December 30 Wednesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Elizabeth Alexander Alexander (Mrs. John White Alexander).
The Man in the White Suit: Day By Day
December 31 Thursday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Gertrude Natkin in N.Y.C.
January –Samuel Wyatt wrote from Berks, England to offer three pages of verse after reading JA [MTP].
January 1 Friday – In Redding, Conn., Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to the Dec. 28, 1908 from Clara Frazer in Withers Mill, Mo.
Dear Miss Frazer: / Mr. Clemens asks me to write for him & say certainly you may have that photograph copyrighted, & then used on post cards.
It is such a pretty little photograph that when the cards are printed, Mr Clemens hopes to have some of them.
January 2 Saturday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a postcard to daughter Jean. “Happy New Year, Jean dear! And I hope you will have many more. / Affectionately” … [MTP].
Sam also wrote a postcard with a photograph of Stormfield to Dorothy Quick. Happy New Year! Jan. 2’09
It is a very nice poem, Dorothy dear; that is my opinion, & Miss Lyon’s, too.
January 3 Sunday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margaret Blackmer at the Misses Tewksbury’s School, Washington-on-Hudson, N.Y.
January 4 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to the Telephone Operators.
To the Young Ladies of the Telephone Office:
I have received your kind & welcome notes, & I thank you for them, & wish you a happy New year, with many & many others to follow.
Your obliged & appreciative friend Mark Twain [MTP]. Note: Sam sent each operator a box of candy.
Sam also wrote on The Educational Theatre for Children letterhead, to an unidentified man.
January 5 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote a three-paragraph letter (again on the Children’s Theatre letterhead) to an unidentified person, inviting to a course of lectures at the Lyceum Theatre [MTP: Cordelia and Tom Platt catalogs, Nov. 1993, Item 1F]. Note: like the Jan. 4 letter this and likely several others were sent out to promote “the dramatic instinct in education.”
January 6 Wednesday – Anna L. Cunningham wrote to thank Sam for the box of chocolates [MTP]. Note: “Telephone girl”
January 7 Thursday – Sam’s new guestbook:
Name Address Date Remarks
H.W. Dearborn [signed] [New York] Jan. 7
Ragnvald Blix began a letter to Sam that he finished Jan. 21 [MTP]. Note: not found at MTP.
January 8 Friday – John Albert Macy brought galleys of Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon, etc. (1909) by William Stone Booth (1864-1926) . Sam then wrote the first pages of “Is Shakespeare Dead?” Sam thereby became convinced that “Booth, had demonstrated, beyond any doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were there” (in Shakespeare’s works) [Gribben 77; MTB 1479, 1485-6].
Sam’s new guestbook:
Name Address Date Remarks
Annie S. Macy
January 9 Saturday – The Armstrong Assoc. of New York, per May Hurlburt sent Sam tickets for a box at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 22 [MTP].
Diana Belais, President of the New York Anti-Vivisection Society wrote to ask Sam for a letter of introduction to Harpers, as they were in “a terrific fight …against the Medical Society of New York, which has banded indissolubly to crush out our movement” [MTP].
January 10 Sunday – Richard Watson Gilder wrote on Wells College, Aurora NY letterhead to ask Sam if he could be present on Wed. Jan. 13 at Carnegie Hall, 5 p.m. for a meeting in memory of Stedman—“if it wouldn’t be a burden” [MTP].
January 11 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam inscribed his photo to Anne Sullivan Macy
(Mrs. John Albert Macy): “To Mrs. John Sullivan Macy, with warm regard, & with limitless admiration of the wonders she has performed as a miracle-worker—/ Mark Twain / Stormfield, Jan. 11/09.” [MTP].
Sam’s new guestbook:
Name Address Date Remarks
Helen Keller Jan. 11 [see below]
January 12 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to the Jan. 8 from General Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909).
Dear General Howard:
You pay me a most gratifying compliment in asking me to preside, & it causes me very real regret that I am obliged to decline, for the object of the meeting appeals strongly to me, since that object is to aid in raising the $500,000 Endowment Fund for Lincoln Memorial University.
January 13 Wednesday – Ino Downey for the Men’s Club of Holy Trinity Church, NYC wrote to invite Sam to their annual dinner on Feb. 22 [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Jan 14 M.L.H.”
January 14 Thursday – In Redding, Conn., Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Archibald Henderson at the Univ. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill.
January 15 Friday – Harry Windsor Dearborn for the Robert Fulton Monument wrote to Sam, attempting to entice him to attend the “informal reception” for which he’d changed the date from Jan. 23 to the 21st to accommodate Sam’s visit to NYC. He listed a string quartet which would be there, a waiting billiard table of Henry W. Marsh’s, and would send an automobile for Clemens. He added a P.S.: “I have invited a number of very young and beautiful girls who will be so pleased to see you on Thursday next” [MTP].
January 16 Saturday – Sam’s guestbook:
Name Address Date Remarks
Edward Quintard New York Jan 16 1909
Lumbring Kant [?] New York Jan 16 1909
Frank Lascelles Oxford – Keblelon “ 16 “ [see notes below]
John Elton Wayland New York 17-18 Jan 16, 1909
January 17 Sunday – William B. Jones for Raymond & Whitcomb Co., Boston wrote to ask for information on an article he’d seen years before attributed to Clemens on the “Waters of The Ganges, etc.” [MTP].
January 18 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Mai H. Coe and William R. Coe.
Dear Coes:
January 19 Tuesday – In Redding Clemens wrote to Frank Cavendish Lascelles, English actor and pageant director who had visited on Jan. 16-17:
Dear Mr. Lascelles: / Mr. Clemens asks me to say that he is very willing to have you burgle the enclosed, & with it sends his warm regards. / Sincerely Yours / Isabel Lyon Jan. 19/09
[first enclosure: postcard with photograph of Stormfield]
[Second enclosure in SLC’s hand:]
TO THE GUEST
January 20 Wednesday – Sam went to New York City, accompanied by Isabel Lyon [Feb. 5 to Blackmer]. He would not return to Stormfield until the evening of Jan. 30.
In the evening Sam attended the annual dinner at Delmonico’s, given by the Directors and faculty of the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital. The New York Times reported on the function:
TWAIN TALKS TO DOCTORS.
———
“Dr. Clemens” Describes Imaginary Medical School at His Country Home.
January 21 Thursday – Sam was in New York City.
Harry Windsor Dearborn for Henry W. Marsh sent an engraved card invitation to tea on Thursday afternoon, Jan. 21 from 3 to 6 p.m. at the residence of Mr. & Mrs. Henry W. Marsh, NYC [MTP].
Mrs. Emma Sheridan Fry wrote to notify Sam of her resignation from the Educational Theatre, enclosing a copy of her resignation to Minnie Herts, which stated her inability to work with Mr. Heniger, “your young Stage Director” [MTP]. Note: Fry wanted no editorial interference.
January 22 Friday – Sam was in New York City.