The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day

January 31 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: “Pay Rent, / Check for Mrs. Greening – 25.00” [MTP TS 3]. Note: Tabitha Quarles Greening (“Puss”).

January 31 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam replied to Charles Alexander’s Jan. 29: .

January 31 Thursday – Life Magazine ran a cartoon   of Mark Twain sitting “on a barrel of cigars and smoking, with text praising him in general terms for his good humor and his attacks on folly and vice” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Sixth Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Spring 1982 p. 10]. Note: compare this to the Dec. 21, 1905 cartoon in Life, celebrating his 70 birthday.  

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Chinatown and the beads. / The King’s watch is gone” [MTP TS 25].

January 31 Friday – Sam was in Bermuda.

Isabel Lyon’s journal:  “Such a delightful two letters from Ashcroft about the King & his journey down to Bermuda” [MTP: IVL TS 17].

John W. Crawford wrote on Hoffman House, NY notepaper to Miss Lyon after learning Clemens was gone to Bermuda. He asked if she might make sure Sam saw his Broncho Verse and asked for an autograph [MTP].

January 31 Sunday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.

My dear Annieanlouise—

I have been in New York ten days, visiting friends, & got back home with some guests yesterday evening by the light of the fresh snow, no lanterns being needed & none displayed either at the front door or in the loggia. So the days are really lengthening, & I am so glad!

January 31 Monday — In Hamilton, Bermuda Sam inscribed a copy of “Is Shakespeare Dead?” From My Autobiography to Marion S, Allen (Mrs. William H. Allen). “We ought never to break the Sabbath during a thunderstorm. /Truly Yours /Mark Twain / To / Mrs. William Allen / with the respect, esteem, and affectionate regards of / The Author” [MTP].

Albert Bigelow Paine wrote from Redding to Clemens:

January 4 Wednesday – The Aberdeen (S.D.) Daily News, p. 2, “Mark Twain’s Pranks” reported reminiscences by Captain H. Lacy, who was born in Hannibal in 1839. Lacy claims it was not Jim Wolfe who was the victim of the famous skeleton-in-bed prank (sometime in the 1840s), but “a tramp printer named Snell,” who “blew into Hannibal one day and was given work on the paper.” Lacy claimed to be along on the prank; his account offers not only a different victim than has been imagined (see MTL 1: 18n4; also Ch.

January 4 Friday – The S.S. Bermudian reached Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda at 6 a.m. and docked about 9:30 a.m. The Clemens party registered at the Princess Hotel, next to the water just west of town. D. Hoffman writes:

January 4 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:  The King sent up an irritated message to me by Katherine this morning. “Was I ill? If not, then some telephoning.” I hopped out of bed, and put on wrapper and a shawl and went down. He was crossish—as the King has never been before— & pounded the bed. Dan Frohman must be telephoned to at once for a box for Ethel Barrymore’s play today—But Dan Frohman is never at his Lyceum office until after 11.

January 4 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to the Telephone Operators.

To the Young Ladies of the Telephone Office:

I have received your kind & welcome notes, & I thank you for them, & wish you a happy New year, with many & many others to follow.

Your obliged & appreciative friend Mark Twain  [MTP]. Note: Sam sent each operator a box of candy.

Sam also wrote on The Educational Theatre for Children letterhead, to an unidentified man.

January 4 Tuesday — D. Hoffman writes: “Clemens took the train to New York on Tuesday, January 4, and had dinner that night with Howells and Paine at the home of Edward Eugene Loomis, who was married to Livy’s niece, Julia O. Langdon” [144]. (Editorial emphasis.) Note: it would be the last time Howells and Clemens met. Though the date is off by one day, MTHL carries the following note: 

January 5 Thursday – Literally thousands of articles, reprints, and mentions of Mark Twain appeared in American newspapers from coast to coast during this period. This tidbit, from the Dallas Morning News, p. 6, borrowed from an unspecified issue of Harper’s Weekly:

What Is In a Name.

Mark Twain once went into a restaurant and sat down at a table near a solitary man who had just arrived and was giving his order to the waiter.

January 5 Saturday – Bermuda: the Clemens party of Sam, Joe Twichell and Isabel Lyon chartered a boat, the Nautilus, and spend two and a half hours sailing in and out of the bays and inlets. Lyon details:

January 5 Sunday – H.H. Rogers and wife paid a call on Sam at 21 Fifth Ave.

Isabel Lyon’s journal:  Mr. Lawrence, president of the Lotos club were here today to talk up the dinner that is to be given next Saturday evening in the King’s honor & the Oxford degree is to be made the feature of it. All day the King was in bed & he is resting up from these long fearful billiard nights, when he played so nervously from 8:3- until 12-1-2 & even 4 o’clock— that time—

January 5 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a three-paragraph letter (again on the Children’s Theatre letterhead) to an unidentified  person, inviting to a course of lectures at the Lyceum Theatre [MTP: Cordelia and Tom Platt catalogs, Nov. 1993, Item 1F]. Note: like the Jan. 4 letter this and likely several others were sent out to promote “the dramatic instinct in education.”

January 5 Wednesday — Sam sailed “unexpectedly” for Bermuda on the Bermudian. Paine did not accompany him; instead his valet, Claude Benchotte [Paine to Quick Jan 17; D. Hoffman 158]. Note: Paine also had written the Allens that Sam would likely make another trip during the winter to Bermuda; Sam, down with a cold on New Year’s Day, planned to leave on this day for Bermuda, so just how “unexpected” the trip was, it may have seemed so to Paine.

January 6 Friday – In San Remo, Italy, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.

January 6 Saturday – Clara Clemens continued to suffer a throat affliction. On this day she returned to the Norfolk sanitarium; she would return on Jan. 9, then go to Atlantic City [IVL TS 4; Hill 121]. 

Albert Bigelow Paine called on Sam at 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. about the possibility of writing Mark Twain’s biography. Paine writes of the meeting: 

January 6 Sunday – Bermuda, the last day. The group spent the day riding through Paget and Warwick, then to Hamilton Parish and to Joyce’s Dock Caves, which were “brilliantly lit with acetylene gas, showing stalactites of enormous size.” Later in the day Sam and Joe tried to find places they’d been back in 1877, when they stayed in a boardinghouse run by Emily Kirkham. They asked about and found the woman, now 48. This search became a subject for his Autobiography, and evidently Sam dictated segments to Miss Lyon during the trip and the voyage home [D.

January 6 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:  A.B. came in for a few minutes this a.m. but not to give any chance for billiards. The King was sorry. Miss Nichols arrived. The King is interested because Will Gillette speaks of buying a “Jay Farm” up in Redding.

January 6 Wednesday – Anna L. Cunningham wrote to thank Sam for the box of chocolates [MTP]. Note: “Telephone girl”

January 6 Thursday — Sam was at sea on the Bermudian headed for Bermuda. It would be his last stay there and last 95 days, his longest [D. Hoffman 158].

Albert Bigelow Paine wrote from Redding to Clemens: “Matters are going well. Mrs. Paine & I are sending out the cards, and I shall order two hundred more bought. Already there are over three hundred letters and telegrams and a number came in today—one from Helen Keller, which I enclose to you” [MTP].

January 7 Saturday – Sam’s notebook:

“60 years ago, optimist & fool were not synonymous terms. This is a greater change than that wrought by science & invention. It is the mightiest change that was ever wrought in the world in any 60 years since creation” [NB 47A TS 3].