Elmira, Hartford and England: Day By Day

October 18 Wednesday – Sam lectured (“Uncommonplace Characters”) in Music Hall, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  Sam enlisted the help of “an old Californian friend” (unidentified) to cancel lectures in Easton, Penn., and Reading, Penn. for Oct. 19 and 20. The Easton Free Press had called the lectures in Bethlehem and Allentown a “failure,” so Sam was:

October 18 Friday – Sam wrote to an unidentified person about his plans to lecture in Great Britain.

“I think it will be 2 or 3 weeks before I shall really know whether I can lecture in Great Britain or not. So I am obliged to be thus indefinite in my reply. I certainly shall lecture about 8 or 10 times in this country if other & more necessary business shall permit” [MTL 5: 197].

October 18 Saturday – Sam repeated his “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Queen’s Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, London at 3 PM [Baetzhold 17]. The London Graphic reported:

Description of the manners and customs of the natives were interspersed with various witticisms, which were heartily appreciated and loudly applauded. Mr. Twain evidently has “the art of putting things.” The lecture, which lasted rather more than an hour, …was listened to throughout with great interest.

October – Sam’s article “A Brace of Brief Lectures on Science, Part 2” ran in American Publishing Co.’s in-house promotional monthly, American Publisher [Camfield, bibliog.].

October 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Wilkes-Barre, Penn. to Elisha Bliss. The typesetters had lost part of Ch. 18 of Roughing It, which described crossing the alkali desert. Sam could not focus to rewrite it and suggested perhaps they might have to omit the whole chapter [MTL 4: 477].

October 19 Saturday – Bill paid to Putnam Phalanx Market, Hartford grocers; steak, halibut, oysters, veal, chicken, etc. $15 [MTP].

Sam inscribed copies of “A Curious Dream”(issued this year in a pamphlet) and RI to Henry Lee: “To Henry Lee / From his friend /Mark Twain /Oct. 19, 1872” [MTP].

October 19 Sunday – Sam wrote from Room 113 at the Langham in London to Charles Warren Stoddard, who had arrived in England on Oct. 13 as a roving-reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.

October 2 or 3 Tuesday – Sam and Livy arrived in Hartford and took possession of the Hooker house on Forest Street in Nook Farm, a small community on the western reach of the city. John Hooker, descendant of Hartford’s founder, Thomas Hooker, began Nook Farm with a 100-acre tract.

October 20 Monday – Sam repeated his “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Liverpool Institute, Liverpool, England [MTPO]. The review by the Liverpool Mercury was effusive. It was also positive [MTL 5: 458n1].

October 21 Tuesday – Sam, family and party sailed from Liverpool for New York on the SS. Batavia [MTL 5: 451n1]. Sam had not received any proofs of The Gilded Age, but Livy’s homesickness (she was also pregnant again) led Sam to escort the family home and then to return for more lectures and to await the proofs in order to claim copyright.

October 22 Sunday – W.L. Denning did work at the Hartford rental house; also provided feather bed, 2 feather pillows, and misc. See Nov. 17 entry for payment [MTP].

October 22 Wednesday – Sam sent a note of thanks for books to an unidentified person. Sam dispatched the letter at Queenstown, Ireland [MTL 5: 458].

October 23 Monday – Sam gave the “Artemus Ward” lecture in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C. [One version of this speech is found in Mark Twain Speaking, 41-7]. The lecture attracted a record crowd for Lincoln Hall, some 2,000, with 150 crowded on stage. The reviews were mixed, and Sam found it difficult to lecture about a dead humorist, or to tell Ward’s jokes and make them funny [MTL 4: 480n3].

October 23 Wednesday – In Hartford, Hatch & Tyler delivered coal to the Clemens home [MTP].

October 24 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Institute Hall, Wilmington, Delaware – “Artemus Ward. ”

In Washington, D.C. at the Arlington Hotel, Sam wrote to James Redpath:

(The only hotel in this town) {WILLARD’S—O, my!—seventh-rate hash-house.}

October 24 Thursday – Bill paid to Arnold, Constable & Co. New York for cashmere, hat, five bibs $20.75 [MTP].

October 25 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Odd Fellows Hall, Norristown, Penn. – “Artemus Ward.” That morning Sam met Susan Dickinson, sister of the famous suffrage lecturer Anna E. Dickinson, who wrote to her sister:

October 25 Friday – Sam telegraphed from London to Henry Lee, also in the city.

“Can’t. I am in the family way with 3 weeks undigested dinners in my system, & shall just roost here & diet & purge till I am delivered. Shall I name it after you?” [MTL 5: 198].

October 26 Thursday – Sam spent the day traveling back to Hartford [MTL 4: 482n18].

October 26 Saturday – Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote to Sam [MTP]. COPY VIC

October 27 Friday – Sam lectured in Sumner Hall, Great Barrington, Mass. – “Artemus Ward.” Sam wrote at midnight (into Oct. 28) from Great Barrington to Livy that the lecture “went off very handsomely.” But the Great Barrington Berkshire Courier of Nov. 1 claimed that of the crowd of 400, at least 390 went away disappointed and dissatisfied [MTL 4: 482-3].

October 28-29 Sunday – Sam probably spent the free weekend in Hartford, only 60 miles away, then traveled to Brattleboro, Vermont.

October 29 Tuesday and/or November 1 Friday – Sam attended one or both of the stag hunts on these dates near the village of Wargrave, and wrote about the experience to Mary Fairbanks on Nov. 2 [MTL 5: 207n3].

October 3 Thursday – Sam wrote from London to Livy. Sam had received word that “poor old faithful Riley” had died. Isabella Beecher Hooker had supposedly retired from public life (she hadn’t), and Sam expressed how lovely Oxford struck him during a visit there [MTL 5: 188].

October 30 Monday – Sam lectured in Brattleboro, Vermont – “Artemus Ward.”