October 28 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Youth in smoking-chapel talking nursery-German in loud voice to be heard and envied of men. ‘Obber’—the old familiar simple words of the text-book vocabulary uttered with painful distinctness. Yet there are those who say there is no hell. ‘Etw’ss’ (etwas)” [NB 46 TS 28]
To The Person Sitting in Darkness: Day By Day
October 29 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “2 men—a giant & a dwarf—Shet pony & giraffe 6 ft 4 in—tramped the deck after midnight, talking loudly. On the portside 4 sat under Mrs. Miller’s open ports & told unclean anecdotes (in the national yell, swore, laughed like demons, & sang. The Captain is going to prevent these freedoms after 11.30 hearafter” [NB 46 TS 28].
October 30 Friday – The Clemens family was at sea on the Princess Irene en route for Genoa, Italy.
Sam’s notebook:
Oct. 30. Refer to it. There should be no first-come take choice in location of chairs. The chair-space outside a stateroom shd be the property of the occupant. People under our ports chatter till 11—if these were our chairs we could have tranquillity, for we retire at 9.30.
October 31 Saturday – The Clemens family was at sea on the Princess Irene en route for Genoa, Italy.
Sam’s notebook: “ For a whole blessed week no Sam Parks, no Bill Devery, no strikes, no news.” [NB 46 TS 26]. Note: Boxed entry. Bill Delivery.
Harper & Brothers sent Clemens a Oct. 31 statement showing $1,854.48 royalties due for single book sales (not sets) [1903 Financials file MTP].
November –This issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal contained Thomas E. Marr’s “Three Famous Authors Outdoors, p. 36-7, with four of the photographs Marr took of Sam Clemens with a porcelain cat, and John T. Lewis at Quarry Farm.
November 1 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “These chattering, cackling squaws & monkeys will all be in hell in a hundred years. There is something pleasant in the thought. / The mission of Alexander Dowie (‘Elijah II’) is a bad failure in New York” [NB 46 TS 29]. Note: John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), Scottish evangelist and faith healer, founder of Zion, Illinois. In 1903 he held a two-week evangelistic healing campaign at Madison Square Garden.
November 2 Monday – The Clemens family arrived at Gibraltar. Sam’s following NB entry states they arrived at 7 a.m. and left at 2 p.m., the last leg by train from Genoa to Florence, Italy.
November 3 Tuesday – The Clemens family was at sea on the Princess Irene en route for Naples, Italy (Some secondary sources report this as the arrival day for the Clemens family at the Villa Reale di Quarto, in Castello, outside of Florence, but the NB entries contradict this. The NY Times article announcing Livy’s death would give their arrival date in Florence as Nov. 8 [June 7, 1904, p.7].
November 4 Wednesday – The Clemens family was at sea on the Princess Irene en route for Naples, Italy: Sam’s notebook: “At Sea. / The disposition of the average ‘lady’ & ‘gentleman’ to stand in the door-way, the passage-way, the middle of the sidewalk, & be a nasty obstruction” [NB 46 TS 22]. Also, in the printed slot for Nov. 4: NEVER take a promenade-deck room again at any price: a mad-house is preferable. Get the Captain’s apartment, or go down cellar. And NEVER travel in an emigrant-ship. Bugs, fleas, stinks, &c” [TS 29].
November 5 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “NAPLES. Arr. 6 a.m. / The entire promenade deck is enclosed in canvas screens—not even God knows why. It is a prison. One might as well be in the hold” [NB 46 TS 29; MTHHR 541n1].
Muriel M. Pears wrote another effusive and long letter to Sam, whom she called the “greatest, kindest, and more Unswerving Magician of Ours.” She gushed her thanks for Sam’s “unfailing goodness and generous remembrance” of his photograph [MTP].
November 6 Friday – The Clemens family arrived in Genoa, Italy. The last leg of their journey was to be by train to Florence, Italy, some six or seven hours. The New York Times ran a squib on Nov. 9, p. 7 which revealed that George Gregory Smith met the family in Genoa and accompanied them on to Florence, so likely he had arranged the rail travel, some 480 miles. This would make the family’s arrival in Florence at about 8 or 9 p.m.
November 7 Saturday – The Clemens family was in Florence, Italy. Hill claims that because Countess Massiglia would not allow Janet D. Ross to prepare the villa prior to their arrival, so they were forced to take a hotel room in town until Nov. 9 [72].
November 8 Sunday – The New York Times, p.7 ran a short note of the Clemenses arrival in Florence:
Mark Twain’s Villa Near Florence.
November 9 Monday – The Clemens family took possession of the Villa di Quarto [Hill 72; Willis 1]. Note: Servants at the Villa di Quarto: Carlo Cosi (Chef), Adelasia Curradi (Upstairs maid), Gigia Brunori (Kitchen maid), Celestino Bruschi (footman), Theresa Bini, Ugo Piemontini (Butler), Emilio Talorici (?) coachman [AMT 1: group photo after p. 204]. Note: Katy Leary also in photo.
November 10 Tuesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam sent a telegram to Daniel Willard Fiske: “WE BEAR WITH DEEPEST SORROW HEAR YOU ARE ILL ALL THIS FAMILY SEND LOVE WISHES FOR YOUR SPEEDY RECOVERY + CLEMENS” [MTP]. Note: in George Gregory Smith’s Sept. 5 to Sam, he noted that “Prof. Fiske who is now in Copenhagen, and I am sorry to say sadly afflicted with his old enemy gout” [Orth 36].
November 11 Wednesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he added a P.S. to on Nov. 12 and the balance on Nov. 15 [MTHHR 541-2]. Note: The segment written this day has been lost. The Nov. 12 and 15 segments remain.
November 12 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Countess Frances R. Massiglia.
I wish to ask permission to put in 3 or 4 “pigs;” in case it shall finally seem desirable to have them. Also I wish to ask leave to remove the annunciator to the ground floor, if you have no objections,—or put another annunciator down there, if these excursions into the unknown shall not turn out to be over-formidable & indiscreet [MTP].
November 13 Friday – Jean Holden wrote from Chicago to Sam asking permission to make slides of some of the pictures in JA [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Refer to Harper aout the pictures”
November 14 Saturday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam sent a telegram to Daniel Willard Fiske: “WE HOPE YOU ARE DAILY IMPROVING AND WILL SOON BE WITH US. + CLEMENS” [MTP]. Note: Fiske was in Copenhagen suffering from Gout .
November 15 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam finished his Nov. 11 and 12 to H.H.Rogers.
Nov. 15. Just in the edge of the evening of that day (the 12th) Mrs. Clemens got a bad & disabling burn, & is keeping her bed ever since. It was an accident, & not her fault. It will not be well soon.
November 16 Monday – Mary Elizabeth Phillips sent a money order to Sam for 25 cents, probably for the print she sent the day before (above) [MTP]. Note: on the env.: “Preserve this rubbish / SLC.”
November 17 Tuesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote on John Y. MacAlister’s letter of introduction to Guido Biagi.
November 18 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Crocker T.D. f / Villa Solferino / 8 & 10 Via Solferino / Dinner, 7 p.m. / (& Mrs. Acklan)” [NB 46 TS 30]. Note: Mrs. Mary Aklom (Mrs. A.J. Aklom), appears in various spellings.
St. Clair McKelway wrote a letter of introduction to Sam for Miss Theodosia Lawson Boone, “now a visitor in Florence, but a resident of New York City” [MTP]. Note: see Nov. 23 from Theodosia Boone.
November 19 Thursday – In Florence, George Gregory Smith wrote to his mother: “We necessarily see a good deal of Mark Twain & his family. They are all delightful people” [Orth 31].
Sam’s notebook: “Dr. S. (G)iglioli—see Biagi Pref. Pol. ? Vispera” / Dr. Grazzini (Little Thanky)? (Praise these.) / 147860 (Prescription / British Pharmacy” [NB 46 TS 30].
November 20 Friday – Isabel Lyon and her mother Georgiana Lyon arrived in Florence and were met at the train station by Jean Clemens, “wearing an incongruous lorgnette” (eyeglasses mounted on a handle: an oxymoron!) [Trombley MTOW 29]. Note: Lyon’s trip had been delayed by needed treatments for a bad eye.