May 23 Friday – Bill and receipt from Munroe & Co., Paris, for stay at the Normandy Hotel, £12.4.1 London [MTP].
Christian Tauchnitz wrote to Sam: “Many thanks for your kind lines. I will certainly write to Mr. Aldrich. / The books of Mr. Howells did not yet reach me, I therefore directed a line to him” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Answered”; file note: “See SLC to Tauchnitz 25 may 1879, SLC to Aldrich, 25 May 1879”
May 25 Sunday – Sam wrote from the Normandy Hotel in Paris to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had left Paris for home a few days before. The Clemens family “felt an awful vacancy here when the Aldriches left,” Sam wrote. He also passed on Tauchnitz’s promise to write Aldrich about including Aldrich’s book of sketches in his series.
May 28 Wednesday – From Sam’s notebook: “This is one of the coldest days of this most damnable & interminable winter” [MTNJ 2: 311].
May 29 Thursday – Sam wrote from the Normandy Hotel in Paris to Andrew Chatto, asking him to send a copy of Roughing It to Ivan Turgenev [MTLE 4: 66].
May 30 Friday – From Lucius Fairchild’s diary: “Dinner at Home…Mark Twain,…Mrs. Clemens, Miss Spaulding, Mrs. Dean, Miss Stevens –& ourselves” [Rees 8].
June – From Sam’s notebook:
“Presbyterian Young clergyman who sat among catholic worshippers & examined Baedecker’s map—said he forgot himself. These acts of brutality make religion pleasant and give people confidence in it, because they see how it builds up the humanities in the devotee” [MTNJ 2: 314].
From Livy’s pen we learn that Miss Mary Dunham of Hartford…
June 1 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Still this vindictive winter continues. Had a raw, cold rain to-day; to-night we sit around a rousing wood fire [MTNJ 2: 312].
June 5 Thursday – Sam wrote a short note from Paris to the J. Langdon Co., advising them of his drawing £200 on a letter of credit that day.
“March—April—May—3 months & $4,000 gone, in Paris—but we have had considerable to eat for it, & a basket or so of wood to burn” [MTLE 4: 70].
Bill and receipt from Munroe & Co, Paris for Normandy Hotel [MTP].
June 8 Sunday – Clara Clemens’ fifth birthday.
From Sam’s notebook:
“We went with Clara & Gen. Fairchild to the Grand Prix & saw Nubienne win the $20,000 given half by City Govt & ½ by RR’s –12 horses in that race” [MTNJ 2: 315].
June 9 Monday – Sam’s article, “Mark Twain, a Presidential Candidate” ran in the New York Evening Post, and was reprinted in several newspapers [Camfield, bibliog.].
June 10 Tuesday – Sam wrote two notes from Paris to Frank Bliss on contract and illustration matters for the new book, TA [MTLE 4: 71-2].
Sam also wrote to Charles E. Perkins, letter not extant but referred to in Perkins’ June 26 reply.
Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell, writing “gossip” while a woman in the next room stopped coughing.
June 11 Wednesday – Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog, Mass. to advise he received Sam’s note just before a letter from Tauchnitz, offering to add Aldrich’s book Marjorie Daw to his series. He thanked Sam “heartily.” He expressed what a “charming time” they’d had in Paris with the Clemenses [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “unpublished, I believe / From T.B. Aldrich”
June 12 Thursday – Sam wrote from Paris to Elizabeth S. Stevens, probably a fan, who asked if Sam had any poetry he might send. “My pen is bad, my ink is pale, / But my affection for you will / never fail / Yours/ S.L. Clemens” [MTLE 4: 75].
June 13 Friday – In Paris, France Sam wrote a short note of suggestion to Frank Bliss about the pictures for the new book [MTLE 4: 76].
June 14 Saturday – Sam wrote a short note from Paris to Frank Bliss, this time about the reduction of pictures sent [MTLE 4: 77].
Sam also wrote Lucius Fairchild about tickets for the upcoming balloon trip:
I preferred to draw the line for Sabbath-outrages at horse-racing. I imagined a conversation like this—& it made me shudder.
St. Peter. How did you come?
June 15 Sunday – Sam wrote from Paris to Frank Bliss. “I think I wouldn’t use the picture which represents me lying on my back drinking from a bottle” [MTLE 4: 79].
June 17 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Paris to Frank Bliss.
“Please ‘process’ that waiter with the bottle, & a few other of the pictures & send proofs for Brown to judge by” [MTLE 4: 80].
Sam also wrote to his brother-in-law, Charles Langdon, encouraging him to come to Paris. Evidently, Charley wrote he could not come. Sam added that their “present plan is to leave her for London in the first fortnight of July…” [MTLE 4: 81].
June 23 Monday – From Lucius Fairchild’s diary:
“Up in the balloon with Mark Twain – Mrs. Twain, Miss Spaulding & Guilwoodford” [Rees 8].
Mr. & Mrs. Fairchild were also in the balloon, which could accommodate 38 people [MTJ&N 2: 315n50]. See also May 3 entry.
June 24 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Paris to an unidentified person saying that “engagements” prevented “his attendance at a reunion” [MTLE 4: 82].
June 26 Thursday – Francis D. Millet wrote on the yacht Sea Belle to Clemens about past good intentions by himself and Lily to write. They were on a “lark” for two weeks as there’d been “too many dinners and late hours.” He praised the yacht and the crew, and discussed their travel plans [MTP].
June 27 Friday – Frank Bliss wrote to Sam, more details on pictures for the book.
June 28 Saturday – Lucius Fairchild’s diary: “engaged to Mark Twain” [Rees 8]
Bill and receipt from Munroe & Co, Paris for Normandy Hotel, 5,025 francs [MTP].
July – Sometime during July Sam wrote from an unknown place to Charles Perkins, his attorney and financial advisor, asking him to “pile in some securities at Bissell’s—enough to run us till we return home, Oct. 25th ” [MTLE 4: 84]. He wrote in his notebook “Get copy of L’Assomoir [sic] illustrated— ” [MTNJ 2: 326] referring to Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (187?) [Gribben 796].
July 1–9 Wednesday – Between these dates Sam wrote from Paris sending a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to Lucius Fairchild, inscribed: ”Read this book, General Fairchild, & learn how to be a good boy” [MTLE 4: 83].
July 8 Tuesday – The Clemenses hired Joseph Verey at $2 per day to be their courier from “Paris through Holland to London.” Sam wrote in his notebook that Verey’s wages “to begin July 8” [MTNJ 2: 327]. Verey was the “young Polander” who “spoke eight languages and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was very shrewd, bright, and punctual” [A Tramp Abroad, ch 32].