March 10 Tuesday – At the invitation of ship’s captain, John Gay, Sam spent much of the day aboard a British Cruiser, the HMS Cressy, enjoying laughter and stories in the Officers’ Mess [Mar. 12 to Quick]. William Evarts Benjamin accompanied him. The Cressy was one of three warships anchored at the Dockyard, Ireland Island, Sandys Parish [D. Hoffman 115-16]. Note: since he did not mention his time aboard ship in the following three letters, they were likely written in the a.m. before boarding. Sam would mention this time aboard the ship to Dorothy Quick in his Mar.
March 11 Wednesday – Sam attended a garden party at the Governor J.H. Wodehouse’s house and enjoyed music by a British band, which he called the “best band in the British army save one—the Horseguards” [Mar. 12 to Quick]. Note: if IVL’s lined out phrase for this date means anything, Benjamin went with him.
March 12 Thursday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam began a letter to Dorothy Quick that he added to on Mar. 13, and 16. Sam relates activities of this day, as well as time spent on Mar. 10 and 11.
My poor little Dorothy, I hope you are well again, & will write a line & tell me so. I wish you were here—you would be on your feet right away.
We are to be here about 20 days yet. We sail for New York April 1.
March 13 Friday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam added to his Mar. 12 to Dorothy Quick.
Friday, 9 p.m. This has been a lovely summer day, very brilliant & not uncomfortably warm. If you would only come, you could stop those deadly medicines & soon get well.
The ball has begun, & I think I will go down & look on.
March 14 Saturday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam began a letter to Frances Nunnally that he added a PS to on Mar. 16.
I was very glad to get your letter, Francesca dear, & also glad that you all escaped uninjured from the fire. But I hope you won’t be subjected to any more risks of that kind.
March 15 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The Yoke—Hubert Wales. / We lunched with Mrs. Peck today and had some wonderful Bermudian Pepperpot. The heart of it was a chicken and it had strange spices and pepper corns. It came on the table in what is called a buck kettle— a big black heavy old kettle, full of the flavor of many pepperpots.
March 16 Monday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam finished his Mar. 12 and 13 to Dorothy Quick.
March 16. The Bermudian has arrived, with / 60 bags of mail & 250 passengers. She sails to- morrow.
We don’t sail April 1. We have postponed to April 11. I am sorry, but Mr. Rogers is improving ever so fast, & we want him to stay as long as he will. Bermuda is better than four or five or six million doctors. Don’t you forget that, dear. / With lots of love [MTP].
March 17 Tuesday – Howells & Stokes sent another typed advisory about the Redding house under construction, specifically the wainscoting in the various bathrooms [MTP].
March 18 Wednesday – Elisabeth Marbury wrote to Sam, enclosing their readers’ criticism of the JA play produced by John W. Postgate [MTP].
The New York Times, p. 7 “Great Men’s Letters Sold at Auction” reported that three letters from Mark Twain sold for greater amounts than those from Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, and others.
March 19 Thursday – Irene Gerken wrote her typical no-periods note to Sam. “I received your letter this evening and was very glad to hear from you you say you are lonesome Why I should think Miss Allen would fill my place Allthough I am far away I hear all the news. By the score you sent me of the cards I see Mr Rodgers has lost every game I am very glad that you had a good time at the War ship and if I had knowen you were there I might of seen you.” She asked after Maud and Reginald [MTP].
March 20 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: We went to the Hastings for tea today at four o’clock, It was assembled out on the beautiful point, and though there were a lot of people there, our own clan was the dearest. The others gave us no thrills. The King and I drove over with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, the Rajah on the box, (Betsy is naughty—she says Mrs. Rogers could be called a Eunuch because she is the Rajah’s manager.) and after the tea and the sandwiches we drove around to the North Shore, and got out to look down a cliff side into the water 100 feet below.
March 21 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Such a wonderful day we have had, for Mrs. Rogers organized a party to go to Somerset, 12 miles away and to lunch there. We set out at eleven; Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, Mr. and Mrs. [Zoheth] Freeman, the King, Mr. Weir, Mrs. Peck, Mrs. [Marion Schuyler] Allen, Mr. John Wayland, Elizabeth [Wallace] and I.
March 22 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Betsy, the King and I drove up to Prospect to hear the band play. We sat on a cab rug under the trees and watched that colony of red coated players with its graceful leader, and we watched the little children who were enraptured by the music, and who gamboled around through “the forest of legs” (Betsy) and tumbled over the dogs and were so very, very happy. They were great human beings in little, and showed openly the characteristics that their elders were concealing under stolid masks.
March 23 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Yesterday the King, Mr. Rogers and I drove over to call on Sir Bronlow Grey’s elderly daughters who have never been off these islands. He was attorney general here and in those old days he would not let them leave, and now they are afraid to venture, I believe.
March 24 Tuesday – At the Princess Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally.
Francesca dear, this note will leave here 4 days hence by a slow steamer, & reach you 8 days from now—April 1. We sail April 11th & reach New York April 13 —Tuesday. Miss Lyon & my daughter will then go to Redding, Conn., where we are building a house, & return at the week- end—Saturday, April 18.
March 25 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: Mr. and Mrs. Freeman took me for tea at the Women’s Exchange. We sat up on the latticed balcony and watched the darkeys in afternoon toilets, and the other folks go by and then we drove out to Spanish Point and around by the North Shore and to visit some charming rentable vacant houses, and that started me to telling the Freemans about Redding and Lyonesse and they want to go there too.
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 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 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 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 30 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “We had a darling lazy sail this afternoon with Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, and then tea in the billiard room—that to give Zoe Freeman a chance for a cup, for he was tired” [MTP: IVL TS 40].
March 31 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The King is going boating with Nicholas Murray Butler and Lord Gray [sic Grey] who arrived yesterday on the Bermudian” [MTP: IVL TS 40-41]. Note: Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl Grey (1851–1917) served as Canada’s Ninth Governor General (1904-1911). He established the Grey Cup for the Canadian football championship. The Cup was initially for the top amateur rugby team in 1909, but since 1965 it has been the prize for the top professional football team.
April – Gessford’s photograph of Mark Twain ran in Forum, facing p. 441. “No significant commentary” [Tenney, ALR Third Annual Supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1979) 192].
April 1 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: The Bermudian sailed away with such a cargo of folks. The greatest “miss” as these Bermuda darkeys say, is the Waylands.
April 2 Thursday – Clemens was in Bermuda.