May 14 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Evening now, and the voices of Jean and Italian Teresa come to me as Jean is having her usual confab with Teresa. How their voices rise and fall in the sweet Italian cadences.
The summer, the months and weeks and days and hours must count for many things done when they are ended. I mustn’t write down what I want to do for then they won’t be done. Only everyday I must think toward their completion [MTP TS 57].
May 14 Monday – Carl Schurz, statesman, reformer, and Secretary of the Interior under Rutherford B. Hayes, died in N.Y.C.
At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent his sympathies to the Carl Schurz family.
May 14 Tuesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Katonah, N.Y., relating his stops since May. In part: (see prior references to this letter for text excised here).
Oh, you dear Jean, it shan’t happen again. The next time I go to see you I shall select the train that will give me the longest time with you. Your letter has been lying here some 7 days—but I haven’t been here.
May 14 Thursday – Sam left 21 Fifth Ave. at 10 a.m., sat on the platform for the City College Ceremonies for three and a half hours, then returned home at 3 p.m. and an hour later took a walk: “At 4 I walked out to 57th street & made a call, then came back in the ’bus—for it was raining” [May 15 to Jean]. In the evening he gave a speech for the banquet of the Alumni of the City College, below:
May 14 Friday — James M. Beck for Shearman & Sterling (Attys.) wrote to Sam, not having a reply for his May 10 letter canceling the engagement, as he was purchasing a house at Sea Bright and wished “to take possession at an early date” [MTP]. Note: “Ans’d May 18, ‘09”
Belle V. Elliott for the Saturday Club of Brunswick, Maine wrote to ask Sam to come speak in November or sometime in the winter [MTP]. Note: “Ans’d May 18, ‘09”
May 15 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “I’m anxious about the Aeolion. It doesn’t come and there is no word from it. Every day Mr. Clemens sends telegrams telling of C.C’s condition. Every day it has improved” [MTP TS 57]. Note: the referred to telegrams are not extant, but when Lyon gives specifics of Clara’s condition it is clear she has rec’d word from Clemens.
May 15 Wednesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam replied to the May 9 from Galveston, Texas Judge and poet John A. Kirlicks (1852-1923):
May 15 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Greenwich, Conn.
May 15 Saturday — Sam’s original guestbook, since replaced by the newer, more elegant gift from Mary B. Rogers, for some reason lists this date for Clara Ashcroft, and Lucy Ashcroft [Mac Donnell TS 7]. Note: any connection to Ralph W. Ashcroft of these two is unknown. Sisters?
Sofia Haag and Charles Haag wrote from Norwalk, Conn. to invite Sam to a Whitman fest on May23 [MTP]. Note: “Ans’d May 18, 09”
May 16 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote an introductory letter for his nephew Samuel Moffett to Bellamy Storer, American ambassador to Vienna, Austria.
I beg that you will allow me the privilege of introducing to your favor my nephew S. E. Moffett, one of the editors of “Collier’s Weekly” who is sent to Europe to gather some facts from governmental sources, & if you can send him to the officials he needs to see, I shall be very grateful. I vouch for his honorable character, his discretion & his honesty. He will do your kindness no discredit.
May 16 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “C.C. came and finds it charming” [MTP TS 57].
Frances F. Cleveland (Mrs. Grover Cleveland) wrote from Princeton to Sam.
May 16 Saturday – Dorothy Quick arrived in New York for a visit and stay-over at Sam’s house until Monday, May 18. With Isabel Lyon, the pair had tickets for “Girls” at Daly’s Theatre:
May 16 Sunday — The Charlotte Observer (N.C.) included an article by Archibald Henderson, “The Real Mark Twain” [Tenney 47].
May 17 Wednesday – With Clara Clemens out of danger from her appendectomy, Sam left N.Y.C. and traveled to Boston, Mass., where he took rooms at the Hotel Touraine. There he wrote on hotel stationery to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich.
I came from New York, arriving in time to dine with you, but I couldn’t raise you on the telephone, so I am turning in, disappointed. You are out dissipating, I suppose.
May 17 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mr. Clemens reads poetry to Jean & me every evening. Such reading it is. There never was anyone to read so beautifully before & to charm you so & hurt you so” [MTP TS 72].
May 17 Friday – Harry Windsor Dearborn, Asst. Secretary of The Robert Fulton Monument Assoc. wrote to thank Sam for “a pleasant afternoon” and gave more information on the Sept. 23 Jamestown Expo. [MTP].
John Mead Howells wrote to Sam with bills by Harry A. Lounsbury, dated Apr. 27, May 4 and May 11, totaling $297.37 for the use of men and teams in the construction of the Redding house [MTP].
May 17 Sunday – Dorothy Sturgis wrote to Sam.
Dear Mr. Clemens.
You are indeed a most noted personage if a letter will reach you without any address on it at all. But do tell me why it went to Hartford, did you ever live there?
I saw a lovely article about you in the Transcript the other day, headed
May 18 Thursday – Sam left Boston early in the morning and traveled 64 miles to Dublin, N.H., where Katy Leary, Patrick McAleer, daughter Jean and Isabel Lyon were waiting to spend the summer with him [May 17 to Aldriches].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Today Mr. Clemens arrived.
Today the sun burst through the clouds just after the telegram came saying that he would arrive in Harrisville at 11:35.
May 18 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “C.C. returned to N.Y. and AB arrived, much talk” [MTP TS 57].
Harper’s Weekly ran a full page photo of Mark Twain in his white suit, with the caption, “Clothes and the Man” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide First Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1977 p. 334].
May 18 Monday – Dorothy Quick ended her weekend visit and left for home in the late afternoon [May 19 to Allen].
Howells & Stokes wrote to advise Sam the cost of bookcases on drawing #45 would be $267
Elizabeth Jordan wrote to Lyon (though catalogued to Clemens). She was delighted he would come if in town [MTP].
Robert Mountsier for Univ. of Michigan Students Lecture Assoc. wrote to invite Sam to lecture sometime during the coming year [MTP].
May 18 Tuesday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow. “Dear Poultney: / Come, by all means! I shall be in New York, but that is nothing, for Jean will be here to welcome you & house you. With my best love to your father, / Ys ever / Mark” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Mr. M.B. Colcord in No. Plymouth, Mass.: “ Dear Mr. Colcord: / You see, all I want is to convince sane people that Shakspeare did not write Shakspeare. Who did, is a question which does not greatly interest me” [MTP].
May 19 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to the May 2 from Lady Margaret Jenkins in England.
Dear Madam: / M . Clemens directs me to write for him explaining that he is not feeling well enough to do so himself, owing to the results of his great anxiety caused by the recent critical illness of his eldest daughter.
M . Clemens is not going to England this year; but he wishes me to thank you very much for your kind letter, and to convey to you his sincere regards [MTP].