March 25 Friday - In Hamilton, Bermuda Sam finished his Mar. 24 to daughter Clara, “March 25. The portrait-postcard has just arrived from Geneva, & is very welcome, with its loving word from you, dear. / With heaps of love to you both / Marcus” [MTP].
Sam also wrote per Helen S. Allen to Albert B. Paine in Redding, Conn.
Dear Paine,
Mr. Allen has made the corrections in the check book suggested by you and now my book exactly corresponds with the pass book.
March 26 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Dear Col. Higginson,—I early learned that you would be my neighbor in the Summer & I rejoiced, recognizing in you & your family a large asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the rest-cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk Conn. & we shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October.
March 26 – early April – In a supplement to a June, 1913 American Post review, the tale is told of Sam attending a performance of Benjamin Chapin playing Lincoln on stage. NY Times (Mar. 25, p. X1) gives the first week’s performance began on Mar. 26. The article and a letter (uncollected) Sam sent to Chapin’s secretary.
MARK TWAIN AND PARTY
ATTEND “LINCOLN”
By One of the Party
March 26 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to John Brown, Jr. (“Jock”).
Dear Mr. Jock: — / With this I am returning the typed letters which you sent. They pleasantly but pathetically bring back the scenes and associations of thirty-three years ago, when Mrs. Clemens and our small Susy and I were comrades of your father in Edinburgh daily, during six weeks, without a break.
March 26 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: A long and enthusiastic letter from AB, who finds Carson City very interesting and so full of matter than he had to send for Mrs. P and Joy [his youngest dau.] to see it with him. C.C. came home late last night. She is a made over creature with happiness and success and music running rampantly through her veins. What a creature she is, and how beautiful [MTP TS 44].
March 26 Thursday – Dr. Frederick Peterson wrote to Isabel Lyon recommending that Jean Clemens, her two nurses, and young friend Marguerite Schmidt (or Schmitt), who shared a cottage in Greenwich, Conn., might prefer Gloucester, Mass. On Apr. 18, Lyon and one of the nurses, Edith Cowles, would go to Gloucester and select a cottage for the girls [Hill 197; MTP]. Note: IVL wrote: “Heartily approve of Gloucester”
March 26 Friday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a postcard (with a picture of Stormfield) to Andrew Carnegie.
Dear St. Andrew:
Many thanks for the whisky. Itgoestotherightplace, & finds a hearty welcome there.
Ever yours
T Mark [MTP].
Earl H. Reed wrote from Chicago to relate a boy’s idea that Cleopatra was the wife of Mark Twain [MTP]. Note: “Appreciation”; “ansd”’
March 27 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
My head is full of obstetrical hooks and slants and jabs for today I began to study shorthand. I don’t see how anyone can ever put soul into that sort of writing. It would seem wrong to put down Mr. Clemens’s thoughts like that—but it’s for Mr. Clemens’s thoughts that I’m trying to learn it. It is very lonely without Saint Mother, but who am I that I should be lonely in the presence of a loveliness like Mr. Clemens’s [MTP: TS 47].
March 27 Wednesday – Sam attended a luncheon at the St. Regis Hotel given by Count Arthur de Jcherep-Spiridovitch (1851-1926), who eulogized the Russian Czar. Sam paid some compliments in introducing the Count. The New York Times, Mar. 28, p.9 reported the event. Evidently, Mark Twain’s remarks were not recorded.
March 27 Friday – The Bermuda Royal Gazette of Mar. 31 reported Sam’s reading of Kipling’s poems at Shoreby on Mar. 27 for the guests of Mrs. Mary Allen Peck: “He read these in a tone and with a depth of feeling that gave to the verses a value seldom recognized” [D. Hoffman 108]. Note: Gribben offers more detail:
March 27 Saturday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to John Albert Macy, who had sent Sam Granville George Greenwood’s book, The Shakespeare Problem Restated (1908) and Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon, etc. (1909) by William Stone Booth.
Dear Mr. Macy: / Alas!
