Day By Day Dates

June 5 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Today is the anniversary of the great tragedy of this family. Sunday evening after that long day with Mother in Florence and after a sweet chat with Santissima [Clara], Mrs. Clemens’s light went out—now I can see Mr. Clemens’s face when I flew into his room and told him to go to Mrs. Clemens’s room. “Is it an alarm?” he said—but I didn’t know, they only told me to run and get him [MTP TS 63].

June 6 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Wrote Mr. Duneka not to trouble Mr. Howells about the book or Mark Twain letters. C.C. & J.L.C. want to collect & compile the letters” [MTP TS 20].

writes of Clemens’ attempt to persuade Howells to take on his biography:

June 7 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper: “Please hand to bearer & charge to me, paper copy of your ‘Rudiments of Manners,’ also paper copy of your ‘How to Conceal Mental Vacancy & Seem Intelligent’” [MTP]. Note: Hill points out this sarcasm as one of Sam’s “savage moods” and “disbelief in the Harper integrity” [112].

June 8 Thursday – Clara Clemens’ 31 birthday. Clara was in Norfolk, Conn. In Dublin,N.H. Sam wrote to her in care of Mrs. Bratenglier.

June 9 Friday – Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to Robert E. Park, Secretary of the Congo Reform Association of America, in reference to John R. Gow’s June 6 inquiry. Some time ago Sam had instructed Harpers to forward “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” to them; he inquired on June 8 about the matter and they apologized that they’d been unable to find their address.

June 10 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens has introduced a delightful character into the microbe book—“Katherine of Arragon”—She is so sweet and so foolish and so innocent, and so profane and so sympathetic that she’s exactly right. Mr. Clemens is enjoying the writing of the book so much too. He doesn’t know that Katherine is anywhere around when in she pipes with a remark that staggers that dear cholera germ. Oh, it is so interesting, and its positively holy to hear Mr. Clemens read it [MTP TS 64-65].

June 11 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara in Norfolk, Conn. in care of Mrs. Bratenglier.

June 12 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: After dinner tonight I spoke of one or two things mentioned in his brother’s manuscript, about how he, Mr. C., had shocked his mother by dancing the Schottisch until a late hour on board the boat of which he was pilot. He was taking his mother on a trip down to New Orleans. Then Mr.

June 13 Tuesday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Katharine I. Harrison, asking her to transfer $2,000 from the Guaranty Trust to the Lincoln National Bank. She added, “Mr. Clemens is well” [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Jean wasn’t well today. She went down to her study, but came back so weary and dazed. Today the Thayers lunched here and Mr. Clemens and Mrs. Thayer talked of the “Quaker City” for a long time. Did Mrs. Thayer know anything about Mrs. Fairbanks?” [MTP TS 65].

June 14 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The microbe revision goes on and Mr. Clemens gives the sapient results to us” [MTP TS 65].

F.P. Keppel for Columbia University sent Sam a printed invitation to be a guest at the 151 Commencement, Wednesday June 14, 11 a.m. A place would be reserved for him in the Academic Procession [MTP].

June 15 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Headache (?) not sure.It is summer, supreme summer with heat that glows and glorifies.

Today Mr. Clemens couldn’t write. He’s been tiring himself, and indigestion follows with a brain fog—so he spent most of the day loafing on the porch, reading and smoking [MTP TS 65-66].

Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Today Mr. Clemens began to read the Revision of the microbe Story” [MTP TS 21].

June 16 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to the June 15 from Frederick A. Duneka.

June 17 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to his attorney, John Larkin.

Mr. Clemens directs me to write for him and say that if this month ends without any permission from M . Renwick for work to be begun on the furnaces, why shouldn’t John Howells be put to work on July first on the $2250.00 hot water heating equipment.

June 18 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara in Norfolk, Conn. It’s raining, dearheart, been raining several hours. The horse is at the door, so I judge Jean is going out driving. Patrick is standing by, superintending. It’s good to look at him—he’s just a dear! Shoves back his cap & scratches his head, just as he used to do ages ago—his way of acknowledging the presence of his superiors.

