Home at Hartford: Day By Day

April 19 Thursday – In Hartford Sam responded to a letter from his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon (not extant, but from Sam’s letter, about Apr. 12), mostly about Livy, who was “getting steadily along & regaining her health by sure degrees.” Livy missed the late Dr. Cincinnatus Taft, but was “thoroughly satisfied” with the current physician, Dr. E.W.

April 19 Friday – Nathan Haskell Dole for Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Boston photographer wrote to Sam: “Mr. Crowell has had the executioner place your head upon the block, the cross-cut did its work and I have the honor of sending you a proof of your own decapitation with the hope that it will merit your approval.” Sam wrote on the env., “Answer when the picture comes” [MTP].

April 19 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall. Sam’s business manager for Hartford affairs, Franklin G. Whitmore, had offered to invest $10,000 or $12,000” at a “usurious rate of interest — 8 or 10 per cent” and even preferred to buy an interest in Webster & Co. He had worked as a general agent for the company in 1888 for the Library of Humor. Sam advised Hall to take Whitmore on for a year and then see if an interest might be sold him. At first Sam spoke approvingly of the idea:

April 19 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote again to Livy at the Radnor House, Bryn Mawr College, Penn.

Well, sweetheart, I hope you & Susy are satisfied with yourselves, going away & leaving people this way. I don’t think much of it.

April 2 Friday – In his letter of Apr. 4 to Orion, Sam wrote:

“I read before a large audience here, Friday night, but not until all the newspaper men had sworn that they would say not a single word about it, either before or after the performance” [MTLE 5: 65].

April 2 Saturday – Sam purchased “one Singer Sewing Machine #3321714” from Singer Manufacturing Co., Hartford, for $40 [MTP].

James R. Osgood wrote from Boston to Sam about “a letter from [H.N.] Hinckely, [sic Hinckley]  the Chicago man, and have replied to him that ‘a Handbook of Etiquette’ would be a trade-book, that the ‘Cyclopedia of Humor’ would not be published for a considerable time—(by the way, have you heard from Gebbie yet?)” [MTP]. See Apr. 4.

April 2 Sunday – Sam wrote from H​​artford to Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta. Twichell recently returned from a trip down South where he called on Harris with a suggestion of Sam’s that Harris appear on stage with him and read the Remus stories. Trouble was, Harris was exceptionally shy.

April 2 Monday – George W. Cable arrived in Hartford at noon and stayed with Charles Dudley Warner. From Cable’s letter to his wife:

      Charles D. Warner met me at the door just leaving for New York. He will be back to my lecture on Wednesday. His wife is at the piano practicing for a little afternoon musicale appointed for tomorrow at this house.

April 2 Thursday – On or just after this day, Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Frederick Dent Grant (1850-1912), son of General Grant. Sam’s note was in response to an Apr. 1 letter from Gerhardt, who was in New York at the time. “I hope you can speak a moment with Gerhardt.

April 2 Friday – Pamela Moffett arrived in Keokuk for a visit. She wrote, “Orion looks somewhat older but Ma and Mollie look about the same” [MTP; Moffett to her son, Apr. 2].

April 2 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, now in San Francisco, awaiting the wedding of her son, Samuel Moffett on Apr. 13 to Mary Emily Mantz. Clemens informed her about the letter from “Mrs. Boardman, was Jenny Stevens, daughter of the old jeweler of Hannibal, & sister of Ed, John & Dick.” He’d answered Jenny’s first letter but didn’t care to answer her second, as he couldn’t “afford a correspondence…”

April 2 Monday – Webster & Co. wrote to Sam that they’d been notified by Gen. Sheridan that his book was now “all revised, and that he will send the manuscript…very shortly.” Maps included [MTP].

Edward B. Hooker wrote to Sam thanking him for efforts on behalf of his engraver friend, Mr. Bass, who had “secured a position in Boston, so that for the present at least he is not in want” [MTP].

April 2 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam went to see physician Marcus M. Johnson [MTNJ 3: 469n215].

He also wrote to his N.Y. attorney at Alexander & Green, Daniel Whitford, letter not extant but referred to in Whitford’s Apr. 4.

April 2 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam answered Edwin Wildman’s Mar. 31 request for an article for Echoes about Sam’s cats:

There is nothing of continental or inter-national interest to communicate about those cats.

They had no history; they did not distinguish themselves in any way.

They died early — on account of being overweighted by their names, it was thought. SOUR MASH, APPOLLINARIS, ZOROASTER, AND BLATHERSKITE…[MTP].

Henry M. Alden for Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam (Lukens Mar. 26 encl.):

April 2 Thursday – Charles J. Langdon telegraphed from the Gilsey House in N.Y. for Sam to send “any and all bonds you may have of the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corp.” He then wrote to Sam:

Since I telegraphed you this morning I have had a delightful call [visit] from Livy and Susy, and to them explained about the Clearfield bonds; that is to say, I am advised from Elmira that they were sent to Mr. Olmsted, with mine, at Harrisburg, and that we have a receipt for them.

April 20 Tuesday – Sam and Livy purchased a brass fender from C. McCarthy of Boston for $15, showing that they did not leave Boston earlier. The item was billed to Sam on May 13 and paid on May 17 [MTP]. Note: Invoicing and payment were often made long after purchase. Afterward the Clemenses returned home to Hartford.

April 20 Thursday – From Ch. 22, LM:

Next Morning we drove around town in the rain. The city seemed but little changed. It was greatly changed, but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can’t persuade a thing to look new; the coal-smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of four hundred thousand inhabitants.

April 20 Friday – Edward Jump, one-time favorite caricaturist of San Francisco, and possibly Sam’s roommate there for a time [Taper xxv], committed suicide. Note: See Schmidt’s site: for a Chicago Daily Tribune article: http://www.twainquotes.com/edjump.html . Robert Hirst of the MTP did not know where Taper got the idea from that Clemens had roomed with Jump, and no evidence was found.

April 20 Sunday – Back home in Hartford, Sam wrote to Edgar W. Howe, reporting that Howells was “drunk with admiration of your book,” The Story of a Country Town (1883).

“As T.B. Aldrich was present during one whole evening [on the recent trip to Boston], & had to listen to so much talk about a book which he has not seen, he naturally got pretty well filled up with curiosity” [MTP].

April 20 Monday – Howells wrote from Boston to Sam, advising him not to use his Cornell speech on Apr. 29 to defend Huck Finn against the Concord Library Committee—he thought them:

April 20 Tuesday – † In Hartford Sam wrote two notes to Charles Webster. In the first included several business matters plus a sentiment of encouragement that “the little fellow’s eye is going to be saved” (Webster’s son.) Sam had read Henry M.

April 20 Wednesday – In Boston, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam:

April 20 Friday – London publication date for Mark Twain’s Library of Humor [Mar. 7 to Chatto; MTNJ 3: 376n248]. Sam was in Montreal.

Andrew Chatto wrote to Sam that they had “just completed the formal publication of your Library of American Humor by the sale of a few early copies” [MTP].

April 20 Saturday – In Hartford, Sam answered Samuel Moffett’s letter to Livy. The Moffetts were planning a trip east from San Francisco, and wanted to visit.

April 20 Sunday – In Hartford Livy wrote to her mother, Olivia Lewis Langdon referring to Apr. 18 (see that entry).

James B. Pond wrote to Sam: “The arrangements are completed & all here accepted & will be present next Sunday morning to give Max O’Rell a send off.” Pond named eleven men who would be there, including Augustin Daly, George Kennan, Edmund C. Stedman and Richard Watson Gilder; he hoped Sam would not miss it; O’Rell was “worthy of it” [MTP].