The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day

December 11-24 Tuesday – Sometime during this period at 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y., Sam wrote to Ignace J. Paderewski (Ignacy Jan Paderewski; 1860-1941), Polish pianist and composer, later Prime Minister of Poland.

December 12 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to the Plasmon Co..of America to tender his resignation as Vice-President and Director of the Plasmon Co. of America [MTP].

Clemens’ A.D. for this day included: Andrew Carnegie continued — he gives two additional millions to Carnegie Institute—Everybody likes attentions—Prince of Wales once showed Mr. Clemens a match-box and told him it was presented to him by King of Spain [MTP: Autdict. 4].  

December 13 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Champ Clark (James Beauchamp Clark):

I thank you ever so much for your kind offer, but I want to get an extension on it until some later day—indefinitely later—so that I may finish a dialogue which I began last September, & which I may not take up again for a good while.

December 14 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Dec. 12 telegram from Frank Cavendish Lascelles, by sending one of his own to: Pageant office, Savoy, London: “Best wishes for the greast London pageant it will be the event of the year” [MTP].

Eustace D. Conway finished his Dec. 7 letter to Sam [MTP].

December 15 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Prof. Sloane and his daughter Margaret (debutante) came in today for tea. The talk ran onto Washington and the political rottenness of the place. “No man can be himself there.” Mr. S. said. “Mr. Cleveland alone shook his fist in the faces of the corrupt politicians and made himself hated.

December 16 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “And this day?” [MTP TS 120].

Hélène Elisabeth Picard wrote a long letter in a tiny hand.

My dear Chief Servant, / A hearty wish for a blessed Christmas to you and your family, and for many happy returns of the day is leaving my desk to start westward in the direction of your home. May those terrific tempests and angry winds allow my wishes to find your door in time, that you might know your French Member has also thought of you.

December 17 Tuesday – Charles R. Morris wrote from Washington DC to ask Sam if he would include his July 4 oration deliverd at Aurora, Nev. When he was a miner there [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “He has quoted the only sentence of the speech that I remember, & I don’t’ know anything about the rest of it.” See Dec. 18 for Sam’s reply.

George Grantham Bain wrote to Miss Lyon to ask which photos Sam wanted copies of and enclosing a ms. for her to return [MTP].

December 18 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to George L. Beam of the Denver & Rio Grande R.R. Co, Denver, Colo. “Mr. Clemens asks me to write for him & thank you for sending him the photograph & pamphlet. And to use his own words, he said, ‘Tell him I think it is a good strong clean-cut face & I hope it looks like me as that is the way I should like to look’”[MTP]. Note: Beam’s photo and pamphlet are not extant.

December 19 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: I am hearing the very first words of the King’s Biography. AB is sitting here and reading them to me. The background of the book. The days that passed four months before the King was born. (He says 5 months before the King was born.) [MTP TS 121].

December 20 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally.

I suppose you are about to leave for home, dear Francesca, so I am hasting to wish you a happy holiday-time before you get away down there out of my reach. Indeed you are much too far out of my reach even when you are in Catonsville. I wish you were going home by way of New York, so that I could have glimpse of you, you dear little rascal.

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

Dear Jean this is John Howells’s wedding-day. I do not know who it is he is going to marry, I only know the sex. The sex is the main thing, & this time it is the right one.

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 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 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, last week – The estimated time of Elinor Glyn’s follow-up 90-minute visit with Clemens at his NY home. This estimate is based on Clemens’ Jan. 13 A.D. See Jan. 13 entry, which also includes Glyn’s description of the meeting, and Anthony Glyn’s Elinor Glyn: a Biography, p. 143-4 which states, “She stayed for an hour and a half and for most of the time they discussed Three Weeks, which he greatly admired, both in matter and in style.” Glyn here neglects Sam’s opinion that publishing such a book was a mistake—a fact that got duly noted in the Sept.

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].  

December 26 Thursday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Miss Lyon replying to hers of Dec. 23 and would be “very glad to communicate with Miss Katharine I. Harrison in regard to the 24the and 25th Volumes of Mr. Clemens’ Works” [MTP].

Ethel Newcomb wrote to Sam, hoping she might see him before going back to Europe, as she’d missed him at Brown’s Hotel in London when he was there. Regards to the girls [MTP].

December 27 Friday – Sam and Dorothy Quick had some unspecified engagement for today; see telegram Dec. 25 to Quick.

The New York Times ran “Want Tchaykovsky Free” on p. 8, and included Samuel L. Clemens in a list of about 500 names signed to a petition plea to liberate Nicholas Tchaykovsky (Nikolai V. Chaikovsky), recently arrested for complicity in the Russian revolutionary movement.

December 28 Saturday – In his Dec. 29 to Nunnally, Sam wrote: “Yesterday I went with 70 other slaves of Harper & Brothers to Lakewood to lunch Mr. Howells out of the country & give him God-speed. The distance was greater than I was expecting it would be.” On Dec. 21 he had written to daughter Jean: “The Howellses sail for Europe Jan. 4; on the 2d all the Harper staff, to the number of 60, go down to Lakeville by special train & give him a send-off. Miss Lyon & Mr.

December 29 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally; his letter informs of a short trip he took the day before, and of his dinner plans for this evening.

Ah, you dear Francesca, you & your mother gave me a pleasant surprise in that beautiful & valuable addition to my winter comforts, & I thank you cordially ; & I wish also to thank you, dear, for the fine album of Rembrandts. I am the better, bodily & spiritually, for these welcome remembrances.

December 30 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Carlotta Welles.

Your letter has just arrived, & is a very pleasant & very welcome surprise; I thought you had forgotten me long ago. The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.

December 31 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote on a card picturing a woman in a hat to Maud W. Littleton: “Happy New year / to / Mrs Littleton / from / SL. Clemens” [MTP]. Note: Martin W. and Maud W. Littleton, across-the-street neighbors.

Year of the Angelfish – “A Good Place to Live in, a Good Place to Die In” - Autobiography House” becomes “Innocents at Home” becomes “Stormfield” - Doe Luncheons – Elinor Glyn – Knickerbocker Crisis - Bermuda Trips: Margaret, Maude, Reginald; HHR – Children’s Theatre - Jubilee City College – Aldrich Memorial– Commodore Dow – Moffett Drowns - Guests, Guests, More Guests – Redding Library “Tax” Dedication  - Burglars! Staff Quits – Requires Cat in Pace – Elizabeth Wallace Visits

January – “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” first appeared in two installments in Harper’s Monthly for Dec. 1907 and for Jan. 1908. It was published by Harper as a book in Oct. 1909 as Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.  Budd points out that Twain worked on various versions of the story at multiple times—in 1869, 1870, 1873, 1878, 1881, 1883, and 1893 [Budd Collected 2: 1013].

January 1 Wednesday – In N.Y.C. Sam attended a farewell dinner for William Dean Howells at the Metropolitan Club, thrown by Col. Harvey. According to Lyon’s datebook for Jan. 2, Sam spoke last after six speeches [MTP: IVL TS 1]. See entry.  

Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Robert Underwood Johnson. “Dear Mr. Johnson: / Mr. Clemens asks me to write for him to say that he is not sufficiently interested to vote on coming membership” [MTP]. Note: Lyon dictated this to Josephine Hobby.

Sam also wrote to Eden Phillpotts.