I can’t (by sticking strictly to the directions given) succeed in digging out any of the acrostics submerged in the Shakespeare text.
March 27 Sunday - Easter —- Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch and Ossip Gabrilowitsch spent the day in Rome, Italy, having arrived there the previous Thursday, Mar. 24. The New York Times reported, p. C3, Apr. 3, dateline Rome Apr. 2, with sub-headline “Mark Twain’s Daughter Has Unsatisfactory Experience and Leaves Town.”
March 28 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Seymour Eaton.
March 28 Wednesday – In the a.m. Charlotte Teller Johnson returned to 21 Fifth Ave. and read her play Joan d’Arc to Clemens. It was the beginning of almost daily visits between the two and much correspondence. See Mar. 27 entry.
March 28 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
March 28 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: Sometimes it seems to me as if each person were surrounded by a wonderful color, and that is a sacrilege to try to penetrate it. There be some whose color could never be merged into that of another person, but in the main there is only one person in all the world whose color would match with its mate, to make a perfect harmony. For we can’t be many things to many people.
March 28 Sunday - In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally.
Dear heart, where are you going to be—well, about the 10 or 12 of April? Because at that time I shall be publishing a booklet, Shall I send it to Atlanta, or to St. Timothy’s?
March 28 Monday - In Hamilton, Bermuda Sam wrote per Helen S. Allen to Albert B. Paine in Redding, Conn.
Dear Paine,
I reenclose the check indorsed.
Enclosed is the small library of 44 volumes which you may buy & send to Mrs,.Allen let the books be sent through Mr. Allen’s agent Depew, and you may prepay all charges if you can manage it.
March 29 Wednesday – Sam read his essay “William Dean Howells” to the household. In April he would send this piece and the final MS of Christian Science to Frederick A.Duneka at Harper’s [Hill 101].
Sam wrote to William H. Pearson for the N.Y. Produce Exchange, Safe Deposit and Storage Co. His letter is not extant but is referred to in Pearson’s reply of the following day, Mar. 30. See entry.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Tonight Mr. Clemens read us an appreciation that he has written of Mr. Howells. It is beautiful, the strength of his pen is marvelous” [MTP: TS 47].
March 29 Thursday – At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Sam told a story at a benefit for the blind. The New York Times, Mar. 30:
TWAIN AND CHOATE TALK AT MEETING FOR BLIND
———
Humorist Sightless Once—in a Vast German Inn.
HIT AT GHOST, BROKE MIRROR
Mr. Choate Urges Liberal Contributions, Mr. Gilder Writes a Poem and Helen Keller a Letter.
March 29 before – William L. Bryan (1860-1955), philosopher, author, president of Indiana University (1902-1937), wrote to Sam. Bryan was a cousin to Joseph Bryan, a friend of Twain’s and a Mississippi River pilot from 1850-1900.
March 29 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The band concert at Prospect when dear John Wayland and the King sat on a rug apart from a batch of women, for when he goes to listing to music he doesn’t want anything else. No feminine chatter—and up near the tennis court sat Madame Wayland, and Mrs. John W. and Josephine Dascomb [sic Daskam] Bacon—such a chatterer—and a Mrs. Gordon. Then home. This afternoon we went over to the Long Beach on the South Shore where the King and Zoe Freeman went in swimming.
March 29 Monday - Raymond A. Blakemore wrote from Boston to advise Sam that he’d invented a “word counter” to be attached to a typewriter, and asked the favor of Sam’s opinion if “such a machine would be of material advantage to you and other authors”’ [MTP].
March 29 Tuesday - Albert Bigelow Paine wrote from Redding to Clemens: “Your news about the pain distresses me, but I am glad you are coming home. The change and the quiet of Stormfield will no doubt be beneficial. I hope Collier will let you be very quiet in N.Y. Edward Loomis whom I saw this morning hopes you will spend a few days with him also.” More discussion about AT&T stock: Paine bought another 100 shares [MTP].