May 7 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens left last Friday with Mr. Rogers and now he’s in Fair Haven. Jean had a telegram that Mr. Clemens will not arrive as soon as expected. The house needs him so dreadfully. He is so much the master of us all.
Jean is reading now Wolf von Hierbrandt’s [sic] book on the Kaiser, and we find it very interesting. I’ve began my pincushion work.
May 8 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The resting is so sweet. Perhaps the long flights of stairs at #21 [Fifth Ave.] began to shred my nerves and physical condition” [MTP TS 56].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Mr. Clemens returned to town—is detained by business” [MTP TS 18].
George H. Warner wrote from Tryon, N.C. to Sam, enclosing a newspaper clipping about Canadian fishing, “Angling for Big Gray Trout.”
Dear Mark Twain / I thought of you when I read the enclosed as the only one capable of doing it justice.
May 9 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
dear, there has not been a single week of the past 48 which has not brought me reason to say “how grateful I am that Livy is out of it!”
How did she ever live in this execrable world? & why did she love it & wish to stay in it?
Jean does not know why I do not go to Dublin, & I do not want her to find out. I am staying here because Clara is to be operated on for appendicitis to-morrow afternoon & 4 o’clock.
May 10 Wednesday – The New York Times, May 11, p. 1 ran a squib that Clara Clemens was operated on in the afternoon by Dr. Hartley (likely Dr. Frank Hartley 1856-1913).
At 8 p.m. at 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
dear, it’s over, & Clara is doing well. She had a famous surgeon—D . Hartley. It was a bad appendix—long & slim & with crooks in it; it was getting ready to be a dangerous case.
Good-night dear Sue—I am very tired, on account of the solicitude. / Holy Saml [MTP].
May 11 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
May 12 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Isabel V. Lyon in Dublin N.H. (only the envelope survives) [MTP]. Note: judging from Lyon’s journal entry below, this likely was a telegram with news of Clara’s condition, and news that he was not ready to come to Dublin quite yet.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Santissima’s temperature is normal. There are no complications, but Mr. Clemens won’t come yet” [MTP TS 57]. Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Telegram this morning. / Pulse 80. Temperature 99. / Everything satisfactory [MTP TS 18].
May 13 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: We walked around the Lake, Jean and I—a beautiful walk. The native people are so gentle and sweet-eyed, with soft lazy speech. We met a couple of men who had a setter with them. The owner eyed Prosper and said “I reckon my dawg won’t hurt him.” We found a glorious bank of violets, painted trillium, and trailing “Hobble bush.” You don’t always find it trailing. “Nature’s Garden” makes the country so enjoyable and it is so interesting to hear from Mr. Clemens and Jean how sweet and lovely Neltje Blanchan is [MTP TS 57].
May 14 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Evening now, and the voices of Jean and Italian Teresa come to me as Jean is having her usual confab with Teresa. How their voices rise and fall in the sweet Italian cadences.
The summer, the months and weeks and days and hours must count for many things done when they are ended. I mustn’t write down what I want to do for then they won’t be done. Only everyday I must think toward their completion [MTP TS 57].
May 15 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “I’m anxious about the Aeolion. It doesn’t come and there is no word from it. Every day Mr. Clemens sends telegrams telling of C.C’s condition. Every day it has improved” [MTP TS 57]. Note: the referred to telegrams are not extant, but when Lyon gives specifics of Clara’s condition it is clear she has rec’d word from Clemens.
May 16 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote an introductory letter for his nephew Samuel Moffett to Bellamy Storer, American ambassador to Vienna, Austria.
I beg that you will allow me the privilege of introducing to your favor my nephew S. E. Moffett, one of the editors of “Collier’s Weekly” who is sent to Europe to gather some facts from governmental sources, & if you can send him to the officials he needs to see, I shall be very grateful. I vouch for his honorable character, his discretion & his honesty. He will do your kindness no discredit.
May 17 Wednesday – With Clara Clemens out of danger from her appendectomy, Sam left N.Y.C. and traveled to Boston, Mass., where he took rooms at the Hotel Touraine. There he wrote on hotel stationery to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich.
I came from New York, arriving in time to dine with you, but I couldn’t raise you on the telephone, so I am turning in, disappointed. You are out dissipating, I suppose.
