France Tramp: Day By Day

April 1 Tuesday – Elisha Bliss wrote to Sam after receiving his letter. He’d discussed copyright matters with Sam’s attorney, Charles E. Perkins. His handwriting degraded some here. There was some confusion about TS being a book to fulfill the Riley contract [MTP].

April 10 Thursday – Valentine Besarel, and John Harris wrote to Sam [MTP]. Note: this letter began Mar. 23.

April 12 Saturday – Sam’s notebook:

April 13 Sunday – From Livy to her mother:

“Susy grows sweet and womanly all the time and Clara is the same rowdy as ever—sweet tempered, but very hard to make any impression on” [Salsbury 101].

April 14 Monday – Leon Mead, contributor to Harper’s Weekly, called on Sam as he was leaving for business in the “neighborhood of the Triumphas Arch.” They walked “to the rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysee half way to the Arch” and talked about Howells and his “disappointment in the matter of the Pacific excursion” [MTLE 4: 48]. Note: Leon Mead was to call on Sam again in the evening.

April 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from the Hotel Normandy in Paris to Frank Bliss.

April – Sam wrote in his notebook:

“Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, & wishes he was certain” [MTNJ 2: 305].

Right below this entry, Sam wrote:

“White, now of Berlin—Yes, G is a d—d old nepot!”

April 19 Saturday – Dr. John Brown wrote from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sam, remembering Susy and the earlier happy visit [MTP].

April 2 Wednesday – The Rose Library, a semi-monthly containing a “complete novel by the best Authors,” ran The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Alan C. Fox Rare Books, Item 133. no date].

April 22 Tuesday – Valentine Besarel wrote to Sam. “I have been favored with your letter of the 15th inst, by which I perceive , that you have not yet receive, from Mrs Harris the invoice that I had sent to you. Inclosed you will find a copy of it” [MTP].

April 24 Wednesday – The Holsatia stopped at Cherbourg and/or Le Havre, France. The American-Hamburg line went through Havre and normally took twelve days from New York to Havre, then an additional day from Havre to Hamburg, a deep-water port in Germany. However, Sam’s notebook mentions passengers getting off at Cherbourg [MTNJ 2: 69].

April 24 Thursday – Samuel Troll, Fils wrote from Geneva to detail a 2,000 franc invoice for Sam’s music box [MTP].

April 25 Friday – Sam wrote from the Hotel Normandy in Paris to Andrew Chatto.

April 30 Wednesday – From Lucius Fairchild’s diary:

“Genl Noyes dinner.  Accepted. Sarah & us. Ministers Stoughton & Maynard, Job Stevenson, Mark Twain present” [Rees 8]

April 6 Sunday – John Hanlon wrote from Paris to Sam. “I am busy writing out the interesting interview of this afternoon, which you will have at the earliest possible moment.

April 7 Monday – Valentine Besarel wrote to Sam about goods shipped and reminded of amounts due. He’d rec’d Sam’s of Mar. 30 [MTP].

February 28 Friday – The Clemens family arrived in Paris with five trunks and took rooms at the Grand Hotel St. James in the rue Saint-Honoré, where they stayed until Mar. 4 [MTNJ 2: 292n7].

From Sam’s notebook

Feb. 29/79—Arrived at Paris at 5 P.M.

In ungraciousness of stranger to stranger we are exactly like the French—mannerless.

Enroute to Hamburg, April 24, 1878, Sam’s notebook mentions passengers getting off at Cherbourg [MTNJ 2: 69].

July 10 Thursday – The Clemens family left Paris at 7:20 AM for Brussels, which Sam called “a dirty, beautiful (architecturally), interesting town” [MTNJ 2: 328].

July 10 to 12 Saturday – The Clemens family spent two days in Brussels, then left in the afternoon of July 12 [MTNJ 2: 328]. Sam’s notebook:

July – Sometime during July Sam wrote from an unknown place to Charles Perkins, his attorney and financial advisor, asking him to “pile in some securities at Bissell’s—enough to run us till we return home, Oct. 25th ” [MTLE 4: 84]. He wrote in his notebook “Get copy of L’Assomoir [sic] illustrated— ” [MTNJ 2: 326] referring to Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (187?) [Gribben 796].

July 1–9 Wednesday – Between these dates Sam wrote from Paris sending a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to Lucius Fairchild, inscribed: ”Read this book, General Fairchild, & learn how to be a good boy” [MTLE 4: 83].

July 8 Tuesday – The Clemenses hired Joseph Verey at $2 per day to be their courier from “Paris through Holland to London.” Sam wrote in his notebook that Verey’s wages “to begin July 8” [MTNJ 2: 327]. Verey was the “young Polander” who “spoke eight languages and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was very shrewd, bright, and punctual” [A Tramp Abroad, ch 32].

June 1 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:

Still this vindictive winter continues. Had a raw, cold rain to-day; to-night we sit around a rousing wood fire [MTNJ 2: 312].

June 10 Tuesday – Sam wrote two notes from Paris to Frank Bliss on contract and illustration matters for the new book, TA [MTLE 4: 71-2].

Sam also wrote to Charles E. Perkins, letter not extant but referred to in Perkins’ June 26 reply.

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell, writing “gossip” while a woman in the next room stopped coughing.

June 11 Wednesday – Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog, Mass. to advise he received Sam’s note just before a letter from Tauchnitz, offering to add Aldrich’s book Marjorie Daw to his series. He thanked Sam “heartily.” He expressed what a “charming time” they’d had in Paris with the Clemenses [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “unpublished, I believe / From T.B. Aldrich”