The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day

December 21 Thursday – Mark Twain was the guest of honor at the Aldine Association dinner given by the Society of Illustrators. The New York Times, Dec. 22, p. 9 reported on the event:    

JOAN OF ARC APPEARS TO STARTLE MARK TWAIN

Surprise Prepared for Him by Society of Illustrators.

THEIR GUEST AT DINNER

December 21 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Electric music. Bermuda.

The King is planning to go to Bermuda if Mr. Twichell can go too, & I’m to go as valet & myself. I’ve written to Mr. Twichell & now we’re waiting. Mr. Clemens would like to go there for the summer & has had me look up the temperature & other things. He thinks he’d like the isolation, but the lack of companionship would make more desolation for him than anything else, for he of all people must have companionship—mental companionship.

December 21 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean.  

December 21 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam added to his Dec. 20 to Margaret Blackmer.

Next morning. 8 a.m. Before breakfast.

December 21 Tuesday —- The New York Times, p. 1, ran an article on the arrival of Mark Twain from Bermuda and Sam’s declaration that he would do no more work:

MARK TWAIN DONE WITH WORK

Humorist Says There'll Be No More for Him in This World.

“I am through with work for this life and this world,” said Mark Twain on his arrival yesterday from Bermuda. He had said a good word for the suffragettes, and his reply came when he was asked whether he intended to lecture for the cause of votes for women.

December 22 Friday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to Robert K. Mackey’s Dec. 20 request for an autograph on a newspaper speech. “Cut out the speech and send it, not the entire newspaper” [MTP]. 

Mrs. Abigail M. Roach wrote to Sam [MTP]. On or just after this date Sam sent her the form letter for the occasion of his 70th, adding a short paragraph: 

December 22 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to thank Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers) for the Christmas cigars and the kind remembrance. He would come up “pretty soon” to wish a Merry Christmas in person as he’d “worked off the several-days’ engagements which Clara had piled” on [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mrs. Fiske’s play” [MTP TS 151-152].

The New York Times, Dec. 23, p.2 ran an article about Mark Twain and the telephone, quoting him from the previous day, Dec. 22:

December 22 Sunday – Sam gave a dinner speech at the Pleiades Club, Hotel Brevoort, which was literally next door to his house at 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Fatout introduces the event:  

At the Pleiades Club dinner for Mark Twain, menus were decorated with illustrated quotations from his books. Carter S. Cole, chairman, introduced the guest of honor by paying tribute to his eminence in American literature, praising so lavishly that Mark Twain began his speech with a mild protest [MT Speaking 600].

December 22 Tuesday – Mansfield Hobbs, an attorney friend of Ralph W. Ashcroft filed incorporation papers for the Mark Twain Company, with $5,000 in capital stock. Clemens, Ashcroft, and Isabel Lyon were the original officers. Sam signed a document assigning and transferring all of his literary rights to the new corporation.

December 22 Wednesday — Sam left NYC for Redding by this day, according to Paine [MTB 1547].

Frederick A. Duneka wrote from NYC:

“You may recall that we had a talk not very long ago about making some school books from your writings. | talked the matter over with Paine yesterday. The school book plan seems a good one in so far as it teaches the young where to go for the most limpid English.

December 23 Friday – Attorney John Larkin wrote to Sam, clearing up matters of the transfer tax on the Tarrytown property on Livy’s estate. He had had “considerable correspondence with Mr. Jervis Langdon” on the matter and prepared “additional affidavits which I believe will satisfy the transfer tax appraiser” but Sam would have to swear to an affidavit before a notary and return the document to Larkin [MTP].

December 23 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied with thanks to the Dec. 18 of Helen Keller.

O, thank you for those lovely words!

Now as to your January visit: we must certainly meet then, & have a talk.

Another thing. You say,

“As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again & again.”

December 23 Monday – Elmer Z. Burns wrote to Sam, enclosing a photograph of Twain’s cabin at Aurora. “Some of your admirers have placed decorations on this cabin in your honor, but I am sure, if all who would like to do so, could, the cabin would be buried beneath the load” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote for Sam on the letter, “The hillside & the sagebrush look just as they did before, but I think the house looks better than it did formerly”

December 23 Wednesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to the Dec. 10 of L.M. Powers. “Published without my consent; & promptly suppressed. SLC /Don’t know where to find this one. It was a political brochure” [MTP].

December 23 Thursday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a short note to the Manager, Associated Press that ran in the NY Times (and possibly other newspapers) on Dec. 24, p.6, “Twain’s Merry Christmas.”

“I hear the newspapers say I’m dying, The charge is not true, I would not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as good as I can, / Merry Christmas to everybody! / Mark Twain” [MTP].

See Paine’s recollection of dinner this evening with Jean Clemens, in Dec, 24 entry.

December 24 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

C.C. goes to spend tonight with the Gilders & she’ll hang up her stocking. The King wanted to be represented too in that stocking, so he sent me up to Vantine’s to buy a pin—it happened to be a jade pin & is good.

December 24 Tuesday – William Henry Bishop, American Consul in Palermo, Italy wrote a four-page typed letter to “My dear Mr. Autobiographer”:

      It is known that when one gets in front of most any kind of an Auto he is apt to be hurt, so I am not much surprised, after the impact of your current Autobiography (page 487 of the December number of the North American Review), to find myself a corpse.

December 24 Thursday – In Redding, Conn. Sam inscribed a copy of P&P to Ossip Gabrilowitsch: “To Ossip Gabrilowitsch, all good wishes & a Merry Christmas, from the Author. Stormfield, Dec. 24/08” [MTP].  

December 24 Friday — In the morning Jean Clemens died in the bathtub. Dr. Ernest H. Smith, the examining physician of the county ruled Jean’s death was due to drowning, evidently during a seizure [Hill 253]. The New York Times ran the sad story on page one, Dec. 25:

MISS JEAN CLEMENS FOUND DEAD IN BATH

She Was Overcome by an Epileptic
Seizure an Hour Before Her Body Was Discovered.

HAD PLANNED A HAPPY XMAS

December 25 Sunday – The New York Times ran a feature article on p. SM1, “Mark Twain— His Autobiography; Rescued from Oblivion After a Third of a Century,” headed by several engravings and photos. See Insert of sketch, captioned: “The latest portrait study of Mark Twain from photograph by Marceau.” The sketch also noted by J.A. Williams.

December 25 Tuesday Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam inscribed in a copy of What is Man? to Neltje Blanchan DeGraff Doubleday (1865-1918) (Mrs. Frank N. Doubleday) :  

December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a telegram to Dorothy Quick, now at 63 8th Ave. “Merry Christmas and do not forget Friday” [MTP]. Note: the Friday engagement is not specified.

Sam also inscribed the verso of a photo of himself lying in bed to an unidentified person:

“Now that the horse-shoe is mounted as a pin, it has become useful as well as beautiful. Truly Yours, Mark Twain, Xmas, 1907” [MTP: City Book Auction catalogs, No. 355, 16 Nov. 1946, Item 103].