April 29 before – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Emily B. Hapgood : “Dear M . Hapgood: / Mr. Clemens wishes me to write for him—and say that he will be very happy if you and Mr. Hapgood can dine with him and Miss Jean on Saturday evening Apr. 29th at half past seven” [MTP].
The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day
April 29 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “No news from the King, and I’m down with something. Pains almost unendurable and a temperature” [MTP TS 54-55].
In Fort Monroe, Va., Sam telegraphed Isabel Lyon: “Delayed indefinitely by fog. Clemens” [MTP]. Note: Lyon mentions this the following day.
H.H. Rogers and son Harry Rogers left the Kanawha and returned to N.Y. by rail [NY Times May 4, p.1, “Twain and Yacht Disappear at Sea”].
April 29 Wednesday– Sam wrote a sketch unpublished until 2009: “Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and as a Fisherman” [Who Is Mark Twain? xxvi, 87-94]. Note: title assigned by the MTP. Undoubtedly the sketch owes itself to an Atlantic article in the May 1908 issue by Henry Bradford Washburn, “Shall We Hunt and Fish? The Confessions of a Sentimentalist,” where Washburn opens with a quotation from Van Dyke’s “Some Remarks on Gulls, with a Foot-note on a Fish,” Scribner’s Magazine Aug. 1907. In his A.D.
Image
April 29 Thursday — In Redding, Conn.
April 3 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mother and I went to a delicious little restaurant, Italian—around in 10th Street. There we met Lilian Griffin. We had a friendly chat and enjoyed the Chianti and the macaroni. The Griffins’s have a studio here on 25th St. and Walter is painting portraits. Lilian is quite stout and looks matronly.
The Aphrodite is going to be placed on exhibition again. I must manage a view of it, and the exhibition of pictures too, up on 57th Street [MTP TS 49-50]. Note: see also Sam’s of Feb. 26.
April 3 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Gertrude Natkin at 138 W. 98 St., N.Y.
M . Clemens has asked me to send you these tickets for a box for the evening of the 19 , and to say that he would write you himself, but that these are very very busy days, & when he is not working he is too tired to do anything but rest up for the busy day that comes to-morrow.
M . Clemens has asked me to send you these tickets for a box for the evening of the 19 , and to say that he would write you himself, but that these are very very busy days, & when he is not working he is too tired to do anything but rest up for the busy day that comes to-morrow.
April 3 Wednesday – In Elmira, N.Y. Sam attended a recital of the unique Robert Hope- Jones organ in Park Church. Jerome & Wisbey write:
It was on April 3, 1907…that this instrument was put through its melodic paces for probably the most critical audience that could be assembled—a group of New York’s leading organists. They came to Elmira in a special car on the Lackawanna….
April 3 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: “I’ve just been reading AB’s article on Stedman in the April ‘Pearson’s’ and somehow it isn’t all Stedman at all. I’m afraid that some of it is a eulogization of Paine through a dead man” [MTP: IVL TS 37-38].
April 3 Saturday — Sam and H.H. Rogers attended the banquet in Norfolk, Va. celebrating the completion of Rogers’ railroad there. The New York Times of Apr. 4, reported the event on p.10:
VIRGINIANS GIVE PRAISE TO ROGERS
Show Recognition of His Accomplishment in Building the Virginian Railway.
$20 BANQUET IN NORFOLK
Rogers Says Road is a Business Enterprise, but His Interests Are Common with State
Special to The New York, Times.
April 3 Sunday — In Hamilton, Bermuda Sam wrote to the Clowns of Barnum & Bailey Circus, who had cabled him this day asking him the following:
THE CLOWNS OF BARNUM AND BAILEYS CIRCUS RECOGNIZING YOU AS THE WORLDS GREATEST LAUGHMAKER WILL CONSIDER IT AN HONOR IF YOU WILL BE THEIR LUNCHEON GUEST AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN SUNDAY AFTERNOON APRIL THIRD AT TWO WILL YOU PLEASE ANSWER COLLECT BARNUM AND BAILEY [MTP].
Sam’s reply by collect cable:
April 30 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to St. Clair McKelway.
Dear McKelway,—Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.
As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen a locomotive before. Very well, then I am once more glad that there is an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens and McIntyres along to save our friends.
