January 17 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Belle C. Greene of Nashua N.H. about her book.
In my judgment the Sketches are pretty good, but not very good. But mind, now, don’t make the mistake of overvaluing my opinion; for I am the oyster who said (& continues to say) that “Helen’s Babies” was the very worst & most witless book the great & good God Almighty ever permitted to go to press in the world — & behold, it has sold 200,000 copies, & is far from dead yet [MTP].
January 17 Tuesday – Richard R. Bowker for Publishers’ Weekly wrote asking Sam for an after dinner address on the tariff, Jan. 29 at the Reform Club at Delmonico’s. “Declined,” Sam noted [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote to Sam or Charles H. Clark (not in MTHL) “I have made a brief note for the Library of Humor.” This scrap of blue paper in Howells’ hand with a brief bio is in the file [MTP].
January 17 Thursday – According to Sam’s Jan. 4 to Johnston, he left New York for Baltimore, Maryland at 10 a.m. He may have left Hartford on an early train, or may have gone there a day or more before. Because Webster & Co. wrote to him on Jan. 16, it’s likely he left Hartford early and continued on to Baltimore.
January 17 Friday – A Hartford Courant reporter called on Sam in the afternoon, seeking answers about the dispute with Edward H. House over the dramatization contract for P&P. (See Jan.18 entry.)
Sam forwarded Hudson’s Jan. 16 letter to R.W. Nelson of the Thorne Typesetting Co., writing on the bottom:
January 17 Saturday – Sam may have spent Friday night in New York or traveled straight through to Hartford. If the former then he was in New York this day.
P.M. Barker for S. Alberta District, Calgary, Canada wrote to Sam, relating a story heard on a tour at Prince Albert [MTP].
January 18 Sunday – Robert Green Ingersoll, whom Sam had met at the Chicago banquet of Nov. 14, 1879, wrote to Sam about attendance at a festival for Robert Burns:
January 18 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells. He informed him of Ned House’s visit, a story Charles Dudley Warner had told of a faulty will for the late Mrs. Dan Fisk, and enclosed a Jan. 1 letter from Hattie Gerhardt. The Gerhardts were in Paris, where Karl was studying art, and had enjoyed a visit from the Warners.
January 18 Thursday – George W. Cable wrote a postcard from N. Orleans: “Never mind the book. I have it. I found it last night where I have found a great many books—to wit, in my bookcase” [MTP].
January 18 Friday – Sam replied from Hartford to the Jan. 9 from Howells about writing plays. Henry Nash Smith observes that Howells became as stage-struck as Sam during this period, though he often insisted he preferred writing novels. Nash adds that Howells translated or adapted or wrote thirty-six dramas, including a musical comedy [MTHL 2: 463n2].
“Raymond still biting. Shall hear more, very soon.
January 18 Sunday – Sam finished the letter to Livy, writing in the morning and after breakfast adding to it at noon, when he wrote about the Chicago readings:
January 18 Monday – Sam went to New York, where he spoke at the Typothetae Dinner at Delmonico’s. From Fatout:
January 18 Tuesday – Sam telegraphed Worden, Webb & Co., N.Y. stockbrokers, with a buy order for 100 shares of WV at $80 [Jan. 19. from Worden].
Charles Webster wrote from the office in N.Y.:
Pond was just in and says Beecher has placed the whole thing absolutely in his hands, both the Life of Christ and the autobiography [MTP]. See also MTLTP 212n1&2.
January 18 Friday – London’s Pall Mall Gazette reported:
…the genial humorist who is famous throughout the civilized world as “Mark Twain” is a mechanician of no ordinary kind. For several years he has been engaged in perfecting a type-setting machine of his own invention, and at last his patient toil has been, as he declares, crowned with success [MTNJ 3: 440n112].
January 18 Saturday – The Hartford Courant printed “Mark Twain’s Lawsuit” on the front page.
