Home at Hartford: Day By Day

July 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. Dana wrote Sam on July 9 and 14.

July 19 Sunday – Orion Clemens wrote more about helping Puss (Tabitha Greening (Puss) to Orion July 17 enclosed)

Karl Gerhardt wrote from Mt. McGregor: “your very nice letters are with me—Josie has again made the fatal mistake of letting my private correspondenced get out…” And, “Josie and baby have come here to the mountain and are all the rage” [MTP].

July 19 Monday – Daniel Whitford, attorney with Alexander & Green, advised Frederick J. Hall against withdrawing “any considerable currency from the Banks and” placing “it in Safe Deposit Vaults” [MTLTP 201n1]. This had been Sam’s and Hall’s plan to avoid a possible bank failure.

July 19 Tuesday – James W. Paige wrote to Sam enclosing a copy of additional claims about the “driver device.” He would forward a letter just received from Pratt & Whitney [MTP].

July 19 Thursday – In Elmira Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, enclosing a letter meant for newspaper publication. The letter is a humorous and scathing sort aimed at the city of Hartford for moving an electric lamp and post on Forest Street. A few of the more cutting excerpts:

July 19 Friday – In Richmond, Va., Arthur C. Thornton (1865- ) wrote to Sam, spelling his name wrong. Thornton extended “a true old Virginia welcome” for Sam to visit in his “summer rambles.” Thornton referred to himself as the “forgotten writer of the horrible conglomeration of puns, which” Sam “rec’d some two years since…” Note: He was from an old Virginia family; his comedy book is not further identified.

July 19 Saturday ca. (before) – In Onteora Park, N.Y., Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.

Yours received. Many thanks. I am daily expecting to leave for Hartford. Please send the following cablegram by United Lines…[MTP]. Note: the cable shows below.

Franklin G. Whitmore then wrote a cable for Sam to Joseph N. Verey (sometimes spelled Very), the Clemens past courier in Europe, whom Sam hoped might be of service to Charles Langdon and family. Clemens gave you up & made other arrangements. Whitmore [MTP].

July 2 Saturday – James A. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau at 9:30 AM., less than four months after his term began. Garfield would linger through the rest of the summer and die on Sept. 19 1881.

Sam wrote from Branford to Osgood & Co. asking him not to buy more of “Brer Talmage” and asking for the proofs of the pictures completed for his book, probably P&P [MTP].

July 2 Sunday – Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy, clipping enclosed listing Karl as “Mentions honorables” for the Beau-Arts, Lettres school. Hattie told about the dinner to M. Jouffroy that they’d attended [MTP]. Note: François Jouffroy (1806–1882) was a French sculptor and teacher at the school Gerhardt attended but he died on June 25. M. Jouffroy was likely “Monsieur Jouffroy"

July 2 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Karl & Hattie Gerhardt. He was hard at work on Huck:

“We have been here on the hill a week or more & I am deep in my work & grinding out manuscript by the acre—stick to it the whole day long, allowing myself only time to scratch off two or three brief letters after they yell for me to come down to supper” [MTP].

July 2 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster, asking about illustrations not returned with the 1002d Arabian Night tale [MTP]. Note: The 131 pictures, called “grotesque drawings of his own composition” [MTS&B 88] were lost and have never been recovered.

July 2 Thursday – Sam said his goodbyes to General Grant, left Mt. McGregor and went to New York City [Powers, MT A Life 503].

July 2 Friday – H.R. Thompson of the Stickney Machine Co. Wrote from Boston to Franklin G. Whitmore, apologizing for the failure of their machine to “do its work every time,” and that they’d located the problem. Furthermore, Thompson offered to sell “an undivided one-fourth interest” in the machine [MTP].

July 2 Saturday – In Elmira Sam attended the baseball game but declined to umpire. From the Brooklyn Eagle of July 3, 1887, p 16.