April 30 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Robert Reid.
I keep thinking about that picture—I cannot get it out of my mind. I think—no, I know—that it is the most moving, the most eloquent, the most profoundly pathetic picture I have ever seen. It wrings the heart to look at it, it is so desolate, so grieved. It realizes San Francisco to us as words have not done & cannot do. I wonder how many women can look upon it & keep back their tears—or how many unhardened men, for that matter? [MTP].
I keep thinking about that picture—I cannot get it out of my mind. I think—no, I know—that it is the most moving, the most eloquent, the most profoundly pathetic picture I have ever seen. It wrings the heart to look at it, it is so desolate, so grieved. It realizes San Francisco to us as words have not done & cannot do. I wonder how many women can look upon it & keep back their tears—or how many unhardened men, for that matter? [MTP].
April 30 Tuesday – On the yacht Kanawha in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka asking him to send a green cloth set of his books to H.H. Rogers to the yacht at the N.Y.C. pier, foot of E. 23 [MTP]. Note: the NY Times article of May 4, p.1, included a bit about this day:
April 30 Thursday – Frances Nunnally wrote from Baltimore to Sam.
April 30 Friday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a note, “How to get to Stormfield” to an unidentified person [MTP].
Pali (not further identified) wrote from Hawaii to send a contribution for Mark Twain’s Library and related his tales of being in Redding and of various personages there. He expressed regret that Hawaii had not been able to see Twain during his 1895 world tour (The Warrimoo was quarantined) [MTP].
April 4 Tuesday – Richard Watson Gilder for Century Magazine wrote to Sam.
April 4 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Charles J. Langdon in Elmira.
“Was there a Mrs. Lee among the Quaker City’s passengers? I do not recal the name” [MTP]. Note: Mrs. S.G. Lee of Brooklyn was on the excursion [MTL 2: 387].
April 4 Thursday – Sam left Elmira and returned to N.Y.C. this evening. Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The King came home from Elmira tonight very tired and depressed, I think” [MTP TS 48].
Edith Elsie Baker for the Actors’ Fund of America wrote to Sam, asking for “a donation of a hundred or more copies of some short but effective speech, joke or epigram from Puddenhead Wilson or Huckleberry Finn printed on a card or parchment about 6 by 8 inches”—these from his publisher; they to sell them for 25 cents [MTP].
April 4 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: We went out to the Euryalus again to the children’s party this time—and it was a rough little voyage. 15 of us had to cramp-up in a tiny cabin and our stomachs felt badly. But we got inside the breakwater and onto the flagship and officers Gray and Boyer and Beatty showed us about and were very good to us and made the children adorably happy.
April 4 Sunday — In Norfolk, Va. Sam telegraphed Clara about Horace Hazen’s note, that he had been discharged [MTP: L-A MS]. Note: the telegram is not extant.
April 4 Monday — Chauncey M. Depew wrote from Wash DC to ask Sam for an intro to a volume of his speeches, “no matter how short” [MTP]. Note: “Ans”
April 5 Wednesday – Sam read the MS of an article by Isaac Frederick Marcosson about H.H. Rogers for the World’s Work [Gribben 479: Lyon’s Journal, no TS given; Bowe 42]. Note: Sam “conferred” with Rogers on the article the next day, Apr. 6. He had acted as a go between for Frank N. Doubleday, publisher of World’s Work, and Rogers.
At 21 Fifth Ave. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Robbins Battell Stoeckel.
Dear Sir: / According to D . Quintards advice M . Clemens directs me to send herewith his check for 200.00 as first payment for rent of Cottage in Norfolk, Conn.
April 5 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Alice Pearmain (Mrs. Sumner B. Pearmain).
April 5 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to Carl Kelsey’s Apr. 1.
My membership would be purely ornamental & therefore valueless. Have retired from the activities of life. I did not retire until I had been in the harness 40 years & concluded that I had done my share—that I have not retired in reality but I have all the work on my hands that I can attend to & that I mustn’t add any thing to it [MTP]. Note: Kelsey with Am. Academy of Political and Social Sciences.
April 5 Sunday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam wrote to daughter Clara in N.Y.C.
Clärchen dear, I hope you are entirely well & hearty by this time. I don’t know where you are, but you are drifting professionally around somewhere, I suppose—& hope.
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