May 5 Sunday – The NY Times included a telegram supposedly sent on May 4 by Sam to Milton Goodkind in a spoof article about Sam being lost at sea:
MARK TWAIN INVESTIGATING,
———
And If the Report That He’s Lost at Sea is So, He’ll Let the Public Know.
May 5 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Eulabee Dix / Mr. Clemens remembers that you want a sitting for his hand./ Margery. / Mustn’t forget that Mr. Clemens is counting on your & Carolines visit. It isn’t entirely selfish” [MTP: IVL TS 52]. Note: this entry is on a separate scrap of paper, undated and placed in this date; it may not relate.
May 6 Saturday – Sam was enjoying the company of the H.H. Rogers family in Fairhaven,Mass.
May 6 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
May 6 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) who had sent a note [not extant] with Harry Rogers.
To the Shah-in-Shah of Nieces— / Greeting & salutation:
May 6 Wednesday – In N.Y.C. Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to Frederick A. Duneka.
“Mr. Clemens asks me to write for him & say that as these people want such a small quantity of stuff, & as it would look better to be in the collection than out of it, if you have no objection he will tell them to go ahead” [MTP]. Note: likely some unidentified group wanting to reprint snippets of Mark Twain’s published works, though also unidentified.
May 7 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens left last Friday with Mr. Rogers and now he’s in Fair Haven. Jean had a telegram that Mr. Clemens will not arrive as soon as expected. The house needs him so dreadfully. He is so much the master of us all.
Jean is reading now Wolf von Hierbrandt’s [sic] book on the Kaiser, and we find it very interesting. I’ve began my pincushion work.
May 7 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Otis Skinner (1858-1942), actor and a star since the mid 1890s. Clemens came to the defense of Mary Lawton:
Dear little Otis:
So you have discharged her! Your reasons have greatly interested me. To-wit: She is too tall. But she is no taller than she was when you engaged her.
She is too large. But she is no larger now than she was then.
Her voice isn’t right. But it is the same voice that was satisfactory before.
May 7 Tuesday – Sam wrote daughter Jean on May 14 after his return from Annapolis that he spent “the 7 to meet engagements.” He did not specify; no more is known.
Clemens gave Isabel Lyon power of attorney to sign checks for him [Hill 222]. The Lyon- Ashcroft MS contains the full text of this document, as follows:
May 7 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “I dined, Mother too, with the Waylands at the Café Beaux Arts and then we went to see Margaret Illington [Frohman] again in ‘The Thief’”[MTP: IVL TS 52].
Charles H. Keep for the Knickerbocker Trust sent a form letter thanking Sam as one of their depositors, allowing them to reorganize [MTP].
May 8 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The resting is so sweet. Perhaps the long flights of stairs at #21 [Fifth Ave.] began to shred my nerves and physical condition” [MTP TS 56].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Mr. Clemens returned to town—is detained by business” [MTP TS 18].
George H. Warner wrote from Tryon, N.C. to Sam, enclosing a newspaper clipping about Canadian fishing, “Angling for Big Gray Trout.”
Dear Mark Twain / I thought of you when I read the enclosed as the only one capable of doing it justice.
May 8 Tuesday – Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote to John B. Stanchfield with a copy to Sam. “Wright called at my office to-day. He said he has been out to the Coast recently. He said also that Butters had now plenty of money; was largely interested in the Realty Bonding & Finance Company, of Oakland; was actively connected with some new traction syndicates building trolleys in Northern California; and that some of his Oakland property has doubled in value recently.” He gave an address for Wright in E. Orange, N.J. [MTP].
May 8 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a cable to C.F. Moberly Bell, editor of the London Times: “I PERCEIVE YOUR HAND IN IT YOU HAVE MY BEST THANKS SAIL IN MINNEAPOLIS JUNE 8 DUE IN SOUTHAMPTON DAYS LATER. / CLEMENS” [MTP].
May 8 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick.
(Joan of Arc’s Day.)
Your letter came last night, dear, & brought me such a disappointment. I am so sorry you have a cold, but glad you are taking proper care of it. It would not be wise for you to make a journey in the draughty cars at such a time.
May 9 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
dear, there has not been a single week of the past 48 which has not brought me reason to say “how grateful I am that Livy is out of it!”
How did she ever live in this execrable world? & why did she love it & wish to stay in it?
Jean does not know why I do not go to Dublin, & I do not want her to find out. I am staying here because Clara is to be operated on for appendicitis to-morrow afternoon & 4 o’clock.
May 9 Thursday – At 9 a.m. [May 14 to Jean] Sam and Isabel Lyon took a train for Baltimore, Maryland, where he would be a guest of Governor Edwin Warfield (1848-1920) and deliver a benefit lecture in Annapolis. Warfield had been mentioned as a future presidential candidate. It had been in Sam’s plans at least since Apr. 22, when he wrote of it to Jean. Though she did not know him, Emma Warfield (Mrs. Edwin Warfield), a member of the First Presbyterian Church, had written asking Mark Twain to speak for a church benefit.
May 9 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.
Dear Miss Dorothy:
November 1 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
November 1 Friday – Overland Monthly ran a sketch of Mark Twain by Alice Resor, accompanied by excerpts of IA reprinted from the magazine’s Oct. 1868 issue [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 192].
November 10 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote to the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
“I desire to vote yea upon the question of electing Mr. William Milligan Slone [sic Sloane] as a member of the Academy, to fill the vacancy caused by the declination of Mr. William James” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Mr. Clemens went to see Mr. Charles Frohman this morning about Miss Mary Lawton’s theatrical affairs” [MTP TS 33].
November 10 Saturday – Sam wrote of playing billiards until 1:15 a.m.: “I got but poor sleep afterwards & was pretty tired next day. I stayed home at night [Nov. 10] & did not go to the Alden feed. Those who went to it did not reach their beds until 4 a.m.—Howells & Paine included—but Aldrich got here at 2 a.m.” [Nov. 13 to Jean].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
T.B. Aldrich is so disappointing in appearance & in qualities of all kinds that go to make up the literary man bearing a high reputation.
November 10 Sunday – Poultney Bigelow sent a postcard to Miss Lyon: “…accepts with delight for Tuesday Nov. 19th” [MTP].
John A. Joyce wrote from Washington, D.C.. Joyce broke down when reading in the NAR of Susy Clemens’ last words, because it brought the memory of his own daughter’s death 20 years before [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Nov. 13, ‘07”
J. Van Vechten Olcott wrote from NYC to thank Sam for letting him know what the Tribune supplement published this day [MTP].