Elmira, Hartford and England: Day By Day

January 28 Wednesday – Geer & Pond, Hartford booksellers, billed Sam for five additional copies of the periodical, The Independent [Gribben 343].

January 29 Monday – Sam lectured in Klein’s Opera House, Scranton, Pa. – “Roughing It” [MTPO].

January 29 Wednesday – In a letter to the Hartford Courant aimed at raising funds for Father Hawley’s efforts, and dated Jan. 28, Sam wrote that charity is:

January 3 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Richmond, Indiana – “Roughing It.” He also wrote his mother, Jane Clemens:

Dear Mother—Enclosed find checks for three hundred dollars. Please drop Livy a line acknowledging receipt of them, & tell her to let me know right away.

January 3 Friday – In Hartford, Sam telegraphed a response to Whitelaw Reid’s letter of Dec. 28, asking him to “write something, no matter what, over your own signature within the next week,”: “Will write the article today.” The untimely death of Horace Greeley had thrown the Tribune into chaos, and politics over ownership evolved into Reid buying controlling interest (with the help of Jay Gould).

January 3 Saturday – Sam wrote again from London to Livy, this time at 2 AM, but noted it was only 9 PM in Hartford.

January 30 Tuesday – Sam lectured in The Tabernacle, Jersey City, New Jersey – “Roughing It.” Sam had become used to introducing himself, and played it up for all the humor it offered. He often related the true story about a man out West who’d been forced to introduce him: “I don’t know anything about this man except two things, one is, he has never been in the penitentiary, and the other is, I don’t know the reason why” [MTL 5: 38].

January 30 Thursday – Sam wrote to the staff of the New York Tribune asking for copies of his British liberality letter, published on Jan. 27, about the award of the gold medal to Captain John E. Mouland [MTL 5: 291].

A load of hay was delivered by Paul Thompson [MTP].

January 31 Wednesday – Sam again took a ferry and lectured in Opera House, Paterson, New Jersey – “Roughing It” [MTPO]. Sam probably spent the night at Paterson’s Franklin House Hotel [MTL 5: 39].

Bill paid to Whiton & Gilletto $15 for 1&1/2 cord oak wood [MTP].

January 31 Friday – Sam donated his “Sandwich Islands” lecture at the Benefit for Father Hawley, Allyn Hall in Hartford. All services were donated; the benefit netted $1,500 for “Father” David Hawley in his charity work for the poor [Lorch 137]. Note: See Jan. 28 entry. Clemens gave one other lecture to benefit Hawley’s work, on Mar. 5, 1875. See entry.

January 31 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Frank Fuller in New York City. Sam wanted the Fullers to visit, as he was “entirely idle, & shall remain so for two weeks & possibly three.” Sam offered “a week’s glorification & general jollity…& we’ll have a royal good time telling lies & smoking” [MTL 6: 22-3]. Sam would have simply picked up the telephone, but Don Ameche hadn’t invented it yet.

January 4 Thursday – Sam arrived in Dayton, Ohio and stayed at the Beckel House, Room 169. In the evening he lectured “Roughing It” to a full house in the Music Hall. He wrote John Henry Riley about plans for the diamond book, thinking that he’d be ready to start the collaboration around the first week in March [MTL 5: 2-3].

Friend Riley—

Heaven prosper the Minister to S. A! Amen.

January 4 Saturday – Bill paid to H.A. Botsford for four bales of straw, etc., $15.68 [MTP].

January 4 Sunday – Sam wrote two letters from London to Livy, one in the daytime with “drizzling rain” and the other after a dinner engagement. Sam and Stoddard dined at the Dolby’s and had a “rattling good time.” Sam wrote about two 60-year old, “white-haired gentlemen” who were at the dinner and told the story of how each had rescued the other from poverty at various times in their youth. One was a Prussian; the other French.

January 5 Friday – Sam lectured in Opera House, Columbus, Ohio – “Roughing It” [MTPO].

A receipt from John Hooker for $100 for “house rent in full” is likely for one month, since later receipts for Hooker’s Nook Farm rent were $300 per quarter. Bill paid to E. Habenstein, baker for Livy, products not legible [MTP].

January 5 Sunday, before – William Dean Howells visited Sam and took a “frightful cold,” as mentioned in a letter from Howells to Charles Dudley Warner [MTHL 1: 12].

January 5 Monday – Sam spent “a good part of the day browsing through the Royal Academy Exhibition of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s” (1802-1873) paintings. He thought the work “wonderfully beautiful!” [MTL 6: 11].

January 6 Saturday – Sam “hired a locomotive…to keep from having to get up at 2 in the morning,” and made the trip from Columbus to Wooster, Ohio, where he lectured in Arcadome Hall – “Roughing It” [MTL 5: 11-12n3].

January 6 Monday – Sam sent another telegram from Hartford to Whitelaw Reid: “Have mailed second & concluding paper” [MTL 5: 266].

Sam’s letter dated Jan. 3, about the Sandwich Islands, “Death of King Kamehameha” ran in the New York Tribune [MTL 5: 264n1].

January 6 Tuesday – Sam wrote a short note of thanks from London to George H. Fitzgibbon, introducing John McComb of the Alta California [MTL 6: 14].

January 7 or 8 Thursday – Sam left London for Leicester [MTL 6: 16n1].

January 7 Sunday – Sam telegraphed from Wooster, Ohio to William Dean Howells to solicit Bret Harte and “the other boys” to get up a fund for William Andrew Kendall (1831?-1876), a poet who was ill in New York, to gain his passage back to California. Sam claimed he didn’t know Kendall, but Harte did, having published several of his poems while editor of the Overland.

January 7 Tuesday – Sam’s letter to the editor of the Hartford Courant ran on page one:

SIR: When you do me the honor to suggest that I write an article about the Sandwich Islands, just now when the death of the king has turned something of the public attention in that direction, you unkennel a man whose modesty would have kept him in hiding otherwise. I could fill you full of statistics, but most human beings like gossip better, and… [Courant.com].

January 8 Monday – Sam gave the “Roughing It” lecture in Concert Hall, Salem, Ohio [MTPO].

He wrote from Salem to Livy.

“Well, slowly this lecturing penance drags toward the end. Heaven knows I shall be glad when I get far away from these country communities of wooden-heads. Whenever I want to go away from New England again, lecturing, please show these letters to me & bring me to my senses” [MTL 5: 14].

January 8 Wednesday – Bill paid to Isaac Glazier & Co. of New York for three watercolors by “Miss Whiting.”(possibly Lilian Whiting of Boston) Also frames, misc., totaling $36.60 [MTP].