April 4 Thursday – In London, Sam left his calling card with a note for Chatto & Windus, his English publishers. “please pay S. Gardener & Co £13:5.0. & charge to me. / S.L. Clemens / Apl. 4/95” [MTP].
Sam described his dinner with Henry M. Stanley and a crowd of “thirty or forty”:
April 5 Tuesday – In Rome Sam sent a cable to Henry C. Robinson:
Do they offer no modification of the proposition? [MTP; also NB 31 TS 36].
Sam’s notebook : “Ezekiel’s Studio — 4 p.m. Tuesday” [NB 31 TS 37]. Note: placement in the NB suggests this day or Apr. 12.
Ben W. Austin wrote from Oak Cliff, Texas to Sam, asking for the autographs of John Raymond and Charles S. Webster [MTP].
April 5 Wednesday – Sam lunched with William Dean Howells; They also met at 8 or 8:30 p.m. at the home of Mary Mapes Dodge for dinner. Also in the company, Rudyard Kipling and wife, and Mary Mapes Dodge, Mary’s son James M. Dodge and wife, and William Fayal Clarke (now editor of St. Nicholas Magazine) [Apr. 4 to Livy, Howells; MTHL 2: 652nn1; MTB 964; NB 33 TS 5].
April 5 Thursday – Sam gave a reading at the British Embassy in Paris in behalf of a school for destitute English and American children, with tickets at $4, an amount that Sam “trembled” from [Mar. 30 to Rogers; Apr. 12 to Orion; NY Times article below]. Note: this has sometimes been reported in error as Apr. 7, perhaps due to a mis-dating in an Apr. 22 article. The New York Times reported on this reading:
April 5 Friday – The dinner and gathering at Henry M. Stanley’s ran past midnight into this day. Later in the day Sam likely traveled on to Paris and 169 rue de l’Université to reunite with his family.
April 6 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook : “Harriet Hosmer’s Studio — 4 p.m. Wednesday” [NB 31 TS 36]. Note: placement in the NB suggests this day or Apr. 13 Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830-1908).
April 6 Thursday – At Richard Watson Gilder’s office, on Century Magazine letterhead, Sam wrote to Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of State in Cleveland’s cabinet, repeating his support for Frank Mason as Consul General at Frankfurt, Germany.
Through me, Mr. Cleveland knows all about Mason but Mr. Gilder of the Century thinks it will be best for me to bother you a little about him, too — & so I do it, & you will pardon me for I am not trying to do the United States a harm but a service [MTP].
April 6 Friday – Sam left Paris for Southampton via London [Mar. 30 to Rogers]. In his Mar. 26 to H.H. Rogers, Sam wrote his plans were to dine with Henry M. Stanley and Sir Francis de Winton, Governor of the Duke of York’s household, on the night before he sailed, Apr. 6. In this dinner, Sam wanted to “put out feelers” in a general way about selling his Paige Compositor stock.
April 6 Saturday – Sam’s letter of Apr. 7 reveals he was in Paris, when he wrote “Clara and I thought we had discovered exactly the flat” for Mrs. Clarence Rice, “last night” (Apr. 6). Sam also saw Mr. Macgowan and Mr. Southard, according to his Apr. 7 to H.H. Rogers.
April 7 Thursday – Horace Rutherford wrote from Trenton, Ky. He enclosed under another cover, a “genuine Kentucky Meerschaum. It has been in training for two or three weeks, and I trust it is ancient enough for you. I saw an article several weeks ago,by Luke Sharp in the Louisville Times in which it stated that you were very fond of smoking an old Kentucky cob pipe, and as you could not stand a new pipe, you hired some old tough to flavor it for you, etc.” [MTP].
April 7 Saturday – Sam was on the S.S. New York as it sailed from Southampton, England [MTHHR 23].
