April 7 Monday – Valentine Besarel wrote to Sam about goods shipped and reminded of amounts due. He’d rec’d Sam’s of Mar. 30 [MTP].
April 10 Thursday – Valentine Besarel, and John Harris wrote to Sam [MTP]. Note: this letter began Mar. 23.
April 12 Saturday – Sam’s notebook:
April 13 Sunday – From Livy to her mother:
“Susy grows sweet and womanly all the time and Clara is the same rowdy as ever—sweet tempered, but very hard to make any impression on” [Salsbury 101].
April 14 Monday – Leon Mead, contributor to Harper’s Weekly, called on Sam as he was leaving for business in the “neighborhood of the Triumphas Arch.” They walked “to the rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysee half way to the Arch” and talked about Howells and his “disappointment in the matter of the Pacific excursion” [MTLE 4: 48]. Note: Leon Mead was to call on Sam again in the evening.
April 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from the Hotel Normandy in Paris to Frank Bliss.
April 19 Saturday – Dr. John Brown wrote from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sam, remembering Susy and the earlier happy visit [MTP].
April 22 Tuesday – Valentine Besarel wrote to Sam. “I have been favored with your letter of the 15th inst, by which I perceive , that you have not yet receive, from Mrs Harris the invoice that I had sent to you. Inclosed you will find a copy of it” [MTP].
April 24 Thursday – Samuel Troll, Fils wrote from Geneva to detail a 2,000 franc invoice for Sam’s music box [MTP].
April 25 Friday – Sam wrote from the Hotel Normandy in Paris to Andrew Chatto.
April 30 Wednesday – From Lucius Fairchild’s diary:
“Genl Noyes dinner. Accepted. Sarah & us. Ministers Stoughton & Maynard, Job Stevenson, Mark Twain present” [Rees 8]
May 3 Saturday – One of the greatest attractions of the 1878 Paris Exposition was Henry Giffard’s captive balloon in the Tuileries of Paris. Lucius Fairchild invited the Clemens family to go up in the balloon. Sam wrote and declined due to a previous engagement.
May 4 Sunday – Sam and Livy enjoyed a breakfast invitation at 12:30 with unknown party or parties [MTLE 4: 53].
May 5 Monday – Valentine Besarel sent a receipt to Sam for 2,246 Lire [MTP].
May 6 Tuesday – Joe Twichell wrote to Clemens “on this sweetest May morning…I greet you. I have no news to tell, but you are in my thoughts.” Joe warned against being fooled by rum and repeated that he was to teach at Cornell next week [MTP]. Note: clipping enclosed from the Hartford Times ca. late April, 1879, “Julia Smith’s Wedding Reception.” Twichell attached a sheet above the article and wrote, “Read this—the whole of it. It is full of dainty bits.
May 7 Wednesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“I wish this eternal winter would come to an end. Snow flakes fell to-day, & also about a week ago. Have had rain almost without intermission for 2 months & one week. Have had a fire every day since Sept. 10, & have now just lighted one” [MTNJ 2: 308].
May 8 Thursday – Sam’s notebook:
“Called on Tourgènieff [Turgenev] with Boyesen & had cup of tea out of his Samovar” [MTNJ 2: 308].
May 10 Saturday – Sam wrote from the Normandy Hotel in Paris to Frank Bliss.
May 11 Sunday – The New York World published Sam’s “interview” with Richard Whiteing, (1840-1928), English author and correspondent for the World. Sam discussed copyright laws and British society [MTNJ 2: 307n31;Scharnhorst, Interviews 14-16] (see Apr. 12 entry).
May 12 Monday – Sam wrote from Paris to Robert M. Hooper:
…previous engagement debars us the pleasure of accepting Mr. & Mrs. Heuston’s kind invitation, but we shall hold the 17th open, so as not to miss the entertainment at your house.
I’m as sorry as you are that you were not on the Tribune, because toward the last I began to get my hand in, & if you had been there I would have won all of your money & part of your clothes [MTLE 4: 57].
May 13 Tuesday – Livy wrote from Paris to her mother:
“We live in such a perfect whirl of people these days, that it seems utterly impossible to do anything, I wish that I had put down the names of the people that have been here for the last two months, but I think every day, well this will be the last we shant have as many again” [MTNJ 2: 288].
May 14 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Paris to his nephew, Samuel Moffett, confiding that he and Livy were “fleeing from these deluges of company” by using the work room (studio) Sam rented from Millet [MTLE 4: 58].
May 15 Thursday – In Paris, Sam answered Mary Mason Fairbanks’ letter requesting a loan of $2,000. Sam sent her $1,000 and referred her to Charles Langdon for the rest. Sam confessed that having Mary’s son Charley send pictures directly to the American Publishing Co was a mistake. “It never occurred to me to remark that they should be sent here—to me, drawn on paper, not on the wood” [MTLE 4: 59].
May 17 Saturday – From Lucius Fairchild’s diary: “At home—Called on Mark Twain & walked on the Boulevard” [Rees 8].
Sam wrote from Paris to Richard Whiteing. He thanked him for writing something complimentary about him and for “saving me from those people—I had been feeling a little uneasy about them” (unidentified) [MTLE 4: 59].
May 20-25 Sunday – Sam wrote (for publication) to the editor of the New York Evening Post. His letter was printed on June 9 as “Mark Twain, a Presidential Candidate” [MTLE 4: 62]. (See June 9 entry for excerpt, and also in Budd, “Collected”.)