May 18 Thursday – Sam left Boston early in the morning and traveled 64 miles to Dublin, N.H., where Katy Leary, Patrick McAleer, daughter Jean and Isabel Lyon were waiting to spend the summer with him [May 17 to Aldriches].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Today Mr. Clemens arrived.
Today the sun burst through the clouds just after the telegram came saying that he would arrive in Harrisville at 11:35.
May 19 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to the May 2 from Lady Margaret Jenkins in England.
Dear Madam: / M . Clemens directs me to write for him explaining that he is not feeling well enough to do so himself, owing to the results of his great anxiety caused by the recent critical illness of his eldest daughter.
M . Clemens is not going to England this year; but he wishes me to thank you very much for your kind letter, and to convey to you his sincere regards [MTP].
May 20 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara, still in N.Y.C. recovering from an appendectomy.
dear, to get a letter from you was a happy surprise; I was not expecting so dear & rich a benefaction.
May 21 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Mr. Clemens spends too much time over his work. Hours & hours & hours he sits writing with a wonderful light in his eyes. The flush of a girl in his cheeks and oh the lustre of his hair. It is too terribly perishably beautiful. It is no wonder that his tread is light as a spirit’s, for the great power of his brain seems to draw him up and to give him his delicacy of step [MTP TS 59].
May 22 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
We’re up in the hills now. All of us but Santissima. A little note this morning from Miss Gordon says that she [Clara Clemens] is improving wonderfully after her operation. Fighting a headache, I am too dull to write what was in my mind.
May 23 Tuesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Brander Matthews. “You have my deepest sympathy. These are black days. There are now but 13 days between me & the anniversary of anniversaries” [MTP]. Note: Matthews’ loss was not determined.
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
May 24 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Robert L. Fulton’s May 12 invitation.
May 25 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The microbe has fixed it—we won’t ever die, but live forever and ever as disintegrated oxygen and hydrogen and gases and acids and things. It’s quite dreadful and very fascinating. The mystery and workings of that brain. I’m reading away back in his first book and just loving that “Innocents Abroad”, with its choice way of looking at places and things and people and events centuries old. Today the music was very beautiful. Like a sweet spirit [MTP TS 60].
May 26 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon Mr. Thayer called, after he left Mr. Clemens said nice things about him, and then said he had seen him a quarter of a century ago when he went up to Hartford to make a black and white sketch of Mr. Clemens for the Century. Mr. Clemens was fighting the beginning of a cold so he took his whiskey bottle, and he said that in an hour he was very happily and comfortably drunk, but the black and white sketch wasn’t an entire success.
May 27 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Hubert H. Bancroft of San Francisco, who had written on May 21 inviting Sam to visit.
I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are over, & it is my desire & purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my remnant of life & indulge myself with the pleasure & repose of work—work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.
May 28 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day Mr. Clemens has been working too hard revising his microbe manuscript. This afternoon he was limp—exhausted—and tonight he went early to bed. Jean read aloud to me in Madame Laschovska’s book on Transylvania and I did not play the Beethoven today that I had planned to. / Mollie Ingalls writes many things among them that Walter Griffin has gone to Holland [MTP TS 61]. Emily Laszowska-Gerard. See May 16 entry.
May 29 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: There is tremendous news from the Japanese Russian War. Togo has beaten Rojesvesky, and taken ships and many prisoners, among them poor Rojesvesky—yes “poor”—for his joy is gone—he has failed utterly. 7,000 Russians gone. Oh, the terror of it, a rough sea and tremendous shelling, and sinking vessels. Oh, terrible beyond words [MTP TS 61].
Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: “Mr. Clemens has been working too hard, he is tired” [MTP: TS 20].
May 30 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Ah, it was splendid to see Mr. Clemens stand with his back to the open fire, and hear him sum up the way in which the Almighty has been personally conducting this Russian campaign against the Japanese. As many as 8 terrible defeats, but the Russian Church say that it is ordained of God and they rushed into battle headed by the cross. Yes, you find yourself thinking, thinking—after Mr. Clemens gets through a talk of that kind [MTP TS 61].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2:
May 31 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to John Larkin.
Mr. Clemens directs me to say that he has stopped the check that is due M . Renwick on June 1st, as you suggest in your letter of May 29thr