Clemens Family Relocates to Europe: Day By Day

January 1 Sunday – In Florence, Italy Sam wrote a longish letter to Frederick J. Hall, mostly about money — whether to draw from his letter of credit, foregoing his $500 per month draw from Webster & Co., and also where more funds might be had for the company. Sam promised to write Whitmore to send Hall the $1,000 from the Century, along with the half-payment from Mary Mapes Dodge for Tom Sawyer Abroad, $2,000.

January 1 Monday – In New York Sam wrote to Henry G. Newton, attorney for Charles R. North:

It would not avail for me to go to New Haven, or to re-open negociations here, because I have no larger powers now that I have been equipped with heretofore. But if you would like to see Mr. Rogers I will make the appointment for you, or you can communicate directly with him.

January 10 Sunday – Sam and Livy returned to Berlin, where Sam would give a reading on Jan. 13 [Jan. 9 to Trumbull; MTB 935].

Joseph T. Goodman’s article, “Artemis Ward,” ran in the San Francisco Chronicle. Joe described Ward’s famous visit to Virginia City, including the Christmas eve walk on rooftops by Ward and Sam [Tenney 20].

January 10 Wednesday – Sam went to Hartford and took in the play, The Masque of Culture, by the Saturday Morning Club, which he’d established years before. It had been performed previously at Unity Hall, so it’s likely that’s where it came off on this day. Sam had missed two prior invitations to see the play with Annie E. Trumbull in the cast. He described the play, and evaluated roles in a letter to Livy the next day.

January 11 Monday – In Ilsenburg, Sam’s notebook:

The night before we came away the old Fürstin & the Princess came over to supper & spent the evening. They are lovely people & good English scholars. The Fürstin is a poet, too. I spun yarns & she translated them to the company [NB 31 TS 21]. Note: Fürsten von Reuss.

Edgar W. (Bill) Nye, always the joker, typed a note to Sam:

January 11 Thursday – In Hartford at Joe Twichell’s parsonage, Sam wrote to Livy about the previous night’s play given by the Saturday Morning Club (see Jan. 10 entry). Sam may have stayed with the Twichells.

January 12 Tuesday – The Clemenses left Ilsenburg for Berlin [NB 31 TS 21]. At the Hotel Royal, Sam wrote to an unidentified man who’d asked for a picture of Sam, and wondered what the name of his new book would be. If the man wanted an electrotype of an engraving of Sam, he might write Webster & Co. for one made from the LAL; if a photograph, the company could get one from Sarony, as Sam had none with him.

January 12 Friday – In New York on Dr. Rice’s letterhead, Sam wrote to Livy of the trip down from Hartford the previous day, lingering negotiations in the typesetter affair, and Mrs. Cabell’s confidence. Kipling would be in New York for a week and Sam wanted to invite him to dinner, but was afraid there would be business interruptions.

January 13 Wednesday – Sam gave a reading for the benefit of the Berlin American Church at the YMCA Hall, Berlin, Germany [Fatout 660; NY Times Jan.3, 1892, p.3 “Court Calls in Berlin”]. Note: It’s not known what Sam read.

January 13 Friday – In Florence Sam wrote to William Webster Ellsworth (1855-1936), at this time secretary of the Century Co., (later president from 1913-1916) complimenting him on the layout and advertising for “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note,” which ran in the January issue of Century Magazine. Ellsworth was from an old Connecticut political family; his father, by the same name, was once governor. He was a great-grandson of Noah Webster, and a member of the Players Club and the Century Club.

January 13 Saturday – In New York Sam wrote to Livy from Mr. Rogers’ office. He described Rogers’ sending a telegram framed by the Conn. Co. people and followed by his own: “My telegram of yesterday [Jan. 11] states my position accurately.

January 14 Thursday – Berlin, Germany. Paine writes that “Clemens awoke with a heavy cold and lung congestion. He remained in bed, a very sick man indeed, for the better part of a month” [MTB 935]. Note: Sam would spend 38 days in bed [Feb. 22 to E.A. Reynolds Ball].

January 14 Saturday – In Florence Sam wrote to Julia Newell Jackson, widow of Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, of the Quaker City excursion.

[Dr. Jackson’s death] cuts short an intimate and most valued friendship of a quarter of a century, and removes from my narrowing circle one whom I sincerely loved, and whose place none can fill as he filled it [MTP].

January 14 Sunday – In New York at the Players Club, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow, thanking him for the “pat on the back.”

Your letter passed through Mrs. Clemens’s hands several weeks ago on its own way to me, and she naturally thanks you too, since you confirm her own judgment. She is head critic over me and Court of Last Resort, and she made me pull the story to pieces and do it over again before she would allow it to be printed. [PW?]

January 15 Friday – Delancey W. Teske wrote from Providence, R.I. for Sam’s autograph [MTP].

January 15 Sunday – The New York Times, p.8 ran news Sam would have surely heard about.

THE “ENTERPRISE” TO SUSPEND.

D.O. MILLS SAYS IT DOES NOT PAY TO KEEP IT GOING.

January 15 Monday – In New York a telegram arrived from Chicago (probably from Paige’s attorney Walker); Paige had agreed to terms.

Sam’s notebook: This is a great date in my history — a date which I said on the 5th would see Paige strike his colors. A telegram from Stone says he has done it. Yesterday we were paupers, with but 3 months’ rations of cash left & $160,000 in debt, my wife and I, but this telegram makes us wealthy [MTHHR; NB 33 TS 47-8 (renumbered pages 49-50].

January 15 Tuesday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Jan. 29 to Rogers.

January 16 Saturday – In Berlin, Sam was in bed suffering from pneumonia.

Also published in The Illustrated News of the World, a third segment of “The Tramp Abroad Again” (New York issue), This is a serial segment using another name for AC. The periodical ran segments on Nov. 28, 1891 and Jan. 9, 16, 1892. The McClure Syndicate had the serial rights for AC prior to its publication by Webster & Co. in book form [Willson list, Univ. of Texas at Austin].

January 16 Tuesday – In the wee hours, Sam wrote again to Livy, this time good news.

January 16 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam responded to Irving Bacheller of Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, also known as The New York Press Syndicate.

I shall be too busy for the next two or three months to undertake that most difficult & bothersome thing, a short story…. In my experience it costs less work to write a big book…than it does to write a little story.

January 17 Sunday – In Berlin, Sam was in bed suffering from pneumonia. Paine writes,

January 17 Thursday – H.H. Rogers also wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Feb. 8 to Rogers; disclosed a $200 check received in New York from Frank Bliss.

January 18 Monday – William H. Dana wrote from Warren, Ohio asking Sam where he might look for an unnamed book by Thomas Fuller Sam had referred to in a letter to a “young lady entering society” he’d seen in an unspecified journal [MTP].

Lotos Club sent Sam a form letter soliciting funds for a $100,000 second mortgage bond [MTP].

Scott H. Palmer wrote from Glenburn, Penn. to interest Sam in an “invention consisting in an appliance for automatic signaling on railways” [MTP].

January 18 Wednesday – At the Villa Viviani, Settignano, near Florence, Sam wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who had moved to Boston to be with her daughter. Sam tells of the family: