Hartford House: Day By Day

December 25 Monday – Christmas – The Clemens family celebrated Christmas in their Hartford home, with Xantippe (Tip) Saunders as a house guest for a week (see Dec. 18 and 20 entries; Saunders to Sam Dec. 23, 1877).

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas –­ William Dean Howells wrote to Charles Dudley Warner about Sam’s letter of Dec. 23: “This morning I got a letter from poor Clemens that almost breaks my heart. I hope I shall be able to answer it in just the right way” [MTHL 2: 212n3].

He then wrote to Sam that being in the Atlantic would “…help and not hurt us many a year yet…” He then began to repair Sam’s wounds:

December 26 Saturday – In the evening, the Joe and Harmony Twichell, George Henry Warner (1833-1919), John Hooker, and Olivia Lewis Langdon came to the Clemens home and celebrated the holiday [MTL 6: 332].

December 26 Sunday – John W. Hart wrote from State Prison (“Sarcophogas 14 State Catacomb”) to wish Sam “A most obesely jocund Christmas.” Hart must have swallowed a dictionary, as his prose is a felony [MTP]. Note: Clemens wrote on the env. “From John W. Hart, who made the ship in prison”; a model ship was sent to Clemens.

December 27 Sunday – In Hartford, Livy wrote to Mollie Clemens and Sam added a PS that he’d just received Orion’s letter, “…in which he says he is ordering the Atlantic. Has he already ordered it?” Livy enclosed a picture of herself [MTL 6: 332].

December 27 Wednesday – The Hartford Courant reviewed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996].

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in England last June, and immediately many of the most easily detached and quotable portions of it found their way into the American press, and a wide circulation. The COURANT printed at the time two or three extracts from the book—Tom’s adventure with the beetle in church, a most delightful study…

December 27 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam wrote individual apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes for his embarrassing speech at Whittier’s Dec. 17 birthday party. He claimed he’d given the speech “innocently & unwarned,” and spoke of his mortification. He wrote of Livy’s “distress”; that:

December 28 Monday – Sam typed a note from Hartford to James Redpath.

NO, THANKS! MY DISLIKE OF THE PLATFORM HAS GROWN TO SUCH PROPORTIONS THAT I BELIEVE I AM AT LAST ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBILITIES WHICH NASBY DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF – – – A REFORMED LECTURER.

December 28 Tuesday – Fidelia Bridges sent a receipt for $220 paid for watercolors [MTP].

December 28 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, thanking him for his letter of Dec. 25 which “was a godsend.” Sam was particularly grateful for Howells:

“…consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston—rightly, too, for my offense was yet too new, then”

December 29 or 30 Thursday – Sam wrote a “Religious conundrum suggested by my present disease” to Twichell: “Question: If a Congress of Presbyterians is a PRESBYtery, what is a Congress of dissenters? Answer: A Dysentery” [MTL 6: 606].

December 29 Tuesday – Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Hawaiian King David Kalakaua, sending his regrets that he could not be at the Gilded Age play that evening, when the King would attend. He invited Kalakaua to lunch with him at Hartford on Thursday, but the King said prior engagement commitments prevented him from accepting [MTL 6: 334].

December 29 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny C. Hesse to Moncure Conway.

“Hart and I have written a play, the chief character in which, is a Chinaman, and we have leased it for life to a man who will play that part. We give him the sole right for the entire world.”

December 29 Saturday – Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to reassure Sam he hadn’t taken offense to his remarks at Whittier’s birthday dinner [MTP]. Note: on the env., “Publ. In part in Paine Biog, II pp 607-8.”

December 3 Thursday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam that “The fotograf is a wonderful success, and Mrs. Howells and I are exultantly grateful. We’ve got it framed to match Warner’s, and it turns its eagle-eye away from me towards Boston, on my study mantel-piece” [MTHL 1: 46].

December 3 Sunday – Sam wrote from the St. James Hotel in New York to Livy. James R. Osgood visited Sam at his hotel around noon. Mrs. T. B. Aldrich had also called and he would soon return her call. He wrote that he’d “used no whisky or other liquor to sleep on [but] was utterly tired out.” NYC temperatures ranged from 35-24 degrees F. with no precipitation [NOAA.gov].

December 3 Monday – Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to congratulate Sam on his recent birthday, to make suggestions how he might purchase the Post with a thousand down and a mortgage for ten thousand. “If I got into the printing business again I should subordinate my whims to my business.” He then wrote about “how lawyers get into business,” and ended with a PS thanking for the Atlantic Monthly [MTP].

December 30 Thursday – Sam wrote in a gift copy of Sketches, New and Old, for Moncure Conway:

To Friend Conway: / Who will kindly remember that the billiard-odds lay with him, & Victory with his gratified friend & servant, Mark Twain. Hartford, New Year’s 1876 [MTL 6: 607].

December 30 Saturday – Sam signed a contract in Hartford for the play Ah Sin. Bret Harte and Charles Thomas Parsloe signed on Jan. 5, 1877 in New York [Duckett 127-8]. The three men were to share equally in the gross profits after deductions for certain expenses, such as printing and agency contracts with stage managers [See Duckett, p 128-9 for the main details].

December 31 to January 1, 1877 Monday – New Year’s Eve. Sam and Livy attended a party at Isabella Beecher Hooker’s Nook Farm home, packed with neighbors and friends. Reflective of 19th Century obsession with paranormal and spiritual pursuits, plus Isabella’s megalomania, several mediums waited in an upstairs room for the new year to reveal Isabella’s vision, that she was to usher in a new order of government. “Spirits” had told her that she would rule the world.

December 31 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, fronting the letter with a self-portrait in black ink [see MTL 6: 336]. Sam and Aldrich went back and forth with jokes and photographs (Sam later claimed he “sent him 45 envelops of all possible sizes, containing an aggregate of near seventy differing pictures of myself, house & family.”

Aldrich replied:

December 31 Friday – Moncure Conway ended his visit with Sam and left for New York, where he was to deliver another lecture [MTL 6: 600-1].

[Continue of to 1876]

December 31 Monday – Charles E. Perkins wrote to advise of a credit to Sam’s account for $450 as “interest on your western loan.” He lists: W.S. Bland, M T Burwell, R Miller, and N Wethersby [MTP].

December 4 Friday – Estes & Lauriat of Boston receipted Sam for two copies of Summer Sketches, unidentified book, one of which was sent to Joe Twichell. The bill was dated Dec. 2 [Gribben 678]. Howells inscribed a copy of his novel, A Foregone Conclusion, to Livy with this date [Gribben 329].

December 4 Monday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter from Belford Brothers to Howells Nov. 29. The Belfords wanted the right to publish Sam’s future contributions to the Atlantic. “We would be willing to pay liberally for the right to publish them in the magazine, although the law allows us to pirate them.” “What answer?” Howells asked [MTHL 1: 166]. (See Dec. 5 for Sam’s answer.)