December 20 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Geraldine Farrar” [MTP TS 150].
Clemens’ A.D. of this day included: Capt. Osborn tells to Bret Harte, in a Californian restaurant, his adventure of falling overboard and his rescue. A tramp overhears him, claims to be his rescuer, is liberally rewarded, and afterwards discovered to be an impostor [MTP Autodict3].
William R. Coe sent Sam a large fold out map of Bermuda. No letter [MTP].
December 21 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Electric music. Bermuda.
The King is planning to go to Bermuda if Mr. Twichell can go too, & I’m to go as valet & myself. I’ve written to Mr. Twichell & now we’re waiting. Mr. Clemens would like to go there for the summer & has had me look up the temperature & other things. He thinks he’d like the isolation, but the lack of companionship would make more desolation for him than anything else, for he of all people must have companionship—mental companionship.
December 22 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to thank Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers) for the Christmas cigars and the kind remembrance. He would come up “pretty soon” to wish a Merry Christmas in person as he’d “worked off the several-days’ engagements which Clara had piled” on [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mrs. Fiske’s play” [MTP TS 151-152].
The New York Times, Dec. 23, p.2 ran an article about Mark Twain and the telephone, quoting him from the previous day, Dec. 22:
December 23 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied with thanks to the Dec. 18 of Helen Keller.
O, thank you for those lovely words!
Now as to your January visit: we must certainly meet then, & have a talk.
Another thing. You say,
“As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again & again.”
December 24 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
C.C. goes to spend tonight with the Gilders & she’ll hang up her stocking. The King wanted to be represented too in that stocking, so he sent me up to Vantine’s to buy a pin—it happened to be a jade pin & is good.
December 25, 1906 Tuesday Christmas
December 25 Tuesday Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam inscribed in a copy of What is Man? to Neltje Blanchan DeGraff Doubleday (1865-1918) (Mrs. Frank N. Doubleday) :
December 26 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. After musing over who it was that called and said her name was Mrs. Rogers, Sam offered this fictional dialogue about going to Bermuda in summer.
Naturally I came home yesterday almost entirely convinced that Bermuda-in-summer & suicide are interchangeable terms. By midnight I had almost come to the conclusion to retire from the experiment.
December 27 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Nov. 9 from David M. Jones.
Dear Father Jones: /It is a pleasant & welcome greeting and I thank you cordially for it.
December 28 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
“Puppy chew the soap.”
“Mr Clemens do you care to contribute to the Booth Memorial Fund?”
“No I don’t. I hate this idea of celebrities scratching each other’s backs & I don’t want anybody to be asked to contribute anything—for me!” [MTP TS 154-155].
December 29 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
December 30 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
December 31 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote a postcard to Andrew Carnegie and Louise W. Carnegie. “Unto / Mrs. Carnegie / & St. Andrew / a happy New Year & repetitions of it.† Mark” [MTP].
Sam also wrote a postcard to Gertrude Natkin at 138 W. 98 N.Y.C.: “A happy New Year to you, dear Marjorie, & many repetitions of the like!” [MTP]. Note: see Feb. 20, 1907 for her delayed reply.
The New York Times, p.1, reported on the New Year’s Eve party thrown at his home for Clara Clemens.
Christian Science Published, Flying Trips to Bermuda – Katonah Visits – Clara Tours - Damned Human Race Club – Suppression of Noises – Lease Tuxedo Park House - Aldrich Dies – Redding Plans – Last Trip to Elmira – 1 Angelfish – Jamestown - Saturday A.M. Club Reunion – Lost at Sea! – “Oxford Would Confer…”– Annapolis - Actors Fund Fair – Meets “Charlie”– Stevedores Shout – G.B. Shaw - Hectic Schedules – Postpones Funeral – Ascot Cup Stolen!
January – James Logan (1852-1929) mayor of Worcester, Mass (1908-1911) wrote to Sam, sending him a translation of Omar Kayyam by Eben Francis Thompson [MTP] Inscriptions: the portrait of E. F. Thompson is signed “Faithfully yours” by Thompson. Volume is inscribed: “To ‘Mark Twain’/Please accept this book as a partial payment on account for the many happy hours and hearty laughs which you have given me. With kind regards/faithfully yours/James Logan./Worcester, Mass.,/Jany. 1907.” Volume also signed: “SL. Clemens/1907.” Note: See Feb.
January 1 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean, about how he rang in the New Year:
Jean dear, we had grand times last night: “Sham,” played by Clara—burlesquing grand opera— assisted by [Witter] Bynner & George Gilder & Miss Burbank—most delightfully played. “Pain” played by me as a baby, with Miss Burbank for the mother & Miss Lyon as nurse. “Champagne” played by Bynner & me as the Siamese Twins” ( I getting drunk on wine drunk by him.)
January 3 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
It has been such a sweet, long, drowsing day, with a beautiful smooth sea; the King has slept, & so has Mr. Twichell …(there goes the dinner trumpet.) the picking up of loose ragged ends; getting ready for Hobby who will look after the mail while I’m away; & getting ready for & over the party. Of course I have relaxed.
January 4 Friday – The S.S. Bermudian reached Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda at 6 a.m. and docked about 9:30 a.m. The Clemens party registered at the Princess Hotel, next to the water just west of town. D. Hoffman writes:
January 5 Saturday – Bermuda: the Clemens party of Sam, Joe Twichell and Isabel Lyon chartered a boat, the Nautilus, and spend two and a half hours sailing in and out of the bays and inlets. Lyon details:
January 6 Sunday – Bermuda, the last day. The group spent the day riding through Paget and Warwick, then to Hamilton Parish and to Joyce’s Dock Caves, which were “brilliantly lit with acetylene gas, showing stalactites of enormous size.” Later in the day Sam and Joe tried to find places they’d been back in 1877, when they stayed in a boardinghouse run by Emily Kirkham. They asked about and found the woman, now 48. This search became a subject for his Autobiography, and evidently Sam dictated segments to Miss Lyon during the trip and the voyage home [D.
January 7 Monday – The Clemens party left Bermuda, again on the Bermudian. D. Hoffman writes:
As the ship sailed from the pier, the flag was dipped three times, and the King “lifted his head high and saluted with grave beauty,” Miss Lyon wrote. She said the little person at his side was Paddy, a pretty girl from the Upper West Side who had been on the same voyage to the Islands.
January 8 Tuesday – Sam was at sea en route from Bermuda to New York on the Bermudian.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The King is so amusing, so paralyzing. [written diagonally:] See notebook” [MTP TS 7]. Note: Lyon continued, likely at a later time, to strike out words, phrases and even whole segments, seemingly toward publication, which never, until now, has taken place.
January 9 Wednesday – In the morning Sam, Joe Twichell and Isabel Lyon arrived back in New York [D. Hoffman 77]. Twain told the press, “Please don’t say I have been away for my health. I have plenty of health. Indeed, I’ll give some of it away to anybody who needs health” [New York Times, Jan. 10, 1907].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “We anchored at Pier 47 this morning, but were a long time doing it because we had to avoid a sunken ferryboat. The week has been one of unbroken peace” [MTP TS 7].
January 10 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
January 11 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y., after dictating and playing billiards, Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Katonah.
Dear Jean, I do hope you are feeling happier, by this time, it wrung my heart to see you so disappointed, & I could not help thinking all the time how grieved your mother would have been to see you long for a thing—anything—& have to be denied it. [in a paragraph, Sam encouraged her to see the best in people; that she’d be happier that way]
