Home at Hartford: Day By Day

March 14 Saturday – Frederick J. Hall came to Hartford to discuss business; he spent the night at the Clemens home. Among other things he and Sam discussed the idea of issuing a cheap edition of Mark Twain books for trade publication, beginning with HF [MTNJ 3: 607&n117].

March 15 Monday – Sam wrote to Christian Tauchnitz in Leipzig, Germany; the letter not extant but mentioned in Tauchnitz’s May 3 reply.

March 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Ulysses S. Grant, to thank him for his influence in saving the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford, a work close to the heart of Joe Twichell, and underway since 1872.

March 15 Wednesday – Hartford schoolteacher, Roswell H. Phelps, visited Sam to apply for stenographer on the upcoming trip to the Mississippi. Negotiations for salary took place. Phelps may have shown Sam some fundamentals of shorthand, because there are several practice pages of shorthand from this period in Sam’s notebook [MTNJ 2: 453n59].

In Boston, Howells wrote Sam:

March 15 Saturday – Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Howells about the new Sellers play. Webster had negotiated with Marshall Mallory on the matter and brought the results to Sam:

“MALLORY IS SICK AND CANNOT TALK BUSINESS BUT HE BADLY WANTS THE THING AND HAS NOT OBJECTED TO THE TERMS REQUIRED SL CLEMENS” [MTHL 2: 479].

March 15 Sunday – The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle loved Huck Finn:

Anyone who has ever lived in the Southwest, or who has visited that section, will recognize the truth of all these sketches and the art with which they are brought into this story [Perry 144-5].

March 15 Tuesday – In Boston, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam:

I wish to acquaint you with Mr. Wilson Barrett, to whom we all took such a liking when he was here. I wish you might see him as Hamlet; but if not, he is very good as Wilson Barrett [MTHL 2: 588]. Note: Barrett was an English actor who toured the U.S. several times between 1886 and 1897.

March 15 Thursday – Sam was still in New York City; Livy had still not arrived.

March 15 Friday – Sam and his “tribe” went “New Yorkwards” checking into the Murray Hill Hotel.

March 15 Saturday – In Hartford on or just after this day Sam responded through Franklin G. Whitmore to Parvin’s Mar. 14 request that he had only the MS of his last book which was promised [MTP].

Albert Johannsen of the State Center, Iowa Mark Twain Reading Club, wrote asking why a chapter which had been taken from HF appeared in LM [MTP]. Note: this letter marked as received Mar. 18.

March 15 Sunday – In Boston, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam:

March 16 Tuesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote a long inscription to Twichell in a copy of A Tramp Abroad, marking various pages where things happened, pointing out how imagination had “preposterously expanded” some things.

“We had a mighty good time, Joe, & the 6 weeks I would dearly like to repeat, any time—but the rest of the 14 months, never. With love, Yours, Mark” [MTLE 5: 45].

March 16 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his sister, Pamela Moffett.

To-day we bought Mr. Chamberlain’s [Franklin Chamberlin (1821-1896) Hartford attorney] greenhouse & 100 feet of land adjoining our east line (to stop Mr. C. from building a dwelling house there); we have also set architect & builder to work to tear down our kitchen & build a bigger one; & at the same time the decorators will decorate the walls & ceilings of our whole lower floor.

March 16 Thursday – After meeting with Sam, Roswell H. Phelps, after conferring with his boss at the Continental Ins. Co., Hartford, outlined in a letter his acceptable conditions for his employment as a stenographer. “Suppose we make it at the rate of $100. per month and all expenses for the time I am actually absent from this office?” [MTP]. These must have been acceptable because Sam quickly agreed and wrote Webster on Mar. 20 of his choice [MTNJ 2: 517].

March 16 Friday – Jane Lampton Clemens added to her letter of Mar. 13. “Now the weather is good and I wish to come to your house, if it suits you. I can do as you said pay Orion’s way there & home again” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Answer”

W.G. Watson wrote to ask if he could see Sam “on very important business (to me) for about 15 minutes” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Watson the tramp”

March 16 Sunday – Worden & Co. wrote to Clemens a statement of stock purchase [MTP].

William M. Laffan for The New York Sun wrote to introduce Mr. Garrett Serviss, an astronomer, who was to lecture in Hartford next Thursday [MTP].

March 16 Monday – The Concord, Mass. Public Library banned Huck Finn from its shelves (see Sam’s Mar. 18 to Webster). The Boston Globe reported the event on the following day.

Sam inscribed a copy of Huckleberry Finn to Edwin P. Parker: “To / Rev E.P. Parker / with the warmest / regards of / The Author. / Hartford, March 16, 1885” [MTP].

March 16 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Warren Stoddard, praising his latest work, The Lepers of Molokai (1885), which described the efforts of Joseph Damien de Veuster (1840-1889), known as “Father Damien” [MTP; Gribben 667]. Due to health problems, Stoddard had recently resigned his position as chair of English literature at the University of Notre Dame.

March 16 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam responded to his brother’s letters of Mar. 13 and 14. Orion had evidently expressed concern about reading about the embezzler, Frank M. Scott at Webster & Co., arrested on Mar. 11.

Nobody is crippled — to hurt.

March 16 Friday – Snowbound by the blizzard, at New York’s Murray Hill Hotel, Sam wrote to Livy. Due to the storm she had not been able to join him for the trip to Washington. He’d come to New York early to attend a dinner party at Charles A. Dana’s, editor of the New York Sun. In this letter home, Sam blamed that engagement for being stuck in New York:

March 16 Saturday – In the evening they took in Taming of the Shrew at Daly’s Theater, which proceeded at 8:15 p.m. [Dorney to SLC Mar. 14].

March 16 Sunday – J.S. Butchelder wrote from Fort Wayne , Ind. offering Sam an improvement on his Scrap book pages. He’d read in his “daily papers” about a problem with the pages sticking together. Sam wrote in the envelope, “Brer, please tell him the tissue paper was used in my Scrap-book years ago, but is not used now because the gum now used does not stick the leaves together / SLC” [MTP].

March 16 Monday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam about “A Mr. Bruce, an author [who] comes to us introduced by a letter from Colonel Higginson. He has a scheme for writing a Life of Cleveland.” Hall was doubtful the book would pay, though if Cleveland were nominated Hall thought there would be a “demand for a good life of him”; if not, there wouldn’t be [MTP].

March 17 Thursday – Wm. Hudner, Hartford merchant billed Sam $22 for Mar. 17; May $27, June $29.70 for undecipherable purchases [MTP].

Thomas A. Davis pastor (& cousin of R.R. Morris above) wrote from Trenton to ask Clemens for a donation of $125 [MTP].

March 17 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George W. Cable, at the time in Baltimore for a reading, confirming details on the planned “trial lecture” for Cable.