June 24 Monday – At Brown’s Hotel in London Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote for Sam to Marie Corelli.
“Mark Twain thanks you for having saved him from the crime of high treason to literature & he will accordingly visit the tomb & house of the Bard of Avon & take luncheon with you—if it will be convenient to you—a Saturday June 29th which is the only possible date” [MTP].
June 24 Wednesday – In Princeton, N.J.. ex-president Grover Cleveland succumbed to a heart attack. His last words were, “I tried so hard to do right.” Sam consistenly held the man in high esteem, and wrote condolences to Cleveland’s widow on June 25.
Alice Minnie Herts for the Children’s Educational Theatre wrote to Sam announcing their move and asking for “a good picture of yourself” [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Answd/ June 29, 08 / Say, yes. For her to get the photo & Mr. Clemens will present it. Mr. C. is in his country home”
June 25 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
June 25 Tuesday – This day’s issue of Punch was dedicated to Mark Twain, and included a full-page cartoon, by Bernard Partridge (see insert); the original would be presented to Sam at the July 9 Punch dinner by little Joy Agnew. The New York Times, June 26, 1907, p. 5, ran a Special Cablegram article on the “certification” of Mark Twain as a humorist by the publication.
MARK TWAIN HUMOR APPROVED BY PUNCH
June 25 Thursday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Frances F. Cleveland (Mrs. Grover Cleveland) in Princeton, N.J..: “Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five years. I mourn with you. S.L. Clemens” [MTP]. Note: for some reason the NY Times reported this as June 26 [June 27, p.2, “From Mark Twain to Mrs. Cleveland”].
June 25 Friday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to “any Inspector of Customs on the Hamburg-American line, Hoboken.”
Dear Sir: / I suddenly learn that the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria is due to-morrow, whereas I was not expecting her so soon. Miss Mary Clark is on board, & is bringing a dog for my daughter, Miss Jean Clemens.
June 26 Monday – Sam wrote the poem “Apostrophe to Death,” not published in his lifetime:
O Death, O sweet & gracious friend,
I bare my smitten head to Thee, & at thy sacred feet
I set my life’s extinguished lamp & lay my bruised heart
[Tuckey, “The ‘Me’ and the Machine” 135; Scott, Poetry MT 126-7]. Note: Hill gives the title as “An Invocation to Death” (as does Miss Lyon in the entry below) and notes that Sam read the poem to the “cozy group around the fire, and the next day Miss Lyon was ‘weak with the wonder of that poem’ all day long” [110].
June 26 Wednesday – The big day in Oxford, England: The Encoeonia (conferring of degrees) took place at the Sheldonian Theater in the morning.
Exactly one month later, Sam wrote of the affair:
June 26 Friday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
Dear Mr. Rogers: / Will you & Mrs. Rogers come & pay me a visit? I hope you can, & that you will give me that pleasure. I have been in the house a week, now, & am nearly wonted. I am sending this note to New York, as you were still there & making preparations for Bermuda when I last heard of you, which was a week ago.
June 26 Saturday — In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to Elizabeth Jordan’s June 23. The MTP shows this as two letters, the first being merely a sentence Sam wrote on the back of Jordan’s incoming: “Wir hätten sollen alle des Morgens um die Arbeit vorbehalten müssen. Let us save the tomorrows for work” [MTP]. The second short note: Dear Miss Jordan: I have with pleasure autographed the books, & my daughter Jean will do them up & forward them to you.
June 27 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day I’ve been weak with the wonder of that poem [See June 26 journal]. Mr. Clemens made some corrections in it and then let me take it— to read and read this morning. Later he came down stairs and talked about the kind of woman Mrs. Howells is. I’d just been saying that according to the way that Mr. Howells has depicted womankind in “Miss Billard’s Inspiration” [sic] he must have either an enchanting wife, or an utterly inconsequential one, and I think it is probably the latter, but there is that inconsequential side to every woman anyway.
June 27 Thursday – Sam attended the Oxford Pageant. The Oxford Chronicle, June 28, p.16, “Yesterday at the Pageant” reported Sam’s appearance at 3:45 p.m. The London Daily Express, reported on the gala event, (June 28, p. 1, “Pageant in the Mist”) and on Mark Twain’s attendance:
The first performance of the Oxford Pageant began yesterday [June 27] in a blaze of glory, and closed—amid cheers—in a Scotch mist.
June 27 Saturday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Augusta M.D. Ogden in Tuxedo Park, N.Y.
June 27 Sunday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to William R. Coe.
Dear Mr. Coe: / Well then, good-bye & a pleasant trip! Perhaps you will run across those fine hyphenated Lyon-Ashcrofts in the court circles of England. They took to the water when the investigation began to get pretty warm. They had said they were not afraid, & had promised my lawyer to stay here till it was finished. It was finished yesterday. The result proves that Miss Lyon did well & wisely to travel for her health.
June 28 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
This is a line to say there’s a report in Norfolk, Conn. (which we are doing what we can to keep out of the papers) that Clara’s horse has been running away with her. It isn’t so. It was her horse, but she wasn’t in the carriage.
Jean & I expect to go see Clara in a few days—as soon as we get a permit from the doctor, which may come any day now. It is pretty cold weather here, but we don’t mind it.
With warm regards to both of you [MTHHR 587-8].
June 28 Friday – Though all 27 days Sam spent in England were busy, Sam labeled this day as especially so. From Sam’s A.D. for July 30:
June 28 Sunday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick.
“Dorothy dear, bring with you a doll about 8 inches long—Paine’s little daughter Frances will fetch a doll when she comes up the hill to visit you, & you and she can have a fine domestic time together./ With lots of love” [MTP; MTAq 181]. Note: Frances Paine was a younger sister to Louise Paine.
June 29 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara in Norfolk, Conn.
Ah dear heart, I am very sorry you are not going to be able to sing the Two Grenadiers BUT I shan’t be sorry if you are with us instead of out on the concert stage singing for strangers.
Yes, my bronchial affection is in a sense permanent: my port lung got a permanent damage in Berlin, & if I should catch 500 colds they would all be followed by bronchitis.
June 29 Saturday – The London Times on July 1, ran “Mark Twain and the Savage Club” about the Lord Mayor of London giving a dinner with Mark Twain as guest, Saturday night (June 29) at the Savage Club. But first, Sam had to travel to Stratford for a luncheon and be trapped by Marie Corelli. Sam’s own words are the best account of the event, which he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of:
June 29 Monday – Sam and Albert Bigelow Paine left Redding and traveled to Boston, where they took rooms at the Touraine Hotel. Before they left, Paine wrote a letter for Sam to Dorothy Quick, then followed it with a telegram and another letter. The first letter: