Summer of 1883: Day By Day

July 15 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote to Sam & Livy: more about their progress & expenses [MTP].

July 16 Monday – Samuel E. Dawson wrote “to assist any of your friends about copyright” [MTP].

July 17 Tuesday – Hartford Engineering Co.  wrote having rec’d his of the 14th and asking again if he would renew his endorsement on the $10,000 bond [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Can’t do it”

Joe Twichell wrote, having read Sam was “getting up from an attack of rheumatism and malaria…how sick have you been?” He told of a gathering where the ex-president Hayes asked about Twain and also about himself [MTP].

July 18 Wednesday – Sam measured off the winding driveway up to Quarry Farm, and began a game.

July – Sam invented the English history game with pegs up the Quarry Farm driveway for different years from 1066. He then made the commercial board game and involved Charles Webster.

This was also a period of continuous outpouring of productivity in Sam’s writing, especially on the HF manuscript. Howells returned from a year in Europe and collaborated with Sam on several stage play projects. The next eighteen months were quite productive for both men.

July 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. Dana wrote Sam on July 9 and 14.

July 2 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Karl & Hattie Gerhardt. He was hard at work on Huck:

“We have been here on the hill a week or more & I am deep in my work & grinding out manuscript by the acre—stick to it the whole day long, allowing myself only time to scratch off two or three brief letters after they yell for me to come down to supper” [MTP].

July 20 Friday – In Elmira, Sam wrote  to Joe Twichell, telling more about the pegs-in-the-driveway memory game. Twichell indiscreetly allowed the letter to appear in the Hartford Courant for July 24, much to Sam’s consternation. To compound the error, the letter was printed with two errors [MTNJ 3: 28n47]. It also ran in the July 26 edition of the New York Times, p 3.

July 21 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Orion, Mollie and Jane Clemens, relating his current “booming” productivity at writing HF, and his new passion, the English history game, which began with pegs up the driveway in Elmira and was translated into an indoor board game:

Private.

July 22 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Mr. Krueger: 

Dear Mr. Kreuger— / I enclose it; & if it ain’t the thing, give me the points & I’ll do it over again; for we want you to go Cornell, & hope you will. The Sages are there, temporarily—till they go to heaven where they belong—& there are other good & great folks there.

July 23 Monday – In Elmira, Sam drafted a “confidential” reply to friend and journalist Noah Brooks’ June 19 letter. Brooks, of the New York Times, had been subpoenaed in the Duncan libel suit, and assumed that Sam would be anxious for the Times to win the suit. Sam’s reply may not have been sent, but revealed his defection to Duncan’s camp as the best defense of being named in the suit [MTNJ 3: 58n135].

July 24 Tuesday – The Hartford Courant ran an account of Sam’s history-memory game from information supplied by Twichell, much to Sam’s consternation. Howells noted the article in his letter of Aug. 12 [MTHL 1: 437 & n2].

July 26 Thursday – Jean Clemens’ third birthday.

Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster in New York City. Sam asked him to run up to Elmira “about Monday or Monday night” and lend him his head “for a couple of hours” [MTBus 218]. It was only a ten-hour trip, after all. Sam wanted to discuss the new memory game as a commercial product, and get Webster to begin the marketing.

July 28 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer, best known for fiction dealing with Mid-Western farmers. Born in Wisconsin, Garland would move to Boston in 1884. Evidently he’d asked Sam for a free story.

“G’way, Leionidas! You ought to know better. I don’t give ‘em away, I sell ‘em. It’s my grub; it’s the only way I’ve got, to earn a dishonest living” [MTP].

July 31 Tuesday – Charles A. Dana wrote, “It is a shame that Krackowiser should bother you in such a case. He is a crank, however, and his function appears to be to bother somebody. I have known him these many years and have employed him sometimes as a reporter” [MTP]. Note: Dana of the NY Sun.

July 5 Thursday – “An American on American Humour” appeared in the St. James Gazette. Thomas Sergeant Perry’s article reported Sam’s humor as “representative of a democratic, serious, ironic quality in American national character, reacting against Europe, though not independently and perhaps not in hostility” [Tenney 12].

July 6 Friday – Charles A. Collins in Elmira wrote a long legal opinion to Sam’s questions, which were pasted to p. 1 of Collins’ letter. See ca. July 1 entry.

July 7 Saturday – John H. Garth wrote from Hannibal “thoroughly ashamed of myself for my neglect in not acknowledging long ago the receipt of your new book…” [MTP].

July 8 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote of the “great interest” taken in him by Dr. Augustus F. Beard of the American chapel, a brother of “the artist Beard of New York animal painter I think.” More expense accounts sent and thoughts of going to Florence to study [MTP]. Note: because such a sojourn in Florence would require him to leave wife and child in Paris, Gerhardt struggled with it for some time. Beard had been pastor of Plymouth Church, Syracuse, NY.

July 9 Monday – An unsigned favorable review to LM ran on page 3 of the New York Times.

Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, wrote to Sam on a mysterious opportunity. The letter implies a recent answer by Sam to an invitation to come to New York to confer with Dana:

Dear Mr Clemens:

I’m sorry you can’t come sooner; but don’t make any new contracts in the mean time.

I think I can put you in the way of making more money out of your brains than you have ever made.

June 14 Thursday – The Clemens family left Hartford and arrived in New York [MTBus 214].

Worden & Co. Wrote having rec’d his of June 13 and enclosing a memo of the sale of 100 shares MoPac and orders from Dean Sage to sell the remaining 200 shares [MTP]. Note: Sage acted as Sam’s stock broker from NY.

June 15 Friday – The Clemens family left New York City and traveled by special sleeping car to Elmira [MTBus 214].

Twichell noted in his journal, “our eighth child and fourth son was b. about 11 AM” [Yale, copy at MTP]. The boy was named Joseph Hooker Twichell.

Joe Twichell wrote to Livy with news of #8—a son—Joseph Hooker Twichell [MTP].

June 16 Saturday – Charles Webster wrote about business: Bliss, sales of old books, etc. [MTP].

June 17 Sunday – Under the headline “ENGLISH BADLY FLAYED” The New York Times, p.10 ran an article about Sam’s introduction to The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English by J. Osgood & Co.

June 18 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster. Sam anticipated a suit about the “strawberries interview” about Duncan, and directed Charley not to say anything to George Jones  (1811-1891), one of the founders of the New York Times.