. Conway. He is reading Conway’s autobiography just published, and it made him hark back to the days in London 24 years ago” [Gribben 157: 1903-1906 Journal, TS 28, MTP].

December – Sam’s essay, “Saint Joan of Arc” first appeared in Harper’s Monthly (p. 3-12). It was collected in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) [Budd, Collected 2: 1009].

Sam wrote a slightly edited version of the 1893 “Extract from Adam’s Diary”; it was edited to make it a companion piece to “Eve’s Diary,” and would be collected in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) [Camfield’s bibliog.].

December 1 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s diary: “This afternoon Mr. Clemens was restless and after he talked business with me, and after he played through The last rose of summer and Wagner’s Wedding March on the orchestrelle, we sat down to play 500 again. We played until tea time, and then after tea time we played until 6:45….We played 500 until eleven o’clock. Mr. Clemens won 14 games [Hill 98; TS 29, MTP]. Note: “Wedding March” from Wagner’s Lohengrin.

December 2 Friday – The National Institute of Arts and Letters, founded in 1898, cast ballots and elected seven members to the first American Academy of Arts and Letters. These were, representing literature: Samuel L. Clemens, William Dean Howells, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and John Hay; representing art: Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge; representing music, Edward MacDowell. The secretary of the Institute was none other than Robert Underwood Johnson.

December 3 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka. It may interest you to know that all of half of the letters I get concerning the Joan sketch are from Catholics; & are strongly (even fervently) complimentary, every time.

December 4, after – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Mr. Lee: “No, it’s lovely. I haven’t any suggestions to make” [MTP].

December 6 Tuesday – Gale puts Sam as a guest at George B. Harvey’s dinner for Henry James [Henry James Encyclopedia 683].

December 7 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal contains an entry for this date: “And then Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich came in to ask Mr. Clemens and Jean to go tonight to see a tragedy that he has recently written.” Note: The play was Judith of Bethulia, a Tragedy, which was his dramatization of an earlier poem, “Judith and Holofernes” (1896); Her Journal also contained: “This has been a day of events—for this morning Mr. [Finley Peter] Dunne came for a closeting with Mr. Clemens” [Gribben 16: 1903-1906 Diary, TS 31, MTP]. The New York Times, Dec.

December 8 Thursday – Mary C. Waters wrote to Sam, having read his Joan of Arc article in the Dec. Harper’s. She enclosed an article, no longer extant [MTP].

December 9 Friday – On or after this day at 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam replied to the Nov. 6 from A. Silk.

“Dear Sir: / I thank you for the library catalogue cutting for I have often wanted to know what that Diary is—and now find by the heading that it is philosophical or religious or both—and I am glad to know—“ [MTP]. Note: the “Diary” was “Extracts of Adam’s Diary.”

December 10 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Robert Underwood Johnson, thanking him for being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters on Dec. 2. Johnson was the Secretary of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which founded the Academy in emulation of the French Academy, and formed to “foster, assist, and sustain excellence” in American literature, music, and art [MTP].

December 11 Sunday – William B. Throop wrote from Aurora, Ill. to Sam, asking where he might find the old story of a man who went to Washington to collect money due on a beef contract [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote “ ‘Roughing It,’ I think,” at the top.

December 12 Monday – Hal W. Greer, attorney in Beaumont, Texas, wrote to Sam, thanking him for “The $30,000 Bequest” in Harper’s Weekly, Christmas edition [MTP].

I.M. Horsfall wrote from London to Sam, having just read his article Joan of Arc in the Dec.Harper’s. He enclosed a sonnet on Joan by his blind daughter [MTP].

December 13 Tuesday – Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote “Due back Jan. 6th S.S. Lucania” on a postcard picturing Trafalgar Square, London [MTP].

R. Howard Krause and Mrs., in Kidderminster, England, sent a Christmas card to Sam [MTP].

December 15 Thursday – In Keokuk, Iowa Edward F. Brownell wrote to Isabel Lyon to clarify if the Dec. allowance for Tabitha “Puss” Quarles (Greening) was to be increased to $25 or if the $15 was to be added to her allowance [MTP].