December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – Sam inscribed a copy of PW to Mary B. Willard, the Berlin school teacher for Clara: To Mrs. Mary B. Willard / Merry Christmas / & best wishes from / Mark Twain / Paris, 1894 [MTP].

December 26 Wednesday – Frank M. Scott, president of The Century Co. wrote to Sam, having received a letter from a Mr. F. Fauveau of Paris, asking permission to translate and publish The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories in French. Scott asked Sam to communicate with Fauveau on the matter. See Jan. 7, 1895 letter to Chatto, forwarding the letter and chore to them, since such permission was under their authority [MTP].

December 27 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. Evidently another letter had arrived from Rogers (not extant) for Sam answered:

December 30 Sunday – The New York Times, p.2 in a display ad for the North American Review, listed January’s issue, headed by Mark Twain’s, “What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us.” 

This is a witty and trenchant rejoinder, in the famous humorist’s best style, to the Frenchman’s criticisms of Americans and American institutions now appearing in “Outre Mer.”

December 31 Monday

January – Borderland (London) ran “Character Reading by Palmistry and Otherwise: The Story of the Tell-Tale Hands of Mark Twain,” p.60-4. The article, previewed in the Oct. 1894 issue of the magazine, contained poorly reproduced photographs of the front and rear of Sam’s left hand, and Sam’s letter to the editor commenting on the accuracy of the palm readings done in the Oct. issue [Tenney 23].

January 2 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Yours of Dec. 21 [not extant] has arrived, containing the circular to stockholders and I guess the Co will really quit — there doesn’t seem to be any other wise course.

January 3 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. Sam thanked Andrew Chatto for books received the day before. He singled out Walter Besant’s London.

January 5 Saturday – French officer Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Sam would take an active interest in the Dreyfus Affair in Vienna in 1897-8.

January 7 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing a Dec. 26 letter from Frank Hall Scott (1848-1912), president of The Century Co. The letter inquired about a Mr. F. Fauveau translating The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories to French. Sam responded:

All authorities of this sort in your hands, thank goodness!

January 8 Tuesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers about being frustrated by Franklin Whitmore not sending monthly itemized accounts as requested, and not saying a word “until his exchequer has run dry.” He’d just received Whitmore’s letter through Bainbridge Colby, with an accounting covering nine months of Hartford expenses. Sam noted he’d just written Whitmore and advised him that the current royalty check from the American Publishing Co.

January 9 Wednesday – The New York Times, rarely complimentary to Mark Twain, ran an editorial, p.4. with no title:

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

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 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 Friday – Livy wrote to Annie Trumbull, a fragment of which survives:

“…of the fact that I was greatly embarrassed by her manner and at my wit’s ends as to how to meet it. I rather liked the woman. / I want very much to know how you are this winter” [MTP].

January 19 Saturday – The Athenaeum, No. 3508 p.83-4 briefly reviewed PW: “The story in itself Is not much credit to Mark Twain’s skill as a novelist,” and few of the characters are striking, but “If the preface (with its tasteless humor) be skipped, the book well repays reading just for the really excellent picture of Roxana” [Tenney 24].

January 20 Sunday – The New York Times, p.3, ran a short excerpt from Sam’s N.A.R. article about Bourget:

January 21 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Yours of the 8th is received.

That is the very thing. If you will write that sort of a letter to [Bram] Stoker, I’ll be very glad, and will keep diligently aloof myself.

January 23 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to John D. Adams of the Century Co. enclosing a “few alterations” to a JA excerpt and asking for proofs of the rest of the parts; he hadn’t thought it necessary but admitted that was a mistake and was glad that Henry M. Alden “had that inspiration” [MTP].

January 26 Saturday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam received H.H. Rogers’ Jan. 15 letter. He would respond on Jan. 29.

January 27 Sunday – The New York Times, p.27, “Mark Twain’s New Volume” praised the illustrations in the book version of Pudd’nhead Wilson, and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins, published on Nov. 28, 1894. The Century installments were illustrated by Louis Loeb. Frank Bliss hired two little-known illustrators for the book, F.M. Senior and C.H. Warren, who came up with 432 drawings to be used in the margins [1996 Oxford ed.

January 29 Tuesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Your felicitous and delightful letter of the 15th [not extant] arrived three days ago and brought great pleasure into the house. I note what you say about helping me with your heart and head and pocket in the matter of the uniform edition; and I shall surely call on the first two gratefully; and if I find I can’t pull through without invading the third, why then I’ll attack that if the edition promises to justify such conduct.

February – As early as Feb. 3 in a letter to Rogers, Sam was planning and discussing a world tour. The plans evolved over the spring and were not finalized until late May, with J.B. Pond acting as manager for the North American leg and Robert Sparrow Smythe of Melbourne handling the down-under leg. After the death of Susy, Clara Clemens recalled her father saying to her mother:

February 1 Friday – Andrew Chatto sent Sam the London address of Max O’Rell (Paul Blouët) and advised that even though Max was in America, letters sent would be forwarded. Chatto acknowledged receipt of the American edition of PW and was sorry he did not have time to include the Twins story in their edition, but hoped to use it “before long” [MTP].

February 2 Saturday – Sam & Livy’s 25th Wedding Anniversary. At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam gave Livy a new five-franc piece that she would frame, which symbolized their reduced financial condition. “Nobody else put up anything, all the family but me being poor” [Feb. 3 to Rogers]. Sam dedicated a copy of JA to Livy:

1870 TO MY WIFE 1895 
OLIVIA LANGDON CLEMENS