The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day

January 7 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

January 7 Monday – The Clemens party left Bermuda, again on the Bermudian. D. Hoffman writes:

As the ship sailed from the pier, the flag was dipped three times, and the King “lifted his head high and saluted with grave beauty,” Miss Lyon wrote. She said the little person at his side was Paddy, a pretty girl from the Upper West Side who had been on the same voyage to the Islands.

January 7 Tuesday – Clara Clemens gave a recital at the 21 Fifth Ave. house.

January 7 Thursday – Sam’s new guestbook:           

Name Address Date Remarks

H.W. Dearborn [signed]    [New York]  Jan. 7

Ragnvald Blix began a letter to Sam that he finished Jan. 21 [MTP]. Note: not found at MTP.

January 7 Friday — Sam arrived in Hamilton, Bermuda, where he wrote from the Allen’s Bay House, Pembroke Parish, to Frederick A. Duneka or Frederick T. Leigh at Harper’s.

Dear Duneka 
or The Major: 
Please get for me with good dispatch, & send to me to the above address, these things, to-wit, and charge to me: 
“Old Rose & Silver,” by Myrtle Reed; 
“Their Heart’s Desire” (illustrated by Harrison Fisher;) 
“The Master’s Violin.” hy Myrtle Reed

January 8 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote to Harriet E. Whitmore (Mrs. Franklin G. Whitmore). Excerpted here only the passages dealing with the Clemens family:

January 8 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote to Thomas S. Barbour resigning from the Congo Reform Assoc.

I have retired from the Congo.

January 8 Tuesday – Sam was at sea en route from Bermuda to New York on the Bermudian.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The King is so amusing, so paralyzing. [written diagonally:] See notebook” [MTP TS 7]. Note: Lyon continued, likely at a later time, to strike out words, phrases and even whole segments, seemingly toward publication, which never, until now, has taken place.

January 8 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:  The King walked up to the Irish exhibition at Madison Square Garden this morning and saw Miss Yeates [sic Yeats], the poet’s sister.

January 8 Friday – John Albert Macy brought galleys of Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon, etc. (1909) by William Stone Booth (1864-1926) . Sam then wrote the first pages of “Is Shakespeare Dead?”  Sam thereby became convinced that “Booth, had demonstrated, beyond any doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were there” (in Shakespeare’s works) [Gribben 77; MTB 1479, 1485-6].

Sam’s new guestbook:  

Name Address Date Remarks

Annie S. Macy

January 8 Saturday — Amy C. Hayes wrote from Molokai, Hawaii to offer condolences from her and her son, Dr. Homer H. Hayes [MTP].

January 8–February 12 – Sometime during this period, Sam wrote to the Robert Fulton Memorial Association, a letter which ran in the Feb. 18 issue, p. 20 of the NY Times:

January 9 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

The days fly busily along. There seems no chance of ever settling the house. Mr. Clemens is still in his bed—and the best things in the day are the games of 500 beside his bed. We play on a big square cigar box. Today a long gaunt reporter from “The World” came to have Mr. Clemens comment upon an account of himself. He tried to extract information from me, but I am solemnly non-committal [MTP: TS 36-37].

January 9 Wednesday – In the morning Sam, Joe Twichell and Isabel Lyon arrived back in New York [D. Hoffman 77]. Twain told the press, “Please don’t say I have been away for my health. I have plenty of health. Indeed, I’ll give some of it away to anybody who needs health” [New York Times, Jan. 10, 1907].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “We anchored at Pier 47 this morning, but were a long time doing it because we had to avoid a sunken ferryboat. The week has been one of unbroken peace” [MTP TS 7].

January 9 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick in Plainfield, N.J.

(Only the envelope survives) [MTP].

Sam also wrote to the Knickerbocker Trust Co. Depositors’ Committee:

Jan. 9, 1908

To the Committee:

January 9 Saturday – The Armstrong Assoc. of New York, per May Hurlburt sent Sam tickets for a box at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 22 [MTP].

Diana Belais, President of the New York Anti-Vivisection Society wrote to ask Sam for a letter of introduction to Harpers, as they were in “a terrific fight …against the Medical Society of New York, which has banded indissolubly to crush out our movement” [MTP].

January 9 Sunday — Albert Bigelow Paine wrote from Redding to Clemens:

I am enclosing to you a letter from Clara, received yesterday. It seems to be postmarked the 27th, so it was written before she could have received a letter from you.

She probably received my first letter about Jan 1 and we may expect an answer to it by next steamer. I also am enclosing a letter from Margaret Blackmer and I will put in one or two foreign letters [MTP].

Margaret W. Patterson wrote from Iowa to offer condolences [MTP].

January, late (before Feb. 1) – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to  the Jan. 2 of Witter Bynner:

Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.
Ah say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner
We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner! [MTP].

July 1 Saturday – John Milton Hay (1838-1905) died this day. In Dublin, N.H. Sam sent a telegram to the N.Y. American:

I am deeply grieved & I mourn with the nation—this loss is irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay & my admiration of him endured 38 years without impairment. / Mark Twain [MTP: Cummings file]. Note: See Sam’s note sent anonymously under 1905 entries.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: This evening a telegram came from the N.Y. American asking Mr. Clemens to telegraph them something on the death of Mr. Hay.

July 1 Sunday – In the evening in Fairhaven, Mass. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Dublin, N.H. 

July 1 Monday – Clara Clemens and Isabel Lyon were on board the Red Cross liner Rosalind from New York off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia when it collided with the coast steamer Senlac. The Rosalind was not damaged, but the other vessel was, all passengers escaping to the Rosalind. “Miss Clemens says that, instead of going to St. John’s, as she intended, she will return to New York” [NY Times, July 2, p.2, “Steamer Run Down by Liner Rosalind”]. See IVL’s journal entry below.

July 1 Wednesday – Sam and Albert B. Paine were still in Boston at the Hotel Touraine, staying the third night there [July 5 to Sturgis]. According to Paine:

Clemens did not wish to hurry in the summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight- seeing, and driving around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool of the evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said:

July 1 Thursday — The Mark Twain Library Association held another lawn party to raise funds at the home of Harry A. Lounsbury. The minutes reveal “not a very large attendance, but the profit was pleasing,” It is not known if Clemens attended [MTLA minutes copied by Tenney Nov. 15, 1981].

Emma Falkner wrote from Regents Park, England to sell Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary [MTP].

July 10 Monday – Sam wrote to G.E. Stechert & Co., New York, ordering a subscription to the German periodical, Simplicissimus; Illustrierte Wochenschrift. Sam’s letter is not extant but referred to in the company’s reply of July 12.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon Mr. Clemens came down with the day’s ms. –“44” turns time backward in order to accommodate the ghosts who’ve been invited to the ghost dance.— He was so handsome as he sat reading with lovely color in his cheeks, and his eyes flashing. Such a delight.