Mr. Edward H. House, the author and journalist, has brought suit against Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, alleging breach of contract in relation to the dramatization of The Prince and the Pauper. An acting version of the play in question by Mrs. Abby Sage Richardson is announced for next Monday evening at the Broadway Theater, New York, with Elsie Leslie in the parts of Edward VI and Tom Canty.
January – Sam was reading Robert Green Ingersoll’s Ghosts and Other Lectures, which the writer had sent him in Dec. 1879. Sam used an incident from Ingersoll’s book in The Prince and the Pauper about a woman and her nine-year-old daughter “selling their souls to the Devil” and “raising a storm by pulling off their stockings” [Schwartz 187].
Sam inscribed Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, 1802-1808 (1880) for his library [Gribben 574].
January – “Contributors’ Club” items in the Atlantic Monthly were usually unsigned. Sam’s untitled piece on Tauchnitz ran in this month’s issue [Camfield, bibliog.].
January – Sometime during the month Sam wrote to Will Clemens (no relation, see Nov. 18, 1879 entry) who had asked for a humorous biography of Sam.
“I haven’t any humorous biography—the facts don’t admit of it. I had this sketch from Men of the Time printed on slips to enable me to study my history at my leisure” [Clemens, W. 20].
Will did write a 200-page biography of Sam and published it on July 1, 1892 as “No. 1” in a paperback series called “The Pacific Library.”
Sam also wrote to Whitelaw Reid sometime during January:
January – Sam bought 200 shares on margin of Oregon & Transcontinental Co. stock, worth about $15,000 [MTNJ 3: 29n50]. Sometime during the first three months of the year, Sam declined an invitation of some sort offered by George Willard Benson, Christian author. “I have a house full of sick people,” Sam explained [MTP].
January – As early as this month and as late as Dec. 1887, Sam inscribed the back side of his photograph to Mrs. Pemberton-Hinks: “Quarrels begun with roses breed no bloodshed! / Sincerely Yours / S. L. Clemens / Mark Twain / To / Mrs. Pemberton-Hinks. / Hartford, Saturday [illegible chars.] (It is a most damaged & piratical looking picture, & nothing can excuse it but the fact that it is the only one left on the place SLC)” [MTP].
January – A chapter from Huck Finn, “Jim’s Investments, and King Sollermun,” ran in the Century Magazine for the January issue, pages 456-8 [Camfield, bibliog.]. Perhaps more immediately of influence was George W. Cable’s controversial essay in the same issue, “The Freedman’s Case in Equity,” which argued for full civil rights for the Negro.
January – Sam began serious work on Connecticut Yankee during the month, reading excerpts to his family in February.
January – Charles Webster began to suffer from neuralgia during the month. (See Sam’s note: Jan. 15 entry). MTHL intro to Section IX refers to Webster’s affliction:
“…and grew worse during the spring. His illness kept him out of the office most of the time after the beginning of summer and almost constant pain made him irritable” [2: 580].
January – Die Meisterschaft, a 3-act bilingual play Sam wrote in 1886-7 for family entertainment ran with a few changes in Century Magazine [MTNJ 3: 333n95].
January – William Dean Howells, in Harper’s Monthly, “Editor’s Study,” p.319-21, praised CY.
Mr. Clemens, we call him, rather than Mark Twain, because we feel that in this book our arch-humorist imparts more of his personality than in anything else he has done. Here he is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences of the tale. …
January – Sam inscribed a copy of The Stolen White Elephant to an unidentified person: A lie well stuck to becomes History. Mark Twain. Jan. ’91 [MTP: Assoc-Anderson Galleries catalog, Dec. 5, 1934 item72].
In an anonymous article, “American Fiction” in the Edinburgh Review, p.31-65 Mark Twain is mentioned in a list of humorists with the observation that “the humorous drama with a single character in different situations is one which American humourists have made peculiarly their own”; the critic’s own preference is for Lowell [Tenney 19].