June 19 Monday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to H.H. Rogers’ June 16:

Why, I must have answered it. [Rogers’ May 26 letter] It may be that I merely worded the answer in my mind & then thought I had written & sent it, I am aware that that does happen to me sometimes. It’s like intending to wind a watch; the intention gets registered as an act, & the watch runs down.

No, indeedy, I’m not sick—I’m trying to work myself to death—& not succeeding, but I keep up the rush just the same. I am enjoying it.

June 20 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tonight after dinner as Jean and I sat in the glow of the fire burning on the good big hearth in the living room, Mr. Clemens paced the room and told Jean the story of Japan and her change of government, about the Daimios and the Shogun and the almost spiritual power of the Mikado. The talk was brought about by Mr. Clemens speaking of the Chinese and Japanese working for such low wages that they cannot be admitted to this country for they would underwork and starve out Americans. It’s powerfully good talk.

June 21 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Samuel J. Elder.

I have read your article with great interest—& also with great profit. I am glad to have it, & I thank you.

I was at the meeting you speak of, & offered & explained the two motions I went there to make —then hurried away. But they passed. One of them was the “life & 50 years” proposition.

June 22 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Jean and I drove over to Marlboro and then trolleyed to Keene in the rain today. It was a nice trip—moist.

Mr. Clemens read more of that satire dwelling on the currency and he made a beautiful allusion to Katherine of Aragon. Dear, foolish, gentle, loving Katherine. Today Mr. Clemens talked about the Japanese battle front being 400 miles long. Grant’s was 1200 miles and Grant was the only General ever, who didn’t hold councils of war.

June 23 Friday – Tuckey puts this day as the last work Sam did on “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes” [135]. Note: also, Starrett, MT Encyc. 736.

June 24 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Joe Twichell. After several pages of bile dumped about Theodore Roosevelt, though he believed “praise & blame” were “unwarrantable terms when applied to coffee-mills”—in other words, man has no more control over his acts than a coffee-mill—Sam wrote of his work and daughters:

I began a new book here in this enchanting solitude 35 days ago. I have done 33 full days’ work on it. To-day I have not worked. There was another day in this present month wherein I did not work—you will know that date without my telling you.

June 25 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.

June 26 Monday – Sam wrote the poem “Apostrophe to Death,” not published in his lifetime:

O Death, O sweet & gracious friend,
I bare my smitten head to Thee, & at thy sacred feet
I set my life’s extinguished lamp & lay my bruised heart

[Tuckey, “The ‘Me’ and the Machine” 135; Scott, Poetry MT 126-7]. Note: Hill gives the title as “An Invocation to Death” (as does Miss Lyon in the entry below) and notes that Sam read the poem to the “cozy group around the fire, and the next day Miss Lyon was ‘weak with the wonder of that poem’ all day long” [110].

June 27 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day I’ve been weak with the wonder of that poem [See June 26 journal]. Mr. Clemens made some corrections in it and then let me take it— to read and read this morning. Later he came down stairs and talked about the kind of woman Mrs. Howells is. I’d just been saying that according to the way that Mr. Howells has depicted womankind in “Miss Billard’s Inspiration” [sic] he must have either an enchanting wife, or an utterly inconsequential one, and I think it is probably the latter, but there is that inconsequential side to every woman anyway.

June 28 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

This is a line to say there’s a report in Norfolk, Conn. (which we are doing what we can to keep out of the papers) that Clara’s horse has been running away with her. It isn’t so. It was her horse, but she wasn’t in the carriage.

Jean & I expect to go see Clara in a few days—as soon as we get a permit from the doctor, which may come any day now. It is pretty cold weather here, but we don’t mind it.

With warm regards to both of you [MTHHR 587-8].

June 29 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara in Norfolk, Conn.

Ah dear heart, I am very sorry you are not going to be able to sing the Two Grenadiers BUT I shan’t be sorry if you are with us instead of out on the concert stage singing for strangers.

Yes, my bronchial affection is in a sense permanent: my port lung got a permanent damage in Berlin, & if I should catch 500 colds they would all be followed by bronchitis.