May 21 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Mr. Clemens spends too much time over his work. Hours & hours & hours he sits writing with a wonderful light in his eyes. The flush of a girl in his cheeks and oh the lustre of his hair. It is too terribly perishably beautiful. It is no wonder that his tread is light as a spirit’s, for the great power of his brain seems to draw him up and to give him his delicacy of step [MTP TS 59].
May 22 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
We’re up in the hills now. All of us but Santissima. A little note this morning from Miss Gordon says that she [Clara Clemens] is improving wonderfully after her operation. Fighting a headache, I am too dull to write what was in my mind.
May 23 Tuesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Brander Matthews. “You have my deepest sympathy. These are black days. There are now but 13 days between me & the anniversary of anniversaries” [MTP]. Note: Matthews’ loss was not determined.
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
May 24 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Robert L. Fulton’s May 12 invitation.
May 25 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The microbe has fixed it—we won’t ever die, but live forever and ever as disintegrated oxygen and hydrogen and gases and acids and things. It’s quite dreadful and very fascinating. The mystery and workings of that brain. I’m reading away back in his first book and just loving that “Innocents Abroad”, with its choice way of looking at places and things and people and events centuries old. Today the music was very beautiful. Like a sweet spirit [MTP TS 60].
May 26 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon Mr. Thayer called, after he left Mr. Clemens said nice things about him, and then said he had seen him a quarter of a century ago when he went up to Hartford to make a black and white sketch of Mr. Clemens for the Century. Mr. Clemens was fighting the beginning of a cold so he took his whiskey bottle, and he said that in an hour he was very happily and comfortably drunk, but the black and white sketch wasn’t an entire success.
May 27 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Hubert H. Bancroft of San Francisco, who had written on May 21 inviting Sam to visit.
I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are over, & it is my desire & purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my remnant of life & indulge myself with the pleasure & repose of work—work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.
May 28 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day Mr. Clemens has been working too hard revising his microbe manuscript. This afternoon he was limp—exhausted—and tonight he went early to bed. Jean read aloud to me in Madame Laschovska’s book on Transylvania and I did not play the Beethoven today that I had planned to. / Mollie Ingalls writes many things among them that Walter Griffin has gone to Holland [MTP TS 61]. Emily Laszowska-Gerard. See May 16 entry.
May 29 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: There is tremendous news from the Japanese Russian War. Togo has beaten Rojesvesky, and taken ships and many prisoners, among them poor Rojesvesky—yes “poor”—for his joy is gone—he has failed utterly. 7,000 Russians gone. Oh, the terror of it, a rough sea and tremendous shelling, and sinking vessels. Oh, terrible beyond words [MTP TS 61].
Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: “Mr. Clemens has been working too hard, he is tired” [MTP: TS 20].
May 30 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Ah, it was splendid to see Mr. Clemens stand with his back to the open fire, and hear him sum up the way in which the Almighty has been personally conducting this Russian campaign against the Japanese. As many as 8 terrible defeats, but the Russian Church say that it is ordained of God and they rushed into battle headed by the cross. Yes, you find yourself thinking, thinking—after Mr. Clemens gets through a talk of that kind [MTP TS 61].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2:
May 31 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to John Larkin.
Mr. Clemens directs me to say that he has stopped the check that is due M . Renwick on June 1st, as you suggest in your letter of May 29thr
June – Century Magazine published Willis Gibson’s article, “Arkansas Fashion,” p. 276-92. Tenney: “A work of fiction which pleased MT with its many favorable references to him. The hero enjoys reading HF and has a cat named Tom Sawyer. For details see Gribben (1980), I, 257” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Fourth Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1980 p. 174].
June 1 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to William Evarts Benjamin.
I am very glad indeed that the Gardiner spirit is laid to rest at last; & largely because you can get a rest yourself, now; you deserve it, for you have heroically earned it, & may you get it in full measure & enjoy it. Miss Lyon brought your letter to me yesterday afternoon, & was so bursting with laughter that she couldn’t control her jaws long enough to get out an explanation. I joined in, when I struck your next-to-last sentence.
