To The Person Sitting in Darkness: Day By Day

April 1 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “11 p.m. Bliss and Gibman. Dinner–Poultney” [NB 44 TS 8].

At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote again to Laura F. McQuiston in Fort Hancock, N.J.

April 1 Tuesday – At sea on board the Kanawha en route to Nassau, Bahamas, stopped at Rum Cay. Sam wrote to Livy that they were “homeward bound,” though he was unsure when they might reach home, possibly Apr. 12 or 14.

All our prophecies go to grass. We go to places we never intended to visit, & don’t go to others that were on our list. We did not return to Havana, so I have never received any letters but those which you & Jean wrote me on the 19th [not extant]. …

April 1 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Robert Collyer, who descended from the forge to the pulpit. Mr. Rogers puts a bust of him in Cooper Institute. / (C’s daughter objects to ‘Preacher…Blacksmith,’ wants the latter suppressed in the inscription” [NB 46 TS 13]. Note: Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer, pastor of Rogers’ NY Church of the Messiah; see prior entries.

April 1 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “Visit that Villa—leave here 9 a.m.” [NB 47 TS 8]. Note: Sam was still shopping for a better villa.

Edward B. Caulfield of the Italian Gazette wrote to Sam.

“The New York ‘Sun’ is misinformed. Maurice Hewlett is not spending the winter in Florence, & he has not even come to Italy for the tour he will make this spring through Tuscany to collect material.

April 10 Wednesday – John Y. MacAlister wrote to Sam, “just beginning to creep about after a wearisome attack of influenza” so he had no details to offer on the Plasmon Syndicate in London, but heard it was growing “by leaps and bounds” [MTP].

April 10 Thursday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to The American Plasmon Co., 361 Broadway, N.Y.: “Has Mr. Butters returned? Any news? What is your telephone address?” [MTP]. Note: Henry A. Butters.

Sam also wrote to the editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. The letter ran in the Apr. 12 issue of the newspaper [MTP].

To the Editor of the Republican:

April 10 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to John White Alexander, illustrator.

I have an engagement & must lose the pleasure of being there, but I thank you heartily for remembering me & offering me a chance to share in the good times you are going to have. We shall never have a more capable or a kinder Secretary than Mr. Gage was. When I was in Europe two years ago I asked him to pass two tons of baggage for me duty free, & I offered to divide. Not many would have done that [MTP].

April 10 Sunday – In Florence, Janet D. Ross wrote to advise Sam, that she was checking out villas for him but had not yet found a suitable one [MTP].

April 11 Thursday – At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote a few lines to Laura Fitch McQuiston in Fort Hancock, N.J. “I shall lose no opportunity that offers, to serve you. My expectations are small, because of the experiences behind me; but I shall watch & wait” [MTP]. Note: see earlier letters to McQuiston.

April 11 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “xx said she, deftly taking a new reef in her garter, then withdrawing her shapely limb from view behind the falling gown—” [NB 45 TS 10].

April 11 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.

“Is the man still in the market who offered you $20,000 & a house on Gillette street? If so, take him up— then sell the Gillette street house straight off, for the best price you can get. Rid me of the Hartford house. If any man wants to pay $25,000 cash for it, let him have it” [MTP].

April 11 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Brocklebank—lunch—” [NB 47 TS 9].

Sam wrote to Harper & Brothers, London office, letter not extant but referred to in Harpers’ Apr. 14 reply; evidently, from the reply, Sam requested copies of “The Dictionary of Dates,” and Howells’ Stops of Various Quills (1895).

April 12 Friday – Rev. Thomas Chalmers of Manchester, N.H. wrote on Fryeburg-on-the-Saco letterhead to Sam, upset about Sam not issuing a “restatement of the Ament case,” and judging his first article to be “an outrage” based on a “newspaper lie.” “I am sorry you have spoiled my ‘Mark Twain’ Your sayings will not be as funny as they used to be” [MTP].

April 12 Tuesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Margaret S. Graham.

It is a charming letter, & comes just in time to do a kind of miracle: that is, add a grace to this April morning, a thing difficult to the verge of impossibility; for the foliage & the flowers are looking their densest richest & vividest in the flooding sunshine, & far-away Florence, glinting vaguely through her enchanted veil, is a dream!

April 13 Saturday – In N.Y.C., Sam wrote to an unidentified woman [MTP].

Dear Madam:

It is such a disappointment. From the tone, I supposed it was God; when I reached the signature I found it was only you.

Your pulverized & repentant / Mark Twain / Apl. 13 [MTP].

April 13 Sunday – Clemens wrote “A Defence of General Funston,” which ran in the May issue of the North American Review [Apr. 14 to Rogers]. Note: the article may be found in Zwick’s Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire, etc. p.119-32 (1992). Paine observes this article “stirred up a good deal of a storm” [MTB 1165].

April 13 Monday – Sam took to his bed with a “heavy cold” which turned into bronchitis. He wrote of the five day stay in bed on Apr. 17 to Bigelow.

April 13 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Princess De Rohan” [NB 47 TS 9].

April 14 Sunday – In N.Y.C., Sam wrote to Mary Elizabeth Phillips, observing that “even the kindliest-intended sketches” of himself made him feel ashamed, but the one she’d sent made him “proud. It may not be me, but it’s what I would like to be anyway” [MTP].

April 14 before – Dr. Richard H. Jesse, President of the University of Missouri, wrote to Sam:

April 14 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to William Dean Howells.

I shall do my best to enclose the enclosure, & be to that degree eccentric.

April 14 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto, William Lyon Phelps (1865-1943), visited Sam for about an hour, noting that Sam “was 68 years old, but looked older….During this hour’s interview, Mark smoked three cigars; there was a constant twitching in his right cheek and his right eye seemed inflamed” [Hill 83]. Notes: Phelps was the “unrepentant duck-killer,” who as a boy killed five of Sam’s white ducks at the Farmington ave. house. (no relation to William Walter Phelps, American Minister to Germany).

April 15 Monday – In N.Y.C., Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton, who had become a professor at Princeton University.

Dear Professor: / I am glad to hail you by that handsome title, and we all congratulate you cordially! Mrs. Clemens puts in her head and interrupts to say, “Give them my love, my best love, and do your dictating a little more quietly and don’t make such a hell of a racket for I am busy in here and have things to attend to myself.” That is like my wife, who is nothing if not unliterary.

April 15 Tuesday – Livy’s diary: “The Misses Selfridge & Miss Mayo here for tea” [MTP: DV161].

April 15 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Marriage of Julian Hawthorne’s daughter / Ch[urch] New Jerusalem / 35th bet. Park & Lexn / 3 p.m. / [Horiz. Line separator] / J.P. Jones, 237 E 17th / dinner—8” [NB 46 TS 14].