Life in Exile: Day By Day

January 24 Sunday – Caroline B. Le Row wrote offering to return to Clemens his “financial gift” of $250 long ago, which the Century had paid him, which he then gave to her, for her “little book,” English As She Is Taught. Le Row was now a teacher of reading at a Girls’ high school in Brooklyn and could send it in a month or so if he needed it [MTP]. Note: Printed in MFMT 137-8

January 24 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

January 24 Wednesday – Sam and Livy dined with Sir William Wilson Hunter (1840-1900), Francis Henry Skrine, Frank Frankfort Moore (1855-1931), British dramatist, novelist, poet; and others [Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter, etc. by Francis Henry Skrine (1901) p. 477]. Hunter would die on Feb. 6. See also Feb. 8 and 26 entries.

January 25 Monday – A London Daily News employee in Vienna wrote to Sam, thanking him for his “answer which I should consider perfectly justified if I thought you were going to lecture on improvisation.” He mentioned story titles that Sam was going to read (that page lost). He also answered a concern of Sam’s: “Alas there is nobody in all Vienna who can take an English lecture down in shorthand” [MTP].

January 25 Tuesday – The New York Times, Feb. 5, p. BR94 ran “Vienna Letter,” by Johannes Horowitz, datelined Jan. 25.

January 25 Thursday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam began a reply to William Dean Howells’ Jan. 14 that Sam finished on Jan. 26.

Yes, the short things will be added to Bliss’s Uniform Edition. Harper will issue two volumes of them in the spring. I consented a couple of weeks before their smash. They decline to give them up, now.

January 26 Tuesday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam wrote to Patrick A. Collins, Consul General, also in London: “If there is a U.S. Consul at Venice, it will be a favor to me if you will kindly have his name & address put upon the enclosed card & posted” [MTP].

January 26 Wednesday – William H. Payne of the Mt. Morris Bank wrote H.H. Rogers accepting $6,612.46 as a “correct and will be satisfactory to us” amount to settle all notes owed [MTHHR 320-1n1].

January 26 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam responded in writing to Mr. C.S. Mason in Toledo, Ohio (Mason’s letter not extant). “Dear Sir— / The Sellers in the book is a fictitious name, necessarily. / Ys Truly / SL Clemens” [MTP].

January 26 Friday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam finished his Jan. 25 to William Dean Howells.

January 27 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam replied by postcard to Miss Clara A. Nichols (her query not extant) at the Chelsea Typewriting Office, Chelsea, London on some question with Chatto, likely about typing some future MS for Sam. “Yes, do it. I am sure Messrs. Chatto will consent, with pleasure. / It may be that I shall have some MS ready before the end of Feb” [MTP].

January 27 Saturday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote to Joe Twichell [MTP:

Paine’s 1917 Mark Twain’s Letters, p.694].

DEAR JOE,—Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the war out there has no interest for me.

January 29 Friday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam wrote to Patrick A. Collins, “ever so much obliged” for Collin’s evident supplying of a US Consul’s name in Venice. Sam explained the reason he had not called on Collins was that in their bereavement they had hidden away “until such time as we may be enabled to confront life again & resume relations with our species” [MTP].

January 29 Saturday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper. Sam posed the question to himself, “The Books Which Have Most Influenced My Life?” and then proceeded to answer it by listing ten of his own works! Then he asked Harper to publish the supposedly “private letter” as “from Mark Twain to a friend”:

January 29 Monday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote to Felix Volkhovsky (1846 -1914). Many opponents of the Russian Czar fled Russia for the refuge of Britain. Volkhovsky fled from Siberia and settled in west London, where his home became a meeting place for a community of Russian émigrés.

January 3 Sunday – Sam’s notebook from Jan. 7 about this day:

London — / Last Sunday [Jan.3] I struck upon a new “solution” of a haunting mystery. Great many years ago (20?) I published in the Atlantic “The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.”

That was an attempt to account for our seeming duality —the presence in us of another person; not a slave of ours, but free & independent, & with a character distinctly its own.

January 3 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria Sam added a PS to his Dec. 30, 1898 letter to William Dean Howells.

P.S. Jan. 3. I forgot to say, don’t reveal to any one that I have turned the corner & am prospering. It might get into the papers; & if there is one thing that is more fraught with annoyance than the repute of being in financial straits, it is the repute of being the other way.

January 3 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Write Mr. Lawson about / Charles Stewart Walther Manager Estate Department—Army & Navy Stores (Auxiliary)” [NB 43 TS 4]. Note: unknown reference.

January 30 Saturday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford at the Library of Congress, Wash. D.C., making formal application for copyright renewal of IA, [MTP]. Note: He may have done this not certain that Bliss would perform in time.

January 30 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam’s recent letter to T.H. about Emile Zola (1840-1902) ran in the New York Herald as “Zola and Dreyfus.” Sam had been moved by Zola’s publication this month of J’Accuse to the French newspaper, L’Aurore. Zola cut up the French authorities for framing Captain Alfred Dreyfus:

January 30 Tuesday – Sam tried to visit T. Douglas Murray, but the family was not at home [Jan. 31 to Murray].

January 31 Sunday – Fatout lists a dinner for Poultney Bigelow, where Sam told a story or gave a talk. Among guests were Lord Young, Chief of the Judiciary of Scotland; Sir William Vernon Harcourt, leader of the Opposition, House of Commons; and Herbert Gladstone, son of the former prime minister [MT Speaking 665]. Note: Fatout does not mention Armitage and gives no source, but it’s likely the following notebook entry.

January 31 Tuesday – Livy also wrote a short letter to Susan L. Crane complaining of “rheumatism or gout in the back,” that nothing seemed to help. She was going to try Sam’s gout remedy [MTP]. She added to the letter on Feb. 1 and Feb. 2.

January, late – Sometime in late January, Sam and Livy wrote to Pamela A. Moffett, who then wrote her son, Samuel Moffett:

January 31 Wednesday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote to T. Douglas Murray, enclosing the introduction he wrote for the Official Trial Record of Joan of Arc.

I enclose the Introduction, corrected & reduced. I have retained several of the emendations made, & have added some others.

January 4 Monday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam cabled to H.H. Rogers: “CONTRACTS SIGNED.” Not extant but quoted in his letter this day to Rogers.