Sandwich Islands Tours: Day By Day

December 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Isabella A. Cotton, one of his companions on the Smyrniote sailing ship from Hawaii, about his plans to leave on the “Opposition” steamer on Dec. 15. He forgot to enclose a picture of himself, and so sent a second note [MTL 1: 371-2].
Sam also wrote his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, and family. Sam wrote he was:

December 5 Wednesday – Governor Frederick Low, and Henry Blasdel, Governor of Nevada and others invited Sam by to repeat his first lecture before he departed California [MTL 1: 373n1]. Note:
Lorch concludes it “may never be known” if Sam arranged this invitation, “but it must be confessed that the phrasing …has the earmarks of being genuine” [48].

December 6 Thursday – Sam replied to Governor Frederick Low and others accepting their Dec. 5 invitation to repeat his lecture on the Sandwich Islands at Congress Hall on Monday, Dec. 10 [MTL 1: 372].
Sam’s letter, MARK TWAIN’S INTERIOR NOTES [II]. ran in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Subheadings: “To Red Dog and Back,” “A Memento of Speculation,” “An Aristocratic Turn-Out,” and “Silver Land” [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].

December 7 Friday – Sam’s letter, MARK TWAIN’S INTERIOR NOTES [III]. ran in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Sections: “San Jose,” “Silk,” and “Mark Twain Mystified” [Schmidt].
Camfield and Benson both list “Mark Twain Mystified” as running first in the Evening Bulletin [bibliog.; 165].

December 9 Sunday – Sam’s article “Mark Twain Mystified” was re-printed in the San Francisco Golden Era.
“I cannot understand the telegraphic dispatches nowadays, with their odd punctuation—I mean with so many question marks thrust in where no question is asked.” Sam complained that this tore up his mind on the “eve of a lecture” [Fatout, MT Speaks 34].
Another article, “’Mark Twain’ on the Dog Question,” was published in the Morning Call [Schmidt].

February 1 Friday – Sam’s Feb. 2 letter to the Alta California referred to the prior night’s visit to the Century Club. (the letter ran in the Mar. 28 Alta.)

February 17 Sunday – From Sam’s Feb.18 Alta letter, published Mar. 30:
BISHOP SOUTHGATE’S MATINEE

February 18 Monday – From Sam’s letter this date to the Alta, published Mar. 30, reveals perhaps his first interest in automated typesetting:

STEREOTYPING MACHINE

February – Sam went to popular shows and lectures, measuring his own attraction against what sold well in the big city. He crammed into a space “about large enough to accommodate a small spittoon” and, on the 3rd, studied the “performance” of the popular preacher, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1889).

February 19 Tuesday – At Cooper Hall in New York City, Sam was impressed by the platform speaking of 24-year-old Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932), a Quaker girl who had been speaking for five years. Sam was in the audience at Dickinson’s lecture, “Something To Do, or Work for Women.” Dickinson was a force in the suffrage movement, and instrumental in adoption of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

February 2? Saturday – Sam wrote from New York to Mollie Clemens (now in Keokuk), complaining about Orion’s request of him to seek Judge Dixson about an advance on some mining stock. Sam wrote he was going to Washington (he did not go.) He also mentioned some “good offers” he’d had from New York newspapers. Sam soon agreed to supply seven sketches at $25 each to the Sunday Mercury; a sketch for the Evening Express; and reprints of his Sandwich Islands Letters for the New York Weekly [MTL 2: 10-12].

February 21 Thursday – This announcement appeared in the editorial column of Street and Smith’s New York Weekly, p. 4:

February 22 Friday – Alta California p. 1, col. 4, ran Sam’s “Letters from Mark Twain” Number 2, dated Dec. 20, “On board steamer COLUMBIA,” [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].

February 23 Saturday – Sam’s Alta letter with this date complained of suffering from “the blues” and that his “thoughts persistently ran on funerals and suicide” [MTNJ 1: 301].

Edward P. Hingston, agent for Artemis Ward. wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Sam’s Feb. 23 to the Alta. “He is rusticating at the seaside. The hope is that he will be well in a week or two and able to reappear.” [MTP]. Note: the article ran in the Alta on 5 Apr 1867.

February 24 Sunday – Alta California prints Sam’s “Letter from Mark Twain” number 3, dated Dec. 23, 1866, with article “Steamer COLUMBIA at sea” [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].

February 3 Sunday – Sam, promised a seat in the pew of New York Sun owner Moses Sperry Beach (1822-1892) if he’d come early, went to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn to hear the sermon by Henry Ward Beecher [Hirst and Rowles, “William E. James” 17]. Sam related the experience in his Alta letter of Mar. 30, 1867:

HENRY WARD BEECHER

January 1 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Slept on the Cora on floor & hammocks at woodyard first night out from Castillo. Started at 2AM & got to Greytown at daylight” [MTNJ 1: 267].
From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter:

January 10 Thursday – From Sam’s notebook:
26 days out from Sanfrancisco to-day—at noon we shall be off Cape Hatteras & less than 400 miles south of New York—(day & a half’s run).
We shall leave this warming pan of a Gulf Stream to-day & then it will cease to be genial summer weather & become wintry cold. We already see the signs—they have put feather mattresses & blankets on our berths this morning [MTNJ 1: 293].

January 11 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
7 PM—Been in bed all day to keep warm—fearfully cold. We are off Barnegat—passed a pilot boat a while ago. We shall get to New York before morning. The d—d crowd in the smoking room are as wildly singing now as they were capering childishly about deck day before yesterday when we first struck cold weather [MTNJ 1: 295].

January 12 Saturday – About 8 AM, the San Francisco steamed into the icy harbor of New York. Sam took a room at the Metropolitan Hotel, a favorite stop for Californians and Washoe miners at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street [Sanborn 311; MTL 2: 2]. The voyage from hell was over and cholera had not claimed Mark Twain. Sam sent a telegram to the Alta California giving details of the cholera outbreak aboard the steamer San Francisco [MTNJ 1: 296]. Sam planned to publish a book on the Sandwich Islands based on his letters to the Sacramento Union.

January 13 Sunday – Sam’s telegram dated Jan. 12 to the Alta ran on the front page of that newspaper titled “Cholera in Nicaragua” [MTNJ 1: 296n65; Camfield bibliog.].

January 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from New York to Edward P. Hingston (1823-1876), Artemus Ward’s theatrical manager. Sam had enjoyed carousing with Hingston and Ward in 1863 in Virginia City. He boldly asked Hingston to come from England and be his manager, “Ward is so well established in London, now, that he can easily spare you till you have given me a start.” Sam informed Hingston of his successful tour and full houses and his invitations to lecture in Cincinnati, Boston, and St. Louis [MTL 2: 8-9].

January 17 Thursday – A giant snowstorm hit New York. Temperatures were in the twenties.

January 18 Friday – Sam’s “Letter from Mark Twain” dated Dec. 20, 1866, subtitled “Away” ran in the Alta California, p.1 col. 3 [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].

January – Sam wrote a spoof of Victor Hugo’s novel, The Toilers of the Sea (1866) while aboard the steamer San Francisco [MTNJ 1: 280-4].