April 7 Sunday – In Paris at 169 rue de l’Université, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. He was “in a sweat” and spent a page or two wondering how his royalties from Frank Mayo’s dramatization of PW might be calculated. As per the contract, Sam should have had no worries:
April 8 Friday – At the Grand Hotel Sud Tirol In Trient, Austria en route to Florence, Italy, Susy Clemens wrote her “beloved,” Louise Brownell. Joseph Verey and Susan Crane escorted the Clemens girls. The letter was postmarked Apr. 16, but this is the date assigned by the MTP.
April 8 Saturday – In New York, Sam lunched at Andrew Carnegie’s [Apr. 7 to Carnegie; NB 33 TS 6]. Kaplan writes, that Carnegie “tried to interest him in a scheme for absorbing Great Britain, Ireland, and Canada into an American commonwealth” [318]. In the evening, “dined at restaurant with Dr. Clarence C. Rice & Dr. Bangs” [NB 33 TS 6].
April 8 Sunday – Sam was en route to New York on the S.S. New York.
April 8 Monday – Frank Mayo inscribed a publisher’s copy of PW: “Yours truly, Frank Mayo. First representation of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Hartford, Conn., April 8th, 1895”. The occasion was the Hartford opening of the dramatization of PW at Proctor’s Opera House. At some later time Sam wrote under Mayo’s inscription: “The above signature is genuine & is that of a genuine man, too. Truly yours, Mark Twain” [MTP; Fatout, MT Speaking 276]. Note: see Sept.
April 9 Saturday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam of the need for Webster & Co. to close ranks:
…that after next year, instead of making it our policy, as we have heretofore, to push forward and enlarge the firm in all directions, it would be wiser to commence at that time to concentrate; to bend our efforts…in keeping what we have, doing it with less expense, and making it more profitable [MTLTP 300].
April 9 Sunday – Sam’s notebook in N.Y.: “Sunday 9th Dined with Mrs. Ratcliffe” [NB 33 TS 6].
In Venice, Livy wrote to Sam. Jean suffered from a cold with a bad cough, and could not adventure in the gondolas. They expected to return to the Villa Viviani in Florence on Wednesday, Apr. 12. A bundle of newspapers from various places had come for Sam, and Livy was upset by the contents of some:
April 9 Monday – Sam was en route to New York on the S.S. New York. In the Brooklyn Eagle, p.9, “The Anti-Spoils League,” Sam’s name was listed along with many others, reading like a Who’s Who in New York.
April 9 Tuesday – In Paris, France Sam wrote to his nephew Samuel E. Moffett after receiving Samuel’s book, Suggestions on Government (1894). Moffett was still on the San Francisco Examiner staff.
August 1 Saturday – The Clemens party arrived in Bayreuth, Germany (Bavaria) on what Sam wrote was “about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday” [“At the Shrine of St. Wagner”]. During their stay in Bayreuth, Sam wrote “At the Shrine of St. Wagner,” the second letter to the McClure Syndicate. You can find this letter in Neider’s Complete Essays of Mark Twain (2000).
August 1 Tuesday – In Krankenheil-Tölz, Germany Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow, author and one of his dinner companions in Berlin. Webster and Co. published two of Bigelow’s books in 1892: The German Emperor and His Eastern Neighbors, and Paddles and Politics Down the Danube. Sam responded to an invitation from Bigelow (not extant) but evidently they were more widely separated by geography than he’d previously thought, so he had to decline as he didn’t want to leave Livy alone overnight.
August 1 Wednesday – Sam was in Hartford visiting old friends and staying with the Whitmores (See Aug. 3 to Livy.)
August 10 Monday – A man signing himself “An Old Frontiersman” wrote from Rosebud, S.D. having just read Sam’s sketch “Luck” in Harper’s. Few writers had given him such pleasure [MTP].
August 10 Wednesday – In Bad Nauheim Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall.
I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I saw a more effective way of using the main episode — to wit: by telling it through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (still 15 years old) & their friend the freed slave Jim around the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator…. I have written 12,000 words of this narrative….so I shall go along & make a book of from 50,000 to 100,000 words.