THE MAYOR PLAYED BALL

L.. — —

But Mark Twain and Thomas K

Beecher Declined to be Umpires

ELMIRA, N.Y., July 2

July 2 Monday – In Elmira Sam wrote to Charles H. Clark, associate on the Library of Humor and editor of the Hartford Courant, thanking him for his “initiation intentions” about his recent honorary masters degree.

I am the only literary animal of my particular sub-species who has ever been given a degree by any College in any age of the world, as far as I know [MTP].

July 2 Tuesday – Sam responded to James B. Pond’s letter of June 28 asking him to do more introductions for Edgar W. “Bill” Nye and James Whitcomb Riley during the summer. (Sam introduced the pair on Feb. 28 in Boston.

It is too late, old man. June was the only idle month I was to have for a year, & June just escaped from us. We are in deep trouble here. Mrs. Clemens’s brother-in-law (Mr. Crane) is believed to be dying, after ten months of wearing illness [MTP].

July 2 Wednesday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam in Hartford, presuming “you will not want to be bothered with business matters while in the Catskills.” Hall had received Sam’s two letters (one identified by Hall’s reference as Sam’s June 30) and would do as he suggested on “the Stedman matter” (Stedman objected to the firm’s use of the word “Library” in selling their “Great War Library” books — see June 30 from SLC to Hall). As for money Sam needed, Hall could send $500 “any time you want it” and hoped “to follow it very soon by another and larger remittance”.

July 20 Tuesday – Sam paid a bill to Estes & Lauriat of Boston for 21 books in all, including $3.85 for a three-volume set of Plutarch’s Lives, Marie Sevigne’s Letters of (1878) [Gribben 550, 621-2] three volumes of “Popular Fiction,” two volumes of Adolphe Taine’s History of English Literature (1871); Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and Epithalamion; 

July 20 Wednesday – Herbert M. Laurence wrote from London to Clemens, having rec’d his letter of July 2 asking if he’d undertake decorating Sam’s house, but he was afraid his return in the fall would be too late for him to do so [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Lawrence, artist / 1881”

Charles Eliot Norton wrote from Ashfield, Mass. to ask Clemens to speak at their annual breakfast [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Prof. Norton”

July 20 Thursday – A piece ran in the Elmira Daily Gazette that was reprinted on p. 2 of the New York Times for July 23:

MARK TWAIN AS STRONG AS MR. TILDEN

July 20 Friday – In Elmira, Sam wrote  to Joe Twichell, telling more about the pegs-in-the-driveway memory game. Twichell indiscreetly allowed the letter to appear in the Hartford Courant for July 24, much to Sam’s consternation. To compound the error, the letter was printed with two errors [MTNJ 3: 28n47]. It also ran in the July 26 edition of the New York Times, p 3.

July 20 Monday – Joseph Blackburn Jones wrote from Chicago, having been to Hartford twice and missing him both times. He hadn’t seen Sam since the “babies” speech in Chicago. He mentioned the time they roomed together at Tom Fitch’s in Va. City. He just returned from Europe and told how popular Twain was there [MTP].

July 20 Tuesday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam that the firm had $248,000 in the U.S. National and Mount Morris banks, and $186,000 in receivables. The plan had been to take some of the cash from the banks and keep it in safe deposit vaults [MTLTP 201n1]. (See July 19 entry.) Hall also wrote

July 20 Friday –Inscribed book sent to Sam: George W. Altemus’ Our Stories, by the School Children of the State of New Jersey (1888): Mark Twain: Best Wishes of Geo. W. Altemus, Jr. 7/20/88 [Gribben 520].

Arthur H. Wright for Webster & Co. wrote to Sam of a somewhat improved bank balances total: $2,656.76 [MTP].

July 20 Saturday – Webster & Co. Sent Sam ten Daily Report slips for July 15 to 20 [MTP].

July 20 Saturday ca. † – Sam sent Thornton’s July 19th letter to Franklin G. Whitmore:

Please mail my enclosed letter to him (read it,) & put in one of those heliotype pictures of me. SLC [MTP]. Note: Sam’s letter to Thornton is not extant.