May 16 Tuesday – Sam sent a postcard from Hartford to Elisha Bliss, asking if the pictures were ready to ship and giving Moncure Conway’s London address. Sam received a postal card reply, sometime shortly thereafter as mentioned in his next letter to Conway [MTLE 1: 61-62].
The front page of the New York Evening Post of May 16, 1876:
The Atlantic Monthly.
May 16 Wednesday – Sam and Joe Twichell left Hartford and traveled to New Haven, Conn., where they took a night boat just before midnight to New York City and spent the night, [Powers, MT A Life 404; D. Hoffman 27] probably at the St.
May 17 Wednesday – Eighteen-year-old Charles S. Babcock wrote from Cambridge, Mass:
Mr. Clemens / Dear Sir, / I am going to make bold to ask of you a great favor. I wish to publish a small sheet, say, about 16×22 inches—divided into four pages of three columns each.
May 17 Thursday –Sam wrote from New York to Livy.
“Livy darling, it is 8.30 AM & Joe & I have been wandering about for half an hour with satchels & overcoats, asking questions of policemen; at last we have found the eating house I was after. Joe’s country aspect & the seal-skin coat caused one policeman to follow us a few blocks” [MTLE 2: 73].
May 18 Tuesday – Sam and Joe Twichell were on the way to a baseball game between the “Hartfords” and the “Bostons” (Hartford Dark Blues and the Boston Red Stockings) when they met Elisha Bliss and Bret Harte on their way to look at a house for Harte to rent [MTL 6: 483n3]. At the baseball game, Sam’s umbrella was stolen, leading him to write an announcement to
May 18 Thursday – A.H. Mead wrote from New Haven to say he was going to “let the law take its course in Gladding’s case.” He theorized that Ira Gladding had intercepted Sam’s letter and took the money [MTP].
May 18 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
Bright, sunny, mild—put on light overcoat for the deck. Mother Cary’s chicks very beautiful; bronze, shiny, metallic, broad stripe across tail; —built & carry themselves much like swallows. After luncheon I commenced feeding crumbs to a few over the stern, & in 15 minutes had a thousand collected from nobody knows where. We are very far from land, of course. They never rested a moment. This stormy Petrel is supposed to sleep on the water at night.
May – The fifth of seven installments of “Old Times on the Mississippi” ran in the Atlantic Monthly.
“American Humor, Part II,” by the Hon. Samuel S. Cox ran in Harper’s Monthly. The article comments briefly on Sam’s lamentations at Adam’s tomb: “This is the humorous sublime! It is the lachrymosely comic magnificent! This is only equaled by the HEATHEN CHINEE of Bret Harte” [Tenney, 1980 Supplement, American Literary Realism, Autumn, 1980 p169-70].
May – “Mark Twain and the Cats” ran in the May issue of the women’s magazine, The Globe. A New Musical Journal, Vol. V. No. 5, New York: Charles A. Atkinson & Co. p. 101-24. The article included an engraving of Sam and one of three cats [eBay June 6, 2009, # 200347763614].
May 19 Wednesday – Back in Hartford, Twichell came by Sam’s house and met Bret Harte. Twichell wrote in his journal he “…was a little disappointed in his looks” [Yale, copy at MTP].
May 2 Tuesday – Augustin Daly wrote from NYC: “Why don’t you come down here & play ‘Peter Spyk’ some Saturday night for one of my ‘Benefit’ occasions. / Would you— Will you—?—” [MTPO].
Moncure Conway wrote a postcard from Boston to Clemens about the release of TS.
May 2 Wednesday – Based on his May 1 note to Howells, Sam arrived back in Hartford. Donald Hoffman, however, puts May 1 as the day Sam arrived home, with a cold and bronchitis [25].
Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk, Ia.
My Dear Brother:— / I enclose a picture of the leech that draws the blood that Col. Sellers makes.
May 20 Thursday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam, praising the seventh and last installment of “Old Times”: “This is capital—I shall hate to have you stop!” [MTHL 1: 84].
William James Lampton (1851?-1917) wrote from St. Louis.
May 20 Saturday – A.H. Mead wrote for The Prisoners Friends’ Corp., Hartford, to Sam.
May 20 Sunday – Sam’s notebook entry: “6 AM Making land.” From “Idle Excursion”:
Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe stretched along under the horizon,—or pretended to see it, for the credit of his eyesight. Even the Reverend [Twichell] said he saw it, a thing which was manifestly not so. But I never have seen anyone who was morally strong enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that they could.
May 21 Friday – F.B. C. “a young man” (no fuller name given) wrote from Hartford begging for $125. “Please don’t blame me for wishing to conceal my name” [MTP].
Fred McIntosh wrote from Phila. to ask who “Gilderoy” was in Ch. 25 of IA [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Bid for autograph letter. ‘Too thin.’ ”
May 21 Monday – Bermuda. In the morning Sam and Twichell hiked again; they took a carriage ride in the afternoon [D. Hoffman 45]. Sam’s notebook:
Was awakened at 6AM Monday by our ambitious young rooster—looked out saw him swelling around a yellow cat asleep on ground. Birds, a bugle & various noises. Then a piano over the way…
Bought white shoes & pipe-clay. Walked till hurt heel. After noonday dinner
May 22 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells about deletions of songs and a proper ending to the Atlantic articles.
“There is a world of river stuff to write about, but I find it won’t cut up into chapters, worth a cent. It needs to run right along, with no breaks but imaginary ones” [MTL 6: 482].
May 22 Monday – Charles S. Babcock wrote again (see his of May 17), pressing his request for to use Mark Twain’s name in a publication [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the letter, “This is the Orion style of ass.” No record of a publication by young Babcock was found. See May 17 from Babcock.
May 22 Tuesday – Sam and Joe crossed the Causeway and arrived at St. George, Bermuda. They checked into the Globe Hotel at 32 Duke of York Street. The Globe was a “ponderous stone structure with huge chimneys” built in 1699-1700 as a governor’s house. The travelers registered under the names “S. Langhorne” and “JH Twichell USA” [D. Hoffman 50-1]. From “Idle Excursions”:
May 23 Sunday – The St. Louis Republican reprinted Sam’s remarks before the May 12 spelling match at Asylum Hill Congregational Church [Tenney 7].
May 23 Tuesday – William Hamersley wrote to Sam: “Gladding’s case will not come up for trial before July—possibly not till August…the court may give him 15 or 20 years…” [MTP].
May 23 Wednesday – Sam and Joe spent their four days on the island walking and talking, observing people, flora and fauna and the countryside. [Powers, MT A Life 405]. From Oct. to Jan. 1878, a serial publication of Sam’s about the trip ran in the Atlantic: “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” [Wells 22]. In this four-parter, the “fool” becomes the “Ass,” but it was all in fun—the men never lost mutual respect for the other.
May 24 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to P.T. Barnum, to thank him for another batch of “queer letters.” Sam had heard that Barnum was in the Hartford Library, but when he got there he discovered a man named Bernard was there. “I ought to have killed him, but as it was Sunday I let him go” [MTL 6: 486].
Sam wrote a $100 check to Patrick McAleer, family coachman, designating it as “house money” [MTP].
May 24 Thursday – Sam and Joe returned to Hamilton and boarded the Bermuda, preparing to leave. Charles M. Allen, the U.S. consul, came aboard to say goodbye to Charles Langdon and ask about his mother [MJNJ 2: 32].