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.
The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day
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.
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 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 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.
April 6 Monday – Bermuda. Mark Twain and Earl Grey met and talked to the children at the garrison school. Their comments appeared in the Apr. 19 NY Times. See Apr. 8 below for these.
April 7 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Bermuda: The King and I went out to the reefs this morning in a kind of royal party, for Lord Gray the Governor General of Canada and Lady Gray and Mrs. (Bermuda Governor) Wodehouse went—and I did like it very much. Mostly it was quiet and restful. But I had a talk with Mrs. Wodehouse who turned to me at once when someone said of me “That is Mark Twain’s private secretary.” We got into the glass bottomed boats and were rowed out over the coral reefs.
April 8 Wednesday – The New York Times, Apr. 19, p. X4, “Mark Twain’s Outing in Bermuda” ran with three photos of Twain and Irene Gerken (not identified), Twain and H.H. Rogers, and one of Earl Grey and Lt. Gen. Wodehouse:
Mark Twain Tells About the Cat.
April 9 Thursday – Bermuda. Either this day or the next, Sam lost his half of the seashell used to identify him to Margaret Blackmer (see May 25 to Blackmer). It was found by a servant in the mess hall at Prospect Army Garrison and handed to Major Malcolm D. Graham, who mailed it back to Sam in New York. See also May 25 to Graham.
April 10 Friday – Several photographs of Mark Twain swimming in the Bahamas are given this date [Bob Slotta, eBay item 180516263500, June 4, 2010; See Hellen Allen’s of Apr. 27, D. Hoffman, picture p. 122]. Note: advertised at that time as the “Only known Under Water Images of him.”
April 11 Saturday – In Bermuda, the Clemens party boarded the steamer Bermudian for a return trip to New York. Isabel Lyon’s journal: “We sailed—Josephine Dascomb [sic Daskam Bacon] is killable—the King calls her ‘Josephine Bastard Bacon’” [MTP: IVL TS 45]. Note: see Mar. 29 on Bacon.
April 12 Sunday – Sam was aboard the Bermudian on the way home to New York. In the Apr. 14 edition of the New York Times, p. 9, Sam related an incident aboard ship:
Mark Twain told of one exciting incident of the voyage home. The ocean he characterized as “most rude.” On Sunday afternoon, dressed in his famous white suit, he was standing at the stern rail with Miss Dorothy Sturgis of Boston, watching the play of the ship’s log, when a wave struck the vessel astern and a great comber climbed over the rail and drenched the pair.
April 13 Monday – The Bermudian docked in New York in the afternoon. On Apr. 14 the NewYork Times, p. 9 ran this tale about Mark Twain and Rogers returning:
TWAIN AND ROGERS BACK FROM BERMUDA
Offer to Lend $2 to Rogers Not Accepted—Strain of Traveling with Financier.
JOINS ANTI-NOISE CRUSADE
“Fourteen Banks of England Could Not Finance” Lakes to Gulf Canal.
——— ——— ——— ———
April 14 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Margaret Blackmer.
Dear Margaret, we arrived from Bermuda yesterday afternoon, & in the accumulation of letters I find yours of a fortnight ago. I’ve brought the little angel-fish pin—badge of my Aquarium— & will keep it for you till you come, which I hope will be as soon as Miss Tewksbury can escort you. Come VERY soon!