Hartford House: Day By Day

March – Harper’s Monthly printed “The First Century of the Republic,” by Edwin P. Whipple. This article described popular humorists like Artemus Ward, John Phoenix, and Mark Twain, who was said to be:

March – Sam’s short story, “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton,” ran in the Atlantic Monthly [Wells, 22]. It also ran on the front page of the Hartford Courant on Feb. 16 [Courant.com]

March 19 Friday – Susy Clemens’ third birthday; in a letter to her mother, Livy told of the presents that Susy shared with her baby sister “Bay” (Clara): dolls, candy, a silver setting, a gold ring, silver thimble, a Bible from the servants, and from her father a Noah’s ark with 200 wooden animals [Willis 97].

March 19 Sunday – Susy Clemens’ fourth birthday. Sometime during this next year, Sam wrote in The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by Trevelyan: “Susie’s aphorism (age 4) ‘How easy it is to break things.’ Her first remark in the morning sitting up in bed” [Slotta 35].

March 19 Monday – Susy Clemens’ fifth birthday.

The Boston Globe ran an interview on page 3 titled, “Mark Twain’s Tenets”—Sam’s remarks on politics and religion [Scharnhorst, Interviews 9-11].

Henry M. Alden (1836-1919) for Harper’s Magazine wrote “at the request of Mr. Moncure D. Conway” sending a check in U.S. currency the equivalent of £39..6s..6d sterling [MTP].

March 19 Tuesday – Susy Clemens’ sixth birthday was noted in Sam’s notebook [MTNJ 2: 54].

Sam’s notebook: “Lester writes (from Washington) one of the regular Jones-Lester non-committal half-promising for the 26th” [MTNJ 2: 55]. (See Mar. 13 & 26 entries.)

Sam’s Mar. 20 notebook entry for Mar. 19:

March 2 Tuesday – Nearly a foot of snow fell on Hartford, bringing the town to a halt and causing train delays to Boston and Albany.

Sam wrote to Howells, enclosing a favorable critique of ministers that Joe Twichell had clipped from a newspaper. Sam wrote that when Twichell heard Howells would be coming on Mar. 11 for a stay, he changed his schedule and canceled an exchange of pulpits with a New Jersey preacher.

March 2 Saturday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells sent Sam a postcard asking if “Saturday of next week” would “do for that projected visit?” [MTHL 1: 221].

March 20 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his old childhood friend, Will Bowen, who returned the $20 check Sam sent on or about Feb. 6 for Sam Bowen. Will felt his brother would never repay the loan. Sam insisted that it was for Sam Bowen to say whether or not he needed the check and to accept or return it. So Sam asked Will simply to give it to his brother and explain.

March 20 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles D. Scully, who wrote Sam a month earlier. Sam had misplaced the letter, more than once. He made a mock-apology for “turning that article upon an unoffending people” and thanked Scully for a reading-circle naming their society after him. Which article Sam meant isn’t clear, nor is the identity of Scully, beyond being the member or leader of some reading-circle of Mark Twain fans.

March 20 Tuesday – Sam purchased a copy of Fridthjof’s Saga, A Norse Romance by Esaias Tegnér from Osgood & Co. [Gribben 690]. See Nov. 13 entry for payment. Sam also purchased Bjorn Anderson’s translated Viking Tales of the North (1877) from Osgood [Gribben 24].

March 20 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Warren Stoddard of the empty Farmington Avenue house. Sam thought the family would be gone “two or three years.” Although Livy had written a loose itinerary, Sam purposely wanted to escape and not plan too much after that except to get some writing done. “We are packing trunks to-day,” Sam wrote [MTLE 3: 31].

Sam’s notebook entry included revision notes for “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” [MTNJ 2: 55].

March 22 Saturday – Sam purchased a small wedge of land along the eastern side of their lot and 40 feet on the south for $1,000, which increased his frontage on Farmington Avenue by twenty feet [MTL 5: 271n6; Salsbury 17].

March 22 Monday – Reginald Cholmondeley wrote from Funchal, Madiera.

March 22 Wednesday – Sam gave the “Roughing It in the Silver Regions” lecture, and “brilliantly inaugurated” the 1876 season of Kent Club lectures at Yale University. Tickets were “entirely by invitation” and “the Law School lecture room” was “filled to its utmost capacity by a delighted audience” [New Haven Morning Journal and Courier Mar. 22 and 23 p2 “Entertainments”].

March 22 Thursday – Sam purchased a copy of William Morris’ (1834-1896) The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of Niblungs (1877), for a discount price of $2.40 from Osgood & Co. [Gribben 487].

March 23 Tuesday – Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam.

March 23 Saturday – Sam had received Orion’s manuscript, and responded from Hartford with mild scolding about learning the trade (“God requires that he learn it by slow & painful processes”) and a sort of line-by-line critique. Sam was upset that Orion had imitated Jules Verne, and not burlesqued him [MTLE 3: 32-5]. One interesting point—Sam offered that he hated what had now become conventional language:

“Next came 100 people who looked like they had just been, &c”

March 23? Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, praising his effort on the play dialogue, and updating information on a lawsuit where the “villain got only $300 out of me instead of $10,000.” Sam wrote about beginning Orion’s biography the day before:

March 24 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Elisha Bliss, recommending Bliss write Dan De Quille (William Wright) about a possible book on the story of the Comstock Lode. Sam claimed:

“The first big compliment I ever received was that I was ‘almost worthy to write in the same column with Dan de Quille’ ” [MTL 6: 424-5].

March 24 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who had just left his home for a visit. Sam ended the letter saying he was to lecture three times in New York “for a benevolent object next week,” and hoped “to go to [Thomas] Nast with Charlie [Langdon]” [MTP].

March 25 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway, now his official agent for literary works in England. Sam had just received Conway’s telegram from England. Conway asked for electrotypes of the pictures True Williams made for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

March 25 Monday – Still in Hartford, Sam and Livy wrote a note of thanks to the young ladies of the Saturday Morning Club for sending flowers to wish them a bon voyage [MTLE 3: 37].

March 26 Friday – “The most notable feature of the furniture” for Sam’s study arrived, “& the place looked almost complete.” Sam planned on moving his “inkstand permanently into a corner of the billiard room,” as the noise from the nursery in the room adjoining his study made it difficult to write [MTL 6: 430 letter to Gray]. Note: He did his best writing in quiet surroundings, which is why he did most of the writing for HF at Quarry Farm, not at the Hartford house, as the tour guide

March 26 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William Wright (Dan De Quille). He gave Dan some advice on selling stock and his plans to lecture in New York:

….If you sell at a loss, jam the remnant into stocks again & sail on, O ship of State, sail on, sail on! You needn’t take the trouble to ask me, when you think it best to sell, but just bang away.