May 25 Tuesday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to James Redpath:
TK Beecher is splendid in the pulpit—splendid is the word but I have never seen him on the platform at all—never have heard him lecture.
Our people all like his lecturing, but you ask me for my opinion, & individually, & so I have to confess ignorance [MTP, drop-in letters].
May 25 Friday – From Sam’s letter cited above:
At 4 p.m., May 25, twenty-four hours out, our position was 250 miles northwest from Bermuda…[Sam made] a rude pencil sketch of a disabled vessel, & this note concerning it:—
May 27 Thursday – Joaquin Miller visited Sam and Livy in Hartford. Miller had traveled in the East after a trip abroad, and stopped in Hartford on the way from Boston to New York. Dan De Quille (William Wright) also arrived in Hartford and took a room at the Union Hall Hotel [Powers, MT A Life 377]. That evening, Miller, Thomas K.
May 27 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway who had written Sam of an early publication date by Chatto of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Sam asked for prospective newspaper reviews from England and mentioned a postal card he’d received from Bliss over a week ago. Sam asked for two or three early copies of the book. In a teasing barb to Conway, Sam ended by saying the family would:
May 27 Sunday – Sam and Twichell arrived home in Hartford [Powers, MT A Life 405].
May 28 Friday – Joaquin Miller may have stayed a day or two at Sam’s, but wrote John Hay on this day that he was with Clemens but would be at the Windsor Hotel in New York that evening.
May 28 Monday – Twichell wrote of the Bermuda trip in his journal upon his return, that he’d gone “with M.T. who paid all my expenses” [Yale 174].
May 29 Monday – Miss Ave Nick wrote from Chicago to Sam, clipping enclosed. She asked for an autographed photo of Twain. The clippings were unusual events around the various states [MTP].
May 29 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, revealing that he had traveled to Bermuda under an assumed name, and lamenting the fact that Howells had not been on the trip:
May 3 Thursday – The New York Daily Graphic ran “Mark Twain and His Chairman,” by “Gath,” (George Alfred Townsend) Sam’s comments on the actor Charles Parsloe [Scharnhorst, Interviews 13-14].
May 30 Sunday – Thomas K. Beecher gave two sermons at Twichell’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church, and wrote a letter to his wife Julia on Sam’s typewriter [MTL 6: 487].
Sister M. Juliana wrote from Providence, R.I. to thank him for the autograph [MTP].
May 31 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to William F. Gill, telling him not to announce Mark Twain as a future contributor to Gill’s “Treasure Trove” series. Sam demanded that Gill give notice in writing that future offerings would not include Sam’s sketches. It was Gill who had “burnt” Sam by denial to use “Encounter with an Interviewer,” as sketch which had appeared in Lotos Leaves [MTL 6: 488-9].
May 31 Wednesday – Sam gave a reading at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church [Andrews 50]. Also, Twichell’s parish scrapbook, described by Messent, contains a notice of “Concert and Readings by the Park Church Quintette and ‘Mark Twain’ at the chapel of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church,” scheduled for this day [386]. Note: the church had 186 pews, seating 930 people [Strong 49].
May 31 Thursday – A.P. Hodgkins of Chelsea, Mass. wrote a fan letter from Rome, Italy [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “From an admirer”
May 4 Tuesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam, enclosing C.J. Dean’s letter to him. Dean was Howells’ “dear old Uncle Alec…palsied for fifteen years,” who was enjoying the serialized “Old Times on the Mississippi” articles in the Atlantic [MTHL 1: 80].
May 4 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam replied to the May 2 from Augustin Daly, playwright and theatre promoter. Daly had invited Sam to play Peter Spyk in a New York production. Sam answered that he was modest enough to serve a decent apprenticeship before trying Broadway.
May 4–16 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles E. Perkins, his attorney and financial manager, asking for an accounting of interest on his various investments totaling $31,000. Sam complained that Fanny C. Hesse’s “accounts are so intolerably mixed,” that he couldn’t figure them out [MTLE 2: 62].
May 5 Friday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Moncure Conway (answering his May 2 postcard) about Bliss sending The Adventures of Tom Sawyer pictures to Chatto by the end of May. Sam enclosed the new picture of the children and told of Susy’s brush with death from diphtheria. Sam closed with the news that James T.
May 5 Saturday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to his brother Orion in Keokuk about his private secretary’s carelessness at forgetting to send “the usual checks” for Orion. Sam enclosed them. He had a “very bad cold in the head” and couldn’t send details. “…the time is needed for swearing” [MTLE 2: 64, 65].
May 6 Thursday – The Gilded Age play performed an encore “before a good-sized audience” in Hartford, where it had two good productions on Jan. 11 & 12 [Cook 13]. According to Andrews, Sam was instrumental in breaking down the taboos against attending stage productions in Hartford [98].
May 6 Saturday – Moncure Conway wrote from London, England that TS was close to publication there: “The last revise of the last proof of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, By Mark Twain’, passed out of my hands three days ago and it cannot be long before that hero walks into my study in a dress neat enough to excite the Huckleberrian disgust” [MTP].
May 6 Sunday – From Livy’s diary:
We are having a wonderfully restful Sunday morning. We neither of us went to church….
The children have been out gathering wild flowers and have brought me such a beautiful lot. I am going down now pretty soon to arrange them.
Mr. Clemens and I are sitting on the west balcony out of the billiard room, it is warm and pleasant, but Mr. Clemens has a terrible cold in the head—As I look down to the stream I see our four ducks—we have also six little ducks…[Salsbury 62].
May 7 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells, who had written two letters, one praising the Gilded Age play. Howells said he had “done some shouting” over Raymond’s portrayal of Col. Sellers at the May 1 performance at Boston’s Globe Theater.
May 7 Sunday – Sam traveled to Boston along with Joe Twichell; Livy stayed home to nurse Susy, who was recovering from “about the savagest assault of diphtheria a child ever did recover from” [MTHL 1: 117; 133; 136]. They probably met at the Parker House as planned and enjoyed dinner.
May 7 Monday – Ah Sin opened in Washington for a week long trial before a New York premier.