March 21 Saturday – At 12:45 p.m. Sam and Carlyle G. Smythe left Rawalpindi and returned the 174 miles to Lahore [Ahluwalia 19].
March 22 Sunday – At 10 a.m. the entire Clemens party left Lahore on a 1,443 mile train trip to Calcutta [Ahluwalia 19].
March 23 Monday – A travel day on the cars for the Clemens party, en route to Calcutta.
March 24 Tuesday – The Clemens party reached Howrah and crossed the Hooghly River by way of a floating bridge, arriving in Calcutta at sunrise. They took rooms at the Hotel Continental [Parsons “MT India” 92; NB 36 TS 59].
March 25 Wednesday – In Calcutta at the Hotel Continental, Clara Clemens was confined to her room by a touch of malarial fever. Both cholera and malaria were rampant in the city. Sam had recovered from the trip enough to submit to an interview by a journalist from The Indian Daily News, which ran Mar. 26.
March 26 Thursday – At 7 a.m. the Clemens party sailed from Calcutta on the S.S. Wardha bound for Ceylon. Before reaching the sea, however, they had to negotiate the Hooghly River. Sam’s notebook:
March 26. At anchor at Garden Reach all night. When wind blew in, icy cold; the moment it stopped, blistering hot & mosquitoes. We all went up & slept on deck….
March 27 Friday – The S.S. Wardha negotiated the last stretch of the Hooghly River and by 11:15 a.m. was in the blue of the Bay of Bengal. Again Sam was nursing a cold. Sam’s notebook:
Mch. 27. We have slept on deck these 2 nights. Very hot, & mosquitoes troublesome elsewhere.
10 a.m. The Hoogli here is 5 miles wide, the shores a low fringe of forest — a ribbon….
March 28 Saturday – En route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, Sam wrote in his notebook:
Our captain (Robinson) is a handsome Hercules; young, resolute, manly … he cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. He is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway of the table: he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way [NB 37 TS 8-11].
March 29 Sunday – The Clemens family was en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. During the Mar. 28 to 31 voyage Sam wrote a short essay burlesquing missionaries in a parody of Sir John Lubbock’s Ants, Bees, and Wasps: A Record of Observations on the Hapbits of the Social Hymenoptera (1882). Gribben writes,
March 30 Monday – The Clemens family was en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. The Wardha anchored in the bay at Madras, India at 8 p.m. [Budd, “Interviews” 69].
Livy wrote to her sister, Susan Crane.
March 31 Tuesday – The Wardha was piloted into the harbor of Madras, India at daybreak for a 24 hour stop. Sam was again suffering from a cold and cough. He was interviewed by the Madras Standard; the interview ran on Apr. 1; a longer version on Apr. 11 in the Calcutta Reis and Rayyet (see Budd, “Interviews” (119) p. 69). From the interview, Sam was quoted:
April – A copy of Walter Bagehot’s Biographical Studies (1895) was inscribed in Sam’s hand: S.L. Clemens from Mr. Skrine, Calcutta, April, 1896 [Gribben 39]. See Mar. 25 for a NB entry on Francis Skrine.
April 1 Wednesday – The Clemens family was again en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. Sam noted, “Curving down around the S.E. corner of Ceylon” [NB 37 TS 18].
April 2 Thursday – The Clemens family was en route on the Wardha in the Bay of Bengal, headed for Colombo, Ceylon. Aboard ship Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
April 3 Friday – Shortly after noon, the Wardha arrived in Colombo, Ceylon. At 9:30 p.m. Sam gave his “At Home” lecture in Public Hall, to what Lorch calls “a highly appreciative but disappointingly small audience,” due to it being Good Friday and with inclement weather [194]. Livy and Clara spent the day sightseeing in Kandy; The Clemenses were guests of Dr. Murray, surgeon, “delightful people & a delightful bungalo” [Ahluwalia 20; Lorch 194].
April 4 Saturday – At 5:30 in Columbo, Sam gave another “At Home” lecture, probably his No. 2 program. In the evening during a tropical downpour, the Clemens party sailed on the S.S. Wardha for Port Louis, Mauritius [Ahluwalia 20].
April 5 Sunday – At sea on the S.S. Wardha Sam noted his last two lectures:
Talked Friday, 9.30 p.m. & Saturday 5.30 p.m. Dead Man, Plug, Smpox, Punch & German — 1.20 [hrs]. Watermelon, Duel, McWillims, Poem, Whistle — 1.20.
We sailed yesterday evening. Guests in Columbo of Dr. Murray & his wife — delightful people & a delightful bungalo…The Anglo-Indian runs to pets. (Lt.Col. Baddeley at Cawnpore.)
Tropical downpour when we sailed [NB 37 TS 24-5].
On board, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore:
April 6 Monday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius.
April 7 Tuesday – At sea on the S.S. Wardha, Clara Clemens wrote to her cousin Samuel Moffett:
April 8 Wednesday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius.
The San Francisco Examiner, p.8 ran a review of the touring PW with Frank Mayo, “Mark Twain’s Epigrams.” The play at the Columbia Theater was called a “huge success.”
April 9 Thursday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. Sam wrote:
April 9. Tea-planting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger says it often pays 40 per cent. on the investment. Says there is a boom [ch LXII 611].
Livy wrote to Harriet E. Whitmore: “I have just rec’d word at Columboof the terrible grief that has come to you. How I wish I could put my arms about you….” [MTP].
April 10 Friday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. Sam also wrote in FE:
April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is about the divinest color known to nature.
April 11 Saturday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. In FE Sam wrote of the morning shipboard routine:
April 12 Sunday – On board the Wardha at sea, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, principally about the Archer County, Texas land that Livy purchased. (See Oct. 27, Nov. 25, Dec. 30 1882 entries.)
April 13 Monday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. Livy wrote home to Alice Day on their ninth day at sea that “this ocean trip has been most restful” [Rodney 187].