May 21 Monday – Abbie Gifford Rogers, wife of H.H. Rogers, died. Sam wrote of her last days on July 17 to Livy. He would get the news on May 31. Dias writes,
“On May 21, 1894, Rogers’ wife, Abbie, died after undergoing surgery in New York. She had for days been suffering intolerable pain (from an unsuspected tumor). Consequently, she submitted gladly to the operation. After the surgery, however, she began to sink and never rallied” [MT Letters to Rogers Family 14].
May 22 Tuesday – In Paris at the Hotel Brighton Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. He told about trying to chase down Rogers’ two daughters, Mrs. Duff and Miss May, who had gone to Switzerland. He wrote about his two-day stopover in London and his offer from Mary Anderson’s agent to speak ten nights for two thousand pounds. Then he related the family’s plans and his forecasted return:
May 24 Thursday – Frederick Blackwood (1st Marquis of Dufferin) wrote to Sam at the Hotel Brighton:
My dear Mr. Clemens / How very kind of you to have remembered my request. I am indeed most grateful especially for the charming autograph inscription which the book contains. Very shortly we are having a garden party, and I hope you will still be in Paris when it takes place.” Sam wrote on the envelope, “Lord Dufferin” [MTP].
May 25 Friday – In Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, wondering if the two Rogers girls had gone home, because there was no sign of them and they were not at the Hotel Victoria in London. He repeated that he would take the family to Aix-les-Bains toward the end of June, then sail back from Southampton. If by chance the newest Paige typesetter was completed, would Rogers please cable him in care of Drexel, Paris.
May 26 Saturday – The Athenaeum, No. 3474 p.676 printed a brief review of Tom Sawyer Abroad. Tenney quotes: “A dull book, and ‘a grievous disappointment to admirers of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and of his friend Huckleberry Finn…it is a pity that [MT] should squander himself on such a book as this’” [22].
May 30 Wednesday – In Paris, Sam wrote a short note to Robert Underwood Johnson:
My dear Johnson: I reminded Dr. Boyland the other day to forward his MS. to you (about the Commune I think it is) and he said he would. It is the MS. I spoke to you about. Yours in a hell of a hurry. S.L. Clemens [MTP: Am. Art Catalog, Feb. 17, 1926, Item 97]. Note: Dr. Halstead Boyland; “the other day” may have been in London or since in Paris.
May 31 Thursday – In Paris Sam wrote to Henry H. Rogers, minutes after hearing from his secretary, Katharine I. Harrison, of the death of Abbie Gifford Rogers (Mrs. Rogers).
June – The final serial segment of Pudd’nhead Wilson ran in the Century, and was called “resplendent as ever in faultless typography and unsurpassed engravings” by the N.Y. Times, June 2, p.3 “New Publications”. Sam was anxious to get the book published.
Sam inscribed a photograph of himself to Mrs. Hapgood: To Mrs. Hapgood / With the kindest regards of / S.L. Clemens. / June 1894 [MTP].
June 1 Friday – In Paris, France Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall.
Mrs. Clemens & I have read your letter & are sincerely sorry for your hard situation. I wish I could make it better; I certainly would if I could. But the whole business being now in the hands of the creditors, I have no authority & can do nothing.
If the assignment was a put-up job I knew nothing of it, & never in the least suspected it.
June 2 Saturday – H.H. Rogers wrote again to Sam, relating a minor dust-up with James W. Paige over signing patents. Paige had delayed signing, arguing he was not quite prepared to take out foreign patents.
June 5 Tuesday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam that they’d been unable to secure a copy of Lownsbury’s Life of James Fenimore Cooper, but they would send for one “from the other side without delay” and hoped he would call on them when in London [MTP].
June 6 Wednesday – John J. Read wrote from Paris thanking Sam for being able to look at life through the eyes of Mark Twain. “What a pity it is that you cannot teach Professor Fiske to play. It requires genius, however, to play well, and the knowledge of Sanskrit or any other outlandish tongue is worse than useless” [MTP].
June 8 Friday – Clara Clemens’ 20th birthday.
June 11 Monday – In Paris, France, Sam made a “short address” at the Countess de Kessler’s Musicale. Livy was in the audience. The gala was reported later by the N.Y. Times, June 28, 1894 p.2, “The Social World.”
June 16 Saturday – In Paris, Sam responded to H.H. Rogers letter, writing about the Clemens family’s changed plans.
June 17 Sunday – William Walter Phelps, the ex-Minister to Germany and close friend of the Clemens family, died in Teaneck, N.J. only one year after returning to the US to take a judgeship. His funeral procession was lined with hundreds of people; the trees he had planted himself lined the path. At the time of his death, Phelps owned half of what is presently Teaneck.
June 18 Monday – In Paris Sam responded to a note from Eben Alexander, US Minister to Greece, writing that his “kind favor of May 8th” (not extant) had just arrived.
I am very glad of the compliment of being translated into Greek, notwithstanding the lack of international copyright, & I am much obliged to you for trying to convey the result to my hands [MTP].
June 19 Tuesday – In Paris, Sam wrote “only a line to say howdy” to Eleanor V. Hutton (Mrs. Laurence Hutton). Sam hoped they wouldn’t have left for Onteora, N.Y. before he arrived in New York July 6th. He told of the family’s plans; they were to leave day after tomorrow (June 21) for La Bourboule, where Sam would spend a week with them. Sam would then leave for N.Y.
June 20 Wednesday – Livy attended a French wedding where Clara was a bridesmaid [June 21 to Orion].
June 21 Thursday – Though this is the day Sam had planned to move the family to La Bourboule, France. Things were delayed somewhat, and they did not leave Paris until Saturday, June 23. In Paris Sam wrote to his brother Orion, agreeing that “Ed is right” about an amount he’d offered of $45 per share of the new Paige Compositor Co. No doubt Orion had written of Ed Brownell selling out after the Chicago test, probably to take advantage of its success.
June 22 Friday – Alfred P. Burbank died in New York of consumption after an illness of about five years. In 1887 Burbank produced Sam’s The American Claimant at the Lyceum Theatre and played the leading role. His most recent work was two tours with Edgar “Bill” Nye, which he cut short on the Pacific coast due to ill health. Several members of the Lotos Club would serve as pallbearers [NY Times June 23, 1894, p.4].
June 23 Saturday – The Clemens family left Paris and “traveled all day & it was hot” and arrived at La Bourboule, France. On June 25 Sam wrote to Susan Crane about the trip and the fatigue resulting from two-weeks’ trunk-packing.
June 24 Sunday – The President of the Third French Republic, Sadi Carnot (1837-1894) was stabbed by an Italian anarchist, Sante Geronimo Caserio, and died shortly after midnight, June 25. Ironically, Carnot had just implied in a banquet speech that he would not seek reelection. Sam noted the assassination in his June 25 letter to Rogers, as well as one to an unidentified person, so undoubtedly the news quickly reached La Bourboule where the Clemens family was staying.
June 25 Monday – In La Bourboule-les-Bains, France Sam wrote to Susan Crane:
Sue, dear, this is a hurried line, just to say howdy & tell you the family news — hurried, for it must try to catch the steamer of day after to-morrow, & in France the mails — well, I don’t know what the system is — the shackly arrangement which the French regard as a postal “system” — I only know it is not swift & not certain — I think it travels by jackass & that the jackass is drunk.
June 27 Wednesday – Frenchmen were rioting throughout the country, angry over the assassination of President Sadi Carnot on June 24. Sam wrote of a crisis situation at the Grand Hotel in La Bourboule, which had several Italians in their employ.