May 12 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the American Publishing Co., asking that cloth copies of Sketches and Tom Sawyer be sent to Hon. J.R. Goodpasture of Nashville, Tenn. (unidentified). Sam also wanted a statement of earnings for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to Apr. 1 [MTLE 2: 67].
May 13 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William B. Franklin, former Union General who led Ulysses Grant’s West Point class. Sam usually addressed Franklin as “General.” Sam recommended interior decorators, Marcotte of New York and the Household Art Company in Boston to bid some project of Franklin’s. “New York is full of bastard furniture-constructors & decorators,” he wrote [MTLE 2: 68].
May 14 Monday – Sam sent his voyage postcard (form letter) to Orion’s suggestions for cold cures, adding a note that death would be “easily preferable” to Orion’s remedy.
“Profanity is more necessary to me than is immunity from colds” [MTLE 2: 70].
May 15 Tuesday – Sam, still in Hartford and preparing to leave on his 10-day trip to Bermuda with Twichell, sent a note to George F. Bissell & Co. for Charles Perkins, authorizing the latter, Sam’s attorney, to endorse checks payable to Sam for deposit [MTLE 2: 71].
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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].
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 Sunday – Sam and Twichell arrived home in Hartford [Powers, MT A Life 405].
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 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 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”
June – An unsigned article “An Overrated Book” ran without title in the “Contributors’ Club,” June issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Attributed to Twain, it was later titled in an index for the period. A reading online revealed the writer’s home was Ponkapog, Mass., that of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The review was of Rev. Edward Payson Hammond’s Sketches of Palestine [Eppard 430-1]. (See entries for June 6, 1877, Oct. 27, 1879 and Jan.
June 3 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, poet, novelist and editor who would succeed Howells as editor of the Atlantic in 1881. The Clemens family would leave for Quarry Farm on June 5 and Sam hoped to write a book there:
June 4 Monday – Sam wrote an almost reverent letter from Hartford to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, soliciting his help to obtain the Swiss mission for Howells.
June 5 Tuesday – In Hartford in the evening, Sam attended William H. Gillette’s performance at Seminary Hall. The Courant of June 6, p.2 reported the event:
June 6 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells. The move to Elmira had been delayed a day, but Sam wrote they were leaving that day.
June 7 Thursday – The Clemenses rode the train ten hours and arrived at the Langdon home in Elmira.
Henry Whitney Cleveland (1836-1907) wrote from N.Y.C. the first of six letters to Clemens, who became irritated with him to the point of calling him the “Reverend D—d tramp.”
June 8 Friday – Clara Clemens’ third birthday.
June 9 Saturday –William Dean Howells, on vacation in Conanicut, R.I., and “in a white fog that carries desolation to the soul,” wrote to ask Clemens for parts one and three of “Some Rambling Notes,” to put in type “at once.”
“The wretch who sold you that type-writer has not yet come to a cruel death. In the meantime he offers me $20.00 for it. I never could regard it as more than a loan, so I ask you whether I shall sell it at that price, or pass it along to you at Elmira” [MTHL 1: 181-2].