February 7 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a reminder invitation to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) to attend the “Doe-Luncheon” at 1 p.m. Feb. 11 [MTP].
February 8 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally.
Francesca dear, I (and Ashcroft) got back from Bermuda night before last, after a pleasant absence of 13 days. I’ve brought you a Bermuda jewel & Miss Lyon will presently dispatch it to you when Ashcroft sends it to the house. It is decorated with an image of Bermuda’s pride, the angel-fish. It is utilitarian—this jim crack. I think it’s a hairpin, but other authorities think it’s a safety.
February 9 Sunday – Dorothy Quick was spending the weekend with Clemens. She left the next day.
February 10 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day the King has been playing with Dorothy, & when she left this afternoon he went upstairs quite lonely, but tired too & so he slept. I was having a long interview with a Dr. Beal who is a friend of the Col. Ingersoll family and surreptitiously he is trying to interest some rich people to buy the house Mrs. Ingersoll is now living in. And the man told me how he had been the one to start the fund for Mr. Clemens when he met with his failure through the Webster Company.
February 11 Tuesday – Sam hosted his second “Doe Luncheon” at 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. [Feb. 7 to Mary Rogers; IVL TS 20].
Sam also sketched drawings to Dorothea Gilder and Helena Gilder (Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder), guests of the luncheon. To Dorothea he drew a sailboat with two figures on deck and one falling overboard, then wrote, “Ship sinking—man overboard / SLC.” To Helena he wrote a lady with an umbrella in the rain and wrote, “Lady out in the rain / SLC.” [MTP].
February 12 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Jan. 16 from Eden Phillpotts about Phillpotts’ proposed book dedication to Mark Twain:
My dear friend: / Indeed there is not a single syllable to be altered. The dedication pleases me “to the limit”—it could not be improved. I am anticipating a good time in the society of that book.
February 13 Thursday – In the evening at 21 Fifth Ave. Clara Clemens gave a musical presentation to about 140 persons, accompanied by Miss Marie Nichols of Boston, a violinist, and Charles E. Wark, pianist The NY Times, Feb. 14, p 7, “Miss Clemens’s Musicale” lists the following 60 guests. See also Sam’s Feb. 14 to Jean.
February 14 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Greenwich, Conn.
February 15 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Such a sweet comfort of an evening I have had with the King, after a busy & fluttering kind of a day. Mr. Rogers came in for a long talk this morning. Brio left at 12:45, leaving a baddish taste in Santa’s mouth. At 2:15 C. Teller called up asking if the King would come to the telephone, but he wouldn’t of course, & then she sent in a note asking him to go to the Brevort (where she is stopping) in order to do some work which he alone could do.
February 16 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to William Augustus Croffut.
My dear Croffut:
You will see by this morning’s clipping that there is hardly any likelihood that the Knickerbocker will resume business. My deposit is $51,199, & I am not expecting 15 per cent of it to escape alive.
February 17 Monday – Sam inscribed a copy of Eve’s Diary to Kim C. Tabley: “To / Mrs. K.C. Tapley / with compliments of / The Author. / Clothes make the man, but they do not improve the woman. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Feb/08” [Nate D. Sanders, Autographs, eBay # 170659440080 June 26, 2011]. Note: evidently Twain thought her last name was “Tapley,” though the incoming (below) clearly shows “Tabley.”
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Yes, we are to go to Bermuda on next Saturday” [MTP: IVL TS 24].
February 18 Tuesday – Sam’s A.D. of Feb. 19 discloses his activities for the day and evening:
Yesterday I spent two pleasant and exciting hours witnessing a Ben Johnson masque performed at the Plaza hotel by about twenty young and attractive creatures of the two sexes, and it was wonder for rich and beautiful costumes, for excellent singing, and for acting which I had not seen approached before by amateurs. I dined out in the evening at the Doubledays’; and went from there to the Guinnesses, in Washington Square. By eleven a great throng had gathered.
February 19 Wednesday – In the evening Sam attended the Pilgrim’s Club Dinner at Delmonico’s in honor of Ambassador to England, Whitelaw Reid. The New York Times, Feb. 20, p. 3 reported:
AMBASSADOR REID THE PILGRIM’S GUEST
Tells Them Talk of War with Japan is Silly and That England Wouldn’t Aid Her.
