Home at Hartford: Day By Day

February 25 Saturday – Christian Tauchnitz, Jr. wrote: “Accept my best thanks for your amiable letter of the 18th of January…” He’d paid £75 on Dec. 5 to Chatto & Windus for the right to publish P&P on the continent, and asked about the binding Sam preferred [MTP]. Note in file: “SLC replies to this on 30 March 1882 (see Tauchnitz to SLC, 15 April 1882) / Postmark on back of envelope may be Feb 25”

February 25 Sunday – Karl and Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy, the letter from Drexel with money rec’d. “Many thanks for the new letter…I shall telegraph you when the little stranger arrives….Josie has a most excellent nurse who does everything for us so that I don’t have any worry and am losing no time” [MTP].

February 25 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Josiah H. Gilbert, permitting use of up to 600 words from his “Babies” speech [MTP]. Note: Gilbert may have been the editor of Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers (1904).

February 25 Wednesday – Cable’s Feb. 26 letter home:

Had a great time in Newark last night; one of the finest nights we have had for some ten days. Orange [NJ] was very poor—i.e. the audience was slim; which was a great surprise to us & not to be accounted for [Turner, MT & GWC 113]. Note: Although not listed in Railton or Schmidt, it seems from this letter that the men read in both places, probably a matinee and an evening performance.

February 25 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton with a duplicate to William M. Laffan. Lawrence Barrett would appear in a Hartford play Mar. 3 and 4, and Sam wrote they were trying to get him to stay with the family — would Hutton and Laffan come and spend those two days with them also? [MTP]. Note: See Susy’s diary Mar. 14 entry.

February 25 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote a short note to Charles Webster, asking him to come to Hartford and join Pamela Moffett (visiting) and his wife Annie Moffett Webster for “rest & recreation” from his neuralgia [MTP].

February 25 Saturday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam that he’d finished the research for Wm. II (for the memory game). He’d sent cousin Eleanor Lampton five dollars. Ma was “so restless” that he “concluded to take her to every kind of show that comes….Ma frequently sees the apparitions of the friends of her youth, and she longs to behold again the house of Aunt Ann, and to reside once more in Columbia” [MTP].

February 25 Monday – In New York City, Sam gave a dinner speech for Trinity College Alumni, “The College President.” Hartford Daily Courant published Sam’s remarks (Feb. 26, 1889, p.3.) The speech was in honor of Twain’s friend Dr. George Williamson Smith, a clergyman and President of Trinity College in Hartford. See MTNJ 3: 452n151.

February 25 Tuesday – In a letter to Grace King, Livy wrote that she was just getting well from an attack of Quinzy,” having been in bed for “nearly a week in New York with Mr. Clemens as nurse” [MTNJ 3: 539n175]. She also confided that they had attended the opening of P&P play and found it “a real disappointment…In the main it is poor, and does not in the least do the book, we think, justice” [543-4n184]. Note: Quinsy was their term for tonsillitis.

February 25 Wednesday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam about having a mock-up of the memory game made:

I have just found a man who is the one we want to make up a dummy…I will hurry him along as fast as possible. As soon as it is completed I shall come up with it as you suggest…[MTP].

Sam also wrote to his brother, Orion Clemens, that he’d “shook the machine”:

..when the pig-headed lunatic, its inventor dies, it will instantly be capitalized & make the Clemens children rich.

February 26 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion. He was “grinding away” on The Prince and the Pauper. He needed to get other things off his mind so challenged Orion to write two books, works that Sam would never have time to do but which he’d thought of years before.

February 26 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Edward F. Noyes (U.S. Minister to France), asking for a U.S. passport for Karl Gerhardt, as a “kindness” to himself, Charles Dudley Warner and Quincy Ward, the sculptor [MTP].

Sam also wrote a letter of introduction for Karl Gerhardt to Any U.S. Representative or Other Friend of Mine [MTP].

February 26 Sunday – Charles H. Clark for Hartford Courant wrote to ask Sam’s advice. He’d been invited by a friend in London to join him for 4 or 5 weeks. Clark had never been abroad. Did Clemens think he might get some work done on board? [MTP]. Note: this may be on the Encyclopedia Of Humor

February 26 Monday – Chatto & Windus wrote [MTP]. (envelope only survives)

February 26 Tuesday – Howells responded to Sam’s letter of Feb. 18 that he was “down in the dust at the notion” that he’d made Sam “take a journey to New York and back for nothing….” Sam answered:

“Ah, what the reader puts into a letter, that is what said reader finds in it! There couldn’t have been any irascibility in my letter, for the reason that there wasn’t any in me” [MTHL 2: 476].

February 26 Thursday – Sam saw Nat Goodwin, actor and vaudevillian, on the train going to Philadelphia. Goodwin told Sam he was “very anxious to play” the Sellers as Scientist [Feb. 27 to Howells].

February 26 Friday – In Hartford Sam responded to the Feb. 23 letter from Clarence C. Buel of the Century Magazine.

When I get this book done [CY], I think a chapter or two of it will read very well in the Century [MTP].

The Bismark (North Dakota) Daily Tribune reprinted on p.4 the earlier February interview from the Cincinnati Enquirer [Schmidt]. See February, early entry.

February 26 Saturday– Sam presented a paper to the Monday Evening Club titled “Machine Culture.” This was Sam’s eleventh presentation to the Club since his election in 1873 [Monday Evening Club].

An interview with Sam ran in the Bismark Daily Tribune:

February 26 Sunday – Henry Edwards wrote from “The Lambs” in N.Y. to thank Sam for his note and for its frankness. Edwards understood “thoroughly”; that Sam had good reason for what he did. [MTP].

February 26 Tuesday – After Edward H. House objected to P&P being dramatized by Abby Sage Richardson, Sam wrote him:

February 26 Wednesday – William J. Hamersley wrote to Sam that “Paige told me yesterday that you wanted me to try to sell some royalties & I have tried and can do nothing” [MTP].

Daniel Whitford wrote to Sam:

February 26 Thursday – Frederick J. Hall sent a note for renewal for Sam to endorse. He also wrote of the Sherman book; that they didn’t own the plates nor the copyrights and that he’d told the Shermans that “if we went into the expense of getting out a large cheap edition, as they want, we would have to have them advance the money for it…” [MTP]. Note: At the bottom Hall wrote: “Later. P.S. The Shermans have given us a check for $3500.00 on account of expense of cheap edition.”

February 27 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.

February 27 Monday – Mrs. Richard H. Jones wrote from N. Orleans to ask for Sam’s autograph. Much of the letter is faded out [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Gee Whillikers!”

February 27 Tuesday ­– Orion signed the pledge to Sam and returned it with an apology (see Feb.22 entry). “I will now turn my attention to law” [MTP; Fanning 202].