June 2 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam finished his June 1 to Joe Twichell.
P.S. / June 2/05
June 3 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: These days I am carried away by Margaret Oglevie [sic Ogilvy]. Barrie will never approach that book again. Late evenings after Mr. Clemens and Jean have gone to their rooms I sit before the open fire and read in the room steeped in tobacco smoke, such good contenting smoke. You want to cry in pain over the beauty of this living [MTP TS 62]. Note: Margaret Ogilvy (1896) by Sir James M. Barrie, was a rather maudlin tribute to his mother, Margaret Ogilvy.
June 4 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Today Jean and I drove along a lot of lovely highways and byways. Patrick’s horse is so nice to drive behind, and gives you only pleasurable emotions, doesn’t drive your heart into your throat by shying at nothing. We found lots of flowers and saw many birds too, and when we came home at 5 we found Mr. Clemens lying on the long couch, all cuddled up in his dressing gown for there wasn’t any fire in the room. Then after tea we had music. It is so good to be alive, and so alive [MTP TS 63].
June 5 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Today is the anniversary of the great tragedy of this family. Sunday evening after that long day with Mother in Florence and after a sweet chat with Santissima [Clara], Mrs. Clemens’s light went out—now I can see Mr. Clemens’s face when I flew into his room and told him to go to Mrs. Clemens’s room. “Is it an alarm?” he said—but I didn’t know, they only told me to run and get him [MTP TS 63].
June 6 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Wrote Mr. Duneka not to trouble Mr. Howells about the book or Mark Twain letters. C.C. & J.L.C. want to collect & compile the letters” [MTP TS 20].
writes of Clemens’ attempt to persuade Howells to take on his biography:
June 7 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper: “Please hand to bearer & charge to me, paper copy of your ‘Rudiments of Manners,’ also paper copy of your ‘How to Conceal Mental Vacancy & Seem Intelligent’” [MTP]. Note: Hill points out this sarcasm as one of Sam’s “savage moods” and “disbelief in the Harper integrity” [112].
June 8 Thursday – Clara Clemens’ 31 birthday. Clara was in Norfolk, Conn. In Dublin,N.H. Sam wrote to her in care of Mrs. Bratenglier.
June 9 Friday – Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to Robert E. Park, Secretary of the Congo Reform Association of America, in reference to John R. Gow’s June 6 inquiry. Some time ago Sam had instructed Harpers to forward “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” to them; he inquired on June 8 about the matter and they apologized that they’d been unable to find their address.
June 10 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens has introduced a delightful character into the microbe book—“Katherine of Arragon”—She is so sweet and so foolish and so innocent, and so profane and so sympathetic that she’s exactly right. Mr. Clemens is enjoying the writing of the book so much too. He doesn’t know that Katherine is anywhere around when in she pipes with a remark that staggers that dear cholera germ. Oh, it is so interesting, and its positively holy to hear Mr. Clemens read it [MTP TS 64-65].
June 11 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara in Norfolk, Conn. in care of Mrs. Bratenglier.
June 12 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: After dinner tonight I spoke of one or two things mentioned in his brother’s manuscript, about how he, Mr. C., had shocked his mother by dancing the Schottisch until a late hour on board the boat of which he was pilot. He was taking his mother on a trip down to New Orleans. Then Mr.
June 13 Tuesday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Katharine I. Harrison, asking her to transfer $2,000 from the Guaranty Trust to the Lincoln National Bank. She added, “Mr. Clemens is well” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Jean wasn’t well today. She went down to her study, but came back so weary and dazed. Today the Thayers lunched here and Mr. Clemens and Mrs. Thayer talked of the “Quaker City” for a long time. Did Mrs. Thayer know anything about Mrs. Fairbanks?” [MTP TS 65].