——— ——— ———
CHEER KING AND PRESIDENT
Ex-ambassador Choate Presides In President Duncan’s Absence—Mark Twain Speaks.
February 20 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick in Plainfield, N.J.
Wednesday An hour after Midnight
I got your dear Valentine, which I prize, & today I got your letter, & I thank you for it. And you didn’t take a single prize! Oh, you dear little rat, it was a shame, & I am sorry. Clara was very busy, or she would have sent you a Valentine. She is grieving, now, because she forgot it.
February 21 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote a letter of introduction to Albert Bigelow Paine for Joe Goodman [MTP: Am. Art Assoc-Anderson Galleries catalogs, 11-12 Nov. 1937, No. 4346, Item 88]. Note: Paine would travel in the West gathering information for the Mark Twain biography.
February 22 Saturday – Sam, Isabel V. Lyon, H.H. Rogers, and William Evarts Benjamin sailed again for Bermuda. Rogers brought along his valet. Lyon noted in her journal that “Mr. Rogers came feebly onto the boat, a sick sick man” [MTHHR 645n1; D. Hoffman 102].
In his A.D. of Feb. 19, Sam had said:
February 23 Sunday – A somewhat longer article on H.H. Rogers and Twain leaving for Bermuda ran on the front page of the New York Times.
ROGERS AND TWAIN SAIL
———
Exchanging Jests on the Pier—Financier Thinks the Outlook Bright.
“This is what I get for being in bad company,” said Mark Twain, humorist, pointing to H. H. Rogers, financier, when a host of interviewers descended upon him yesterday morning on the deck of the steamship Bermudian, previous to their departure for Bermuda.
February 24 Monday – The Clemens party arrived in Bermuda and Sam checked into the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda where he wrote two postcards to Frances Nunnally.
Francesca dear, I got your letter just as I was leaving New York—thank you dear.
I am writing now because I suppose that the linchpin got lost in the mails; & if that is so, I want you to drop me a line here, so that I can replace it with another.
February 25 Tuesday – In Bermuda, Sam made another excursion in the donkey cart, this time to Spanish Point with Irene Gerken. Reginald handled the donkey as before, while Isabel Lyon, Elizabeth Wallace, and William Benjamin all walked. H.H. Rogers did not go [D. Hoffman 105]. See Lyon’s entry below:
February 26 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. NY, Isabel Lyon telephoned Albert Bigelow Paine after discovering some missing older letters of Clemens’. Isabel Lyon’s diary:
Tino [a nickname for Paine] in Redding…to ask about letters that I am missing and that the King and Santa [Clara] would hold me responsible for. He was cross and answered in a burst of ill temper that he had many letters and would take them when he wanted to. This is not quite right of Tino—and is a new and regrettable attitude [Hill 201].
February 27 Thursday – In Bermuda, the Clemens party was entertained by a baseball game [D. Hoffman 105].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Ball game today / I turn on the practical faucet & suggest a publisher. This apropos to Miss W’s [Wallace’s] charming ms. reminiscent of her life in France. She’s been reading it to me on the porch & I went off to find the King just arrived from a trip to town with Mr. Rogers. St. Simeon Slylites—or Skylights—[MTP: IVL TS 27-28].
February 28 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: There was a cold & tearing wind all day, so that when the Trinidad finally got in after lying to anchor outside the harbor, her smoke stacks were white with brine, & her few passengers looked wearily shaken. This morning Sorellatua & I went to a quaint little Belgian woman who has brought a quantity of lovely lace here for sale. The King drives out, & he walks out, & he is gay & young & full of a new and splendid life. Mr.
February 29 Saturday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam began a letter to daughter Clara that he added a PS to on Mar. 2.
March – Burr McIntosh Monthly (NY) ran a portrait of Twain and daughter Clara, p. 57-8,. Tenney: “Accompanying text states that MT had approximately $50,000 on deposit at the Knickerbocker Trust Company in New York at the time of the crash; he opposed establishing a permanent receivership on the grounds that it would be as expensive to maintain as a harem: ‘Anybody who has had experience in this line will endorse my statement’” [45].
March 1 Sunday – In Bermuda, the Clemens party took an excursion to see the new island aquarium, which had opened on Jan. 1, 1908. D. Hoffman gives “the effervescent and obliging U.S. consul,” W. Maxwell Greene as organizer of the trip, and writes: Goodwin Gosling, secretary to the Bermuda Natural History Society, also came aboard….