June 27 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, complimenting him on a circular claiming 150,000 sales for Innocents Abroad (a stretcher, for sure. 60,378 is more accurate.)
“Mr. Langdon is very ill. Sometimes we feel sure he is going to get well, but then again hope well nigh passes away. This morning the case looks so well that all are pretty cheery again” [MTL 4: 159].
June 28 Tuesday – Charles Langdon sailed from Liverpool on the Abyssinia. It arrived in Boston on July 8, not New York as Sam had thought in his letter of the previous day [MTL 4: 161n1].
June 4 Saturday – Sam’s article, “More Distinction,” a hilarious guide to raising chickens, ran in the Buffalo Express:
June 7 Tuesday – Jervis Langdon was sinking. Sam & Livy went to Elmira to help nurse him and to support Livy’s mother, Olivia Lewis Langdon [MTL 4: 149n1].
June 9 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, asking him to send an enclosure with a “nice copy of the book” to Edward H. House, Occidental Hotel, San Francisco. House was traveling to Japan. When he was critic for the New York Tribune he wrote an important and glowing review (May 11, 1867) of Sam’s first NY lecture, and Sam was thankful.
Late February – Livy’s cousin, Hattie Marsh Tyler, “who lived in the Buffalo area, dropped in. She filled Olivia’s ears with complaints about the female ‘help’ available in Buffalo. Around that time, just three weeks into running her new household, Olivia had needed to mildly scold servants Ellen and Harriet.
March 1 Wednesday – Sam sold his one-third interest in the Buffalo Express to George H. Selkirk for $15,000, to be paid over five years. Sam still owed Thomas A. Kennett (1843-1911). Sam repaid Jervis Langdon’s estate by the end of 1871, but by 1878 Selkirk had still not completed payment [MTL 4: 338].
March 10 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Orion. Sam reported that he had sent 160 pages of manuscript out to be copied and would ship them to Elisha Bliss. Bliss had offered to find a storage place for Sam and Livy’s furniture, which Sam wrote would not be needed:
March 11 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Francis P. Church. Sam offered to edit the humorous department of the Galaxy for $2,000 a year if they’d release copyright back to him upon publication.
March 11 Saturday – Orion Clemens wrote from Hartford to Sam:
March 12 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Big Thing,” was printed in the Buffalo Express. Commenting on an article from the Louisville Journal, Sam wrote:
How familiar that old gushing, tiresome bosh is!…I wish to ask the Louisville reporter the old familiar question, so common among reporters in the mines: “How many ‘feet’ did the doctor give you?” (“Feet are shares.) We always got “feet,” in Nevada, for whooping about a Nearly-Pure-Silver-National-Debt-Liquidator in this gushing way” [McCullough 166].
March 13 Monday – Orion Clemens wrote two letters to Sam. The first begins with: “I asked Mr. Bliss up into my room this morning and had a long talk with him. Said I: — ‘I compose with great difficulty. You or Sam would do it quickly.’ ” He continued to say that it would behoove Bliss to hire a girl at $30 for composing for the new newspaper. The second letter begins with: “Since writing the foregoing I have concluded to send you the children’s story.
March 14 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Susan Crane about Livy’s improving condition, the hiring of a wet nurse, card playing and baby Langdon—“the cubby is not well” [MTL 4: 358-9]. Sam also wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks with much the same information [360].
March 15 Tuesday – Sam accepted an invitation from a Mr. Nicholls to read for the G.A.R. [MTL 4: 92]. Note: Reigstad credits Martha Gray (Mrs. David Gray) with persuading Twain to speak as part of the Grand Army of the Republic’s lecture series. Reigstad writes:
March 15 Wednesday – Sam wrote a short note from Buffalo to his mother and family. “Livy sits up 2 hours at a time, but can’t walk yet” [MTL 4: 361].
Sam also wrote Redpath offering to lecture in the Northeast for $150, but for not less than $250 in Boston. He asked for confidentiality on the matter [362].
March 16 Wednesday – Sam telegraphed an unidentified person, declining to lecture “during the present season” [MTL 4: 92].
March 17 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss. After notifying Bliss that he was taking Livy to Elmira the next day, Sam wrote:
March 18 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Hattie Booth, an autograph seeker [MTL 4: 93].
March 18 Saturday – With Livy’s improvement, Sam & wife traveled to Quarry Farm, the home of Theodore and Susan Crane, Livy’s adopted sister.
March – Between March 1870 and March 1871 – Sam wrote 87 pieces for the New York Galaxy [Wilson 109]. He was offered two and a half times the normal rate for a regular humorous section in the magazine. He agreed only if the label of humor was not applied to his work. He thus wrote under a column titled, “Memoranda,” and his first article was published in May.
Livy’s cousin, Anna Marsh Brown stayed with the Clemenses “briefly” [Reigstad 134].
March – Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance was published (Note: Rasmussen gives February, p.49). “First Romance” was joined with the work but was first published on Jan. 1, 1870 in Buffalo Express [Budd, “Collected” 1008].
March 19 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Mysterious Visit,” a delightful spoof on income taxes and deductions, was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 166]. A second article attributed to Sam, “Literary Guide to Williams & Packard’s System of Penmanship,” also was printed in the Express [McCullough 170].
March 2 Wednesday – The Clemenses invited George H. Selkirk and wife Emily over for the evening. Selkirk was one of Sam’s Express partners [Reigstad 133].
Jervis Langdon replied to the Feb. 26 from Sam:
Dear Samuel,
March 2 Thursday – Sam advertised his Buffalo house for sale at $25,000, what it cost Jervis Langdon a year before [MTL 5: 338].
In a letter to his brother on Mar. 4, Sam identified this day as when he decided to “go out of the Galaxy” with a last “Memoranda” column [MTL 4: 341].
Frank Church wrote to Sam on this day, trying to placate him about the column: