May 22 Sunday – Sam’s note this date gave details in the ongoing conflict with the Countess Massiglia.
Sunday May 22: At 5.50 am the fountain was still playing.
Also at 7 when I got up to dress.
Also at 8.05 when I was at breakfast & turned & looked over my shoulder.
There was never such an unimpeachable witness on the stand: he testifies right along,night & day, that there is plenty of water to preserve my invalid wife from added disease-attacks, & he proves his testimony at the same time.
May 23 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Rogers” [NB 44 TS 11].
At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote a postcard to Channing H. Cook of the American Plasmon Co., N.Y.C. “You were quite right, Dr. Cook. It was Dr. Lockwood“ [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Rudyard Kipling, apologetic he hadn’t been much help in Kipling’s suit against Putnam & Co.
May 23 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to James R. Clemens.
Insert: Planters House Hotel, St. Louis
I am thanking the both of you (& Muriel) very much, & am accepting for June 5th, 6 p.m., & next day & maybe day after. With many thanks.
May 23 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Franklin G. Whitmore.
Mr. Clemens wishes me to write for him answering the various points of your letter.
The stained glass can be put in an art store as you suggest.
The mirror can be sold at auction.
The mahogony [sic] bureau and bedstead can be sold at auction.
The sale of the safe at $15 is all right.
Mrs. Clemens does not think it will be necessary for the laces at the Bank to be examined.
May 24 Saturday – Livy’s diary: “Mr & Mrs Frederick Goddard here for luncheon” [MTP: DV161].
Mary A. Geisse wrote from Phila. to Sam, thanking him for “his prompt reply, also for your opinion of my work” (poems) [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “I tried to make this fool understand (without saying the naked brutal words) that she has neither talent nor genius with this damned result.”
May 24 Sunday – The New York Tribune, p. 16 reported on the Clemens family illnesses:
ILLNESS AT TWAIN HOME.
——
Members of Family Have Been Sick—All
Except One Now Well.
The statements published in yesterday’s papers that Mark Twain and his family were still ill at his home, at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, were declared by Dr. Henry Moffat, of Yonkers, one of the physicians in attendance, to be wofully [sic] exaggerated.
May 24 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Telephone countess Seristori concerning tomorrow” [NB 47 TS 11].
May 25 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “Alice Day, dinner” [NB 44 TS 11].
Check # Payee Amount [Notes]
216 Consol gas of NY 9.50
May 25 Sunday – Sam read the last half of George Iles’ 1900 book, Flame, Electricity and the Camera [May 26 to Iles].
Nathaniel Pasternak wrote from N.Y.C. to Sam, that he would “be on hand any time you call me up. The boys were disappointed—badly—on receipt of that previous letter and are now reassured. Membership has now swelled to about fifty—you can guess the reason—and no more are admitted for the present. We hope your trip turns out to be a very successful and agreeable one” [MTP].
May 25 Monday – The New York Times ran a squib under “General Notes,” p.8:
At Mr. Henry H. Rogers’s request, Samuel L. Clemens, “Mark Twain,” is to preside and make an address at the opening exercises of the Old Home Week in Fair Haven, Mass., Mr. Rogers’s native town. Mr. Rogers is President of the Old Home Week Association. [Note: July 26-31, 1903; Sam was in Elmira the entire week, so plans were changed.]
May 25 Wednesday – R.H. Slacke wrote from Shildon, County Durham, England to Sam: “For more than twenty years it has been on my mind to tell you that heaps of your admirers would rejoice to see the history of Joseph ‘as if fell from the lips of Scotty Briggs, riddled with slang.’ / Yours faithfully…” [MTP]. Note: see Buck Fanshaw’s funeral in ch. 47 of RI.
An unidentified person wrote from Arlington, England to Sam (only the envelope survives) [MTP].
May 26 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “Roslyn” [NB 44 TS 11].
May 26 Monday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to George Iles. “Yesterday I read the last half of your book on flame, electricity & the camera again. And I thank you again. It is an enchanting book, & the style & phrasing are worthy of the great subjects. I am leaving for the West, to return the middle of June; but I am leaving the ancient hymn-books behind, in a safe place” [MTP].
May 26 Tuesday – In Fairhaven, Mass. H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, responding to his of May 20.
I received your letter of the 20th and since that time have seen in the papers accounts of the condition of your patients [NY Tribune of May 24]. I hope they are still improving.
….
We have had lovely weather and I am leading a simple Christian life, trying to get strong and fit. I wish you were young enough to be influenced religiously. It would I am sure be the making of you [MTP].
May 26 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Gov. David R. Francis, St. Louis, Mo.
May 27 Monday – At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote to William Dean Howells after presumably receiving a photograph of Howells inscribed to “Old Clemens.”
May 27 Tuesday – Sam left N.Y.C. on the N.Y. Central RR at 9:20 p.m. headed for St. Louis [May 23 to James R. Clemens]. Note: according to his June 10 to James, it was a 30 hour trip from N.Y.C. to St. Louis, putting him in St. Louis at about 7:30 the morning of May 29. His NB entry gives 9.45 p.m. as departure time, with fare of $24.25 and a room $22; paid $46.25 [NB 45 TS 14].
Livy’s diary: “Sue [Crane] came in the evening: Mr Clemens went to Columbia, Missouri to receive a degree from the University of Missouri” [MTP: DV161].
May 27 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “APH / Noon—Collier / 416 W. 13th / Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired. / Patriot & humbug are usually synonymous terms” [NB 46 TS 16].
May 27 Friday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
I keep forgetting to say:
Forward NOTHING to me that comes to your care by either MAIL or EXPRESS.
Please put all such things in a barrel, & leave them there till I come.
(Barrel or furnace—take your choice.) / None of the stuff is ever worth the postage [MTP].
May 28 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Wait for Burton Thompson” [NB 44 TS 11]. Note: not identified.
The New York Times, May 29, p 3 reported on a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria to organize the
Missouri Society of New York:
A MISSOURI SOCIETY NOW
———
Organization in This City Formed at a Banquet.
———
May 28 Wednesday – Sam was on the train en route to St. Louis, sleeping well the second night [May 23 to James R. Clemens].
John B. Briggs wrote from New London, Mo. to Sam. “Dear ‘Mark’:– / I see by the St. Louis Republican where you are to be in Hannibal, Mo., in the course of a few days, and if I am well enough would like to see you…and talk over old boyhood days” [MTP].
May 28 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Dr. Ferrar [sic Farrar] / 1271 Bway / 11 am. / [Horiz. Line separator] / Plasmon meeting 1.30 / [Horiz. Line separator] / 142 E 33d. Robt. Reed. 5. ” [NB 46 TS 17]. Note: Dr. John Nutting Farrar (1839-1913), dentist, “Father of American Orthodontics.”
Robert J. Collier wrote to Sam.
May 29 Wednesday – Sam spent the evening with the Urban Broughtons at their home on 230 W. 72nd Street [MTHHR 462n3: NB 44 TS 12]. Note: On June 3 Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers referring to him not showing at the Broughtons.
May 29 Thursday – Sam arrived in St. Louis around 7:30 a.m. He had planned to meet James Ross Clemens at the Planters House, but James and his cousin Lamotte Cates met him at the station and took him to Planters. (Note: Paine writes Horace Bixby also met him at the station MTB p. 1167).
May 29 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Isabel Lyon wrote two letters for Sam to Franklin G. Whitmore.