Home at Hartford: Day By Day

December 20 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, stressing the importance of securing a contract with Mrs. Grant for the publication, now planned a year ahead, of General Grant’s letters to his wife. Sam was afraid there’d be a demand for an even higher royalty or an offer to take in Fred Grant as a partner. Did Webster want Sam “to come down & ask for the letters?” Or, simply to come and consult about a plan.

December 20 Monday – Mollie Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy, including Orion’s of Dec. 19.

December 20 Tuesday – Sam went to Boston, Mass. And gave the speech, “Patent Adjustable Speech” in reaction to a toast on “Post-Prandial Oratory” at the Congregational Club, Music Hall [Fatout MT Speaking 230-4]. The Twainian Jan-Feb 1946 p.1 reports from a Boston Globe article (Dec. 21, p.1, “Pilgrims”), that Charles W.

December 20 Thursday – Sam inscribed a copy of The Stolen White Elephant to Joseph Lane.

To / Joseph Lane/ with the regards of / The Author. / ~ / Dec. 20/88.

Note: This may be Joseph Lane (1851-1920), British anarchist and one of the little-known founders of the libertarian socialist movement in Britain, author of An Antistatist, Communist Manifesto (1887). Or, more likely it was Joseph G. Lane, a wealthy Hartford grocer.

December 20 Friday – In Hartford, Sam replied to L.E. Parkhurst (incoming not extant) who evidently inquired about the illustration “The Slave Driver” in CY, which was a likeness of robber baron Jay Gould.

December 20 Saturday – Sam was becoming incensed at the endless delays and tinkering done on the typesetter by James W. Paige and his assistant Charles Ethan Davis. Sam’s notebook:

December 21 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks. Sam gave the usual excuses and apologies for not writing. Evidently, Mary’s last letter said that her financial crisis was over. Sam blamed “confound speculation, anyway!” Sam was beginning his days by writing and ending it the same way, and had “to be dragged to dinner by the hair” [MTLE 4: 183]. 

December 21 Tuesday – Sam introduced Joe Twichell to General Grant, so he might have a “private talk in the interest of the Chinese Educational Mission here in the U.S.” (Hartford). Saving the mission was a cause close to the heart of Twichell (see Mar.15, 1881 entry). Note: Grant wrote to Li Hung Chang in the Chinese government, arguing that closing the mission would be an error.

December 21 Wednesday – Sam left Hartford and traveled to Philadelphia [MTBus 180]. Note: Sam’s Dec. 20 letter to Miss Trowbridge said he left on that day, while his letter of the same date to his sister stated he was going to Philadelphia “tomorrow.”

December 21 Thursday – Sam went to New York in the evening [Dec. 14 letter to Woodford, MTP]. He stayed at the Hotel Brunswick [N.Y. Times, PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE, p.5 Dec. 23, 1882].

December 21 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood, offering a rare apology for his remarks. Evidently, he had questioned Osgood’s integrity. Powers points out that sales of LM “languished at 30,000 copies” [MT A Life, 469]. In a letter now lost, Sam accused Osgood of mismanaging the book. Osgood was “astonished” and defended himself; he’d written on Dec.

December 21 Monday – Sam wrote a short note from New York City to Charles Webster, directing him to re-ship a Memoirs, vol. 1 to Mrs. W. M. Laffan, as the first one was lost, and to send tree-calf books to Mrs. Grant for her autograph [MTP].

December 21 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to an unidentified man:

Just let it stand as it is; it can’t be improved. I haven’t ever seen a paragraph with more truth & less error…[MTP].

December 21 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his old friend Frank Fuller. Sam’s letter is obviously a response to Fuller’s (not extant). Fuller had been influential in getting Sam to invest in several schemes and securities, and it seems from his reply below that Fuller was up to more promoting.

December 21 Saturday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam that his telegram for “6 Morocco ‘Yankee’” was received and they’d been shipped. Enclosed was an audit by Barrow, Wade, Guthrie, & Co., Public Accountants for the period of four months ending Aug. 31, 1889. They found the books in good order. A N.Y. World reporter had been by the previous day asking what was behind a portrait of Jason “Jay” Gould (1836-1892) in CY. Mr.

December 21 Sunday – † In Hartford Sam telegraphed Frederick J. Hall:

Come up at noon [.] forever — damn the idiotic telephone [MTP]

December 22 Monday – Andrew H.H. Dawson wrote to Sam, enclosing a printed invitation to a festival and banquet at Delmonico’s on Jan 26, 1880 [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “I didn’t answer or go to his banquet. S.L.C.”

December 22 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to David Watt Bowser (“Wattie”) in Dallas, Texas, who had written that he’d won a gold medal for his paper. Sam asked Wattie to “remember me kindly to your teacher [Laura Wright Dake]” [MTLE 5: 231].

December 22 Thursday – Sam spoke at the New England Society in Philadelphia. His subject was “Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims” [Fatout, MT Speaking 162-5]. Sam had been invited by Henry Clay Trumbull, a Congregational clergyman, and brother of James Hammond Trumbull, the Hartford scholar who wrote the multi-lingual chapter headings for The Gilded Age.

December 22 Friday – Sam had a list of errands to attend to during the day, probably meeting with Webster among other things [Dec.

December 22 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Laurence Hutton, congratulating Miss Eleanor Varnum Mitchell, soon to be Mrs. Laurence Hutton.

“And now I am relieved of a burden which has long been secretly oppressing my heart. Months ago, fully aware of the relations existing between you & my daughter, I was shocked & grieved to discover that she had transferred her affections to a horse kitten” [MTP].

December 22 Tuesday – The N.Y. Times article of Dec. 5, 1886 recalls this previous New England Society Dinner and the “Trick” Sam played on William M. Evarts. This is in the 1886 entry, but should also be in the Dec. 22, 1885 entry. Sam was in New York on that day, though the 1885 Times article covering the dinner says nothing of Sam or Evarts.

December 22 Wednesday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam enclosing a newspaper clipping from the July 6, 1886 Morning Oregonian, which featured an address given by Thomas Fitch in Portland. Shortly thereafter Sam wrote “It is fine, Joe. Preserve it” on the clipping. [MTP].

December 22 Thursday – Orion and Mollie Clemens wrote to Sam and Olivia. Orion: thanks for the Christmas present, Ma will buy something nice with her present; comments and wonderings about the typesetter. Mollie: thanking for the present sent — where would they be without their help? She couldn’t answer why Sam would help her “poor old father,” who was “comfortably fixed as can be” now.

December 22 Saturday – In an agreement signed this day, Frederick J. Hall bought out Charles Webster’s interest in Webster & Co., for $12,000. The agreement would be effective as of Apr. 1, 1889 [MTHL 2: 610n1].