Home at Hartford: Day By Day

September 13 Saturday – David Gray wrote to Sam. “Imagine my disappointment & mortification, on getting home yesterday from Syracuse, to find your telegraph, & that I had missed you!…Did you ever write ‘The Prince & the Pauper’? How often that story has haunted me!” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Refers to ‘Prince & Pauper’ / David Gray / Answered /1879”

September 13 Monday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to Harriet Whitmore (Mrs. Franklin Whitmore), responding to her letter about her husband’s recent illness. Frank was better and Sam offered that he would “hurry up Whitmore’s health in the billiard room” when both families returned to Hartford in the fall. He wrote for Livy, who still wasn’t up to writing. The Whitmores were staying in Branford, Conn. [MTLE 5: 158].

September 13 Tuesday – Sam left Rochester at 10 A.M. and got to Fredonia at 3 PM. While there he checked up on one of his investments. From the Fredonia Censor, Sept. 21, 1881:

September 13 Wednesday – Pamela Moffett wrote from Quincy, Ill. To thank him for his “kind and generous forethought”—they’d had a “very comfortable journey.” She’d just received a draft for $1,900 from the sale of the Independent Watch Co. stock. “I feel very grateful to every body who had a share in getting me out of this scrape,” especially Sam and also Charles Webster [MTP].

September 13 Thursday – The Clemens family’s summer stay in Elmira came to an end, as did the most productive season in Sam’s literary career. They traveled to Hartford by way of New York, stopping at the Brunswick Hotel on Fifth Avenue [MTBus 219; MTNJ 3: 27n46]. Sam’s notebook contains a list entitled “People to see in N.Y.” and includes Charles A.

September 13 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster.

“The bust was made in Elmira & is just finished. The photos were taken here & I have the negatives myself. But do nothing in the matter unless you find advantage for us in it. —I thought it would advantage the book” [MTP].

Charles Webster wrote twice on various business matters [MTP].

September 13 Monday – Jane Clemens wrote a rambling two-page letter for Sam & Family about not knowing what to write, of wanting to leave Keokuk, of dead relatives and of her daughter “Mela” (Pamela) being there for a visit on her way to see her son Samuel. Jane signed the letter, “An Old Citizen” [MTP].

Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam of progress and several details at the Webster & Co.

September 13 Tuesday – In the morning the Clemens family left Elmira for New York City, where they stayed at the Murray Hill Hotel [to Wheeler Sept. 12]. Before leaving, Sam telegraphed William H. Gillette in New York (see Sept. 15 reply); message not extant.

From Sam’s notebook: Sept.13, in back $21,000, & everything paid for [MTNJ 3: 324].

September 13 Thursday – In Elmira even though Theodore Crane had been ill, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore that he planned to leave on Sept. 18 for the Sept. 20 banquet in Chicago and be back in Elmira on Sept. 22, which he noted was also the date for the payment due to Pratt & Whitney for their work on the Paige typesetter.

September 13 Friday – In Elmira Sam wrote to John C. Bostelmann, the Clemens girls’ music teacher whom Clara Clemens raved about in her July 15 (spelled there Bostlemann). Sam enclosed a check and wrote that even though the amount was owed for the lessons, “They were worth a great deal more.”

September 13 Saturday – Sam returned to Onteora Park, likely this day, and began to ready the family for return to Hartford. Beckwith recorded Sam performing a charades with daughter Jean [Beckwith’s unpublished papers at the Smithsonian; offered by a MT scholar who wishes to remain unnamed].

September 14 or 15 Saturday – Given the number of people Sam needed to see in New York, the family may have stayed two nights in the city; or one, as was usual, before continuing to Hartford.

September 14 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to the editors of the New York Evening Post. It was a humorous letter about mining gold in water. The letter ran in the newspaper Sept. 16 [MTLE 5: 159]. Note: it was reprinted in the Sept. 20 Hartford Courant, page 1 as “Mark Twain on the Goldsprings.”

Sam finished The Prince and the Pauper. (See Sept. 15 entry.)

September 14 Wednesday – Jane Augspurg wrote from Hartford to ask Sam if she might translate some of his works into German [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “From a translator”

September 14 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to answer the Sept. 11 request from David L. Grasmere, asking for a note from Sam.

September 14 Sunday – James B. Pond wrote to Clemens [MTP].

September 14 Monday – Livy was depressed about leaving Quarry Farm, but was encouraged at Susy’s unselfish instincts in making up a bag of amusements for Jean on the trip. Livy’s diary entry:

We start for New York tomorrow the 15th leaving this beloved Quarry Farm. We expect to spend a few days in New York & then on to Hartford….The blessed child…was doing some thing for the pleasure of some one else [MTP].

September 14 Tuesday – In Elmira Sam wrote to Andrew Chatto, who had sent a statement and notes for deposit, as well as a pamphlet of compositors’ prices. Sam noted that the English (as now) always seemed to make their own systems that don’t always translate across the Atlantic:

…I seem to discover a most curious thing: that over there you measure type by the 1000 ENS instead of ems, & have done so all this century. I can’t see how we came to change [MTP].

September 14 Wednesday – This is the day Sam wrote Whitmore he’d leave Elmira (see Aug 18), but Sam’s letter of Sept. 8 to Hall confirms he would “look in” at Webster & Co. On this morning, so that the family probably left Elmira the day before.

Alfred P. Burbank telegraphed Sam: “Will you come to Rochester for tomorrow nights performance I want to talk of future disposition of the play” [MTP].

September 14 Friday – In Elmira Sam was forced to cancel his appearance at the Chicago banquet. He telegraphed George W. Smith and also sent the letter he’d written on Sept. 12 [MTP]. Fifty-seven year old Theodore Crane had been ill since Sept. 5 [Sept. 15 to Pamela Moffett], and sometime during that period suffered a stroke. A diabetic, Crane was paralyzed on one side [Sept.

September 14 Saturday – On or just after this day Sam responded to E.H. Butler’s letter (below) through Franklin G. Whitmore. He didn’t recall the piece Butler asked about but told Whitmore if it was a sketch he wrote it must be in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old or The Stolen White Elephant [MTP]

Sam also wrote to Charles J. Langdon in New York, letter not extant but referred to as “pleasant” in Langdon’s Sept. 29 [MTP].

September 15 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to George S. Gilman, publisher, evidently responding to his inquiry about Sam’s connection with American Publishing Co.: “Under certain (not difficult nor unreasonable) conditions, I am to remain with the old Co., I believe” [MTLE 4: 96].

September 15 Wednesday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had sent him a copy of his book to read—already read by Sam (The Stillwater Tragedy, serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, Apr.-Sept.1880). He wrote about Livy and the baby Jean, and about finishing a story (Prince and the Pauper) the day before.

September 15 Thursday – When Sam left Fredonia his mother accompanied him the three miles to the station at Dunkirk, then returned home. Sam waited at Dunkirk until 3 A.M. for a train to take him the 45 miles to Buffalo, where he stayed overnight at David Gray’s [Sept. 18, 19 letters to Fairbanks, Jane Clemens].

September 15 Friday – Sam wrote from Elmira to James R. Osgood, mailing him another chapter of LM.

“Book nearly done, now. Is mainly in the hands of the copyist. Will send you the seven (reprint) chapters, revised and corrected presently—the ones first illustrated by the artist…so you can hurry up your canvassing specimen” [MTP].