The Buffalo Express: Day By Day

July 27 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to his mother, Jane Clemens, and family. “We are glad you are all so well satisfied in Fredonia.” Sam wanted his family near, but not too near. He’d been impressed by the “intelligent faces” in Fredonia during a lecture there and recommended the town to his sister Pamela, who rented a Fredonia house right after Sam’s wedding.

July 28 Thursday – Jane Clemens wrote from Fredonia to Sam and Orion, including a newspaper story of the suicide of Dr. Charles A. Pope. “I send you this, for you to see how such a great wise and good man, as Dr Pope left this world….P S Mela [Pamela] says we are all hoping to see you both here soon, when you can leave your father [Jervis] out of danger” [MTP].

July 4 Monday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to Elisha Bliss. Jervis had rallied again, so much so that Sam expected him to get well. Sam disclosed his back and forth with the Appleton Co. and had been expecting Bliss to come up and discuss “books and business.” Sam was still counting on the Adirondack trip with the Twichells [MTL 4: 161-2].

July 5 Tuesday – Sam arrived in Washington, D.C. and began lobbying for passage of the bill.

July 6 Wednesday – Sam wrote at 11:15 PM from Washington, D.C. to Livy:

“Got up at 6…went to several places. Finally, at 9, got a carriage & took Mr. Stewart to the Senate.”

Sam had some successes, got the bill approved in committee, but felt he should stay:

July 7 Thursday – Senate Bill 1025 was reported out of committee, but no further action was taken on it [MTL 4: 168n1].

July 8 Friday – Mathew B. Brady (1823-1896) photographed Sam. Sam wrote at 10:30 PM from Washington to Livy. After summarizing the state of the bill and his dinner companions (Ex-Vice President Hamlin, Senator Pomeroy (1816-1891), Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, & Mr. Richard B. Irwin), Sam wrote:

July 9 or 10 Sunday – Sam left Washington and returned to Elmira [MTL 4: 170n1].

June 11 Saturday – Sam wrote a note from Elmira to Ellen White, the family housekeeper to have a carriage ready in Buffalo at “half past eleven tonight—Erie Depot.” The time means that Sam & Livy left Elmira on the 7:07 PM Erie Railway’s “Day Express,” which took four and a half hours to reach Buffalo [MTL 4: 150].

June 12 Sunday – Sam & Livy wrote from Buffalo to Pamela A. Moffett, now living in Fredonia, NY.

We were snatched away suddenly by an urgent call to come to Elmira & help nurse Mr Langdon for a couple of weeks at some Pennsylvania springs he was going to visit. But he decided not to go, & so we simply rested a moment & then hurried back here.

June – In the Galaxy for this month—MARK TWAIN’S MEMORANDA – Included:

“A Couple of Sad Experiences” – (includes The Petrified Man and My Famous Bloody Massacre)
“The Judge’s ‘Spirited Woman’”
“Higgins”
“Hogwash”
“A Literary ‘Old Offender’ in Court with Suspicious Property in His Possession”
“Post-Mortem Poetry”
“Wit-Inspirations of the “Two-Year-Olds”
Short miscellaneous items: “Murphy,” “A Patriarch,” and “Lady Franklin” [Schmidt].

June 19 Sunday – Sam and Livy wrote from Buffalo to Jervis & Olivia Langdon. Jervis had improved somewhat and the newlyweds expected them to visit [MTL 4: 153]. Note: Jervis’ condition must have worsened after this, because they did not make the trip to Buffalo.

June 22 Wednesday – Sam and Livy returned to Elmira to help nurse Jervis Langdon [MTL 4: 155n1]. They took turns at a bedside vigil. Sam took a shift in the middle of the day and from midnight to four in the morning. Livy and sister Susan Crane sat with their father for seven or eight hour stretches, waving a palm-leaf fan over him during the hot summer days [Willis 61].

June 23 Thursday – Female Academy, Buffalo, New York – Commencement Exercises Speech. Clemens wrote the speech, though David Gray (1836-1888), poet and editor of the Buffalo Courier, read it [McCullough 211].

Sam’s article, “MARK TWAIN IN NEW YORK” was printed in the Auburn, California, Stars and Stripes [Fatout, MT Speaks 62].

June 24 Friday – Sam’s article “Buffalo Female Academy” was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 211].

June 25 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to his mother, and sister:

“We were called here suddenly by telegram 3 days ago. Mr. Langdon is very low. We have well nigh lost hope—all of us except Livy.”

June 27 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, complimenting him on a circular claiming 150,000 sales for Innocents Abroad (a stretcher, for sure. 60,378 is more accurate.)

“Mr. Langdon is very ill. Sometimes we feel sure he is going to get well, but then again hope well nigh passes away. This morning the case looks so well that all are pretty cheery again” [MTL 4: 159].

June 28 Tuesday – Charles Langdon sailed from Liverpool on the Abyssinia. It arrived in Boston on July 8, not New York as Sam had thought in his letter of the previous day [MTL 4: 161n1].

June 4 Saturday – Sam’s article, “More Distinction,” a hilarious guide to raising chickens, ran in the Buffalo Express:

June 7 Tuesday – Jervis Langdon was sinking. Sam & Livy went to Elmira to help nurse him and to support Livy’s mother, Olivia Lewis Langdon [MTL 4: 149n1].

June 9 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, asking him to send an enclosure with a “nice copy of the book” to Edward H. House, Occidental Hotel, San Francisco. House was traveling to Japan. When he was critic for the New York Tribune he wrote an important and glowing review (May 11, 1867) of Sam’s first NY lecture, and Sam was thankful.

Late February – Livy’s cousin, Hattie Marsh Tyler, “who lived in the Buffalo area, dropped in. She filled Olivia’s ears with complaints about the female ‘help’ available in Buffalo. Around that time, just three weeks into running her new household, Olivia had needed to mildly scold servants Ellen and Harriet.

March 1 Wednesday – Sam sold his one-third interest in the Buffalo Express to George H. Selkirk for $15,000, to be paid over five years. Sam still owed Thomas A. Kennett (1843-1911). Sam repaid Jervis Langdon’s estate by the end of 1871, but by 1878 Selkirk had still not completed payment [MTL 4: 338].

March 11 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Francis P. Church. Sam offered to edit the humorous department of the Galaxy for $2,000 a year if they’d release copyright back to him upon publication.

March 12 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Big Thing,” was printed in the Buffalo Express. Commenting on an article from the Louisville Journal, Sam wrote:

How familiar that old gushing, tiresome bosh is!…I wish to ask the Louisville reporter the old familiar question, so common among reporters in the mines: “How many ‘feet’ did the doctor give you?” (“Feet are shares.) We always got “feet,” in Nevada, for whooping about a Nearly-Pure-Silver-National-Debt-Liquidator in this gushing way” [McCullough 166].