Midwest Lecture Tour – Visits to Elmira & Hartford – Sam & Livy Engaged - Sam Met William Dean Howells – Innocents Abroad a Great Success - Buffalo Newspaper Purchased with Jervis Langdon’s help – Grueling Lecture Schedule

1869 – Sometime during the year Clemens took out a $10,000 life insurance policy with Continental Life Ins. Co of Hartford [MTP]. Note: see June 16, 1877.

October 29 Friday – Sam left Elmira for Pittsburgh. See locket picture of Livy dated this day by MTP.

October 30 Saturday – Sam arrived in Pittsburgh in the afternoon, for his Nov. 1 lecture. He was the guest of honor at a banquet at McGinley’s Dining Saloon, on Wood Street, given by the lecture committee of the Mercantile Library Association [MTL 3: 382n2]. Lorch says it was an “oyster supper” [105].

October 31 Sunday – Sam continued the Oct. 30 letter to Livy:

“I walked around town this morning with a young Mr. Dean, a cousin of Wm D. Howells, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He kindly offered to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Howells, but I thanked him sincerely & declined, saying I had a sort of delicacy about using letters of introduction…”

November   – Sometime during the month (probably in the first half), G.M. Baker of Boston made a formal group  photograph of Sam, Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw 1818-1885) and  Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke 1833-1888) [MTP].

November  1 1869 to January 21, 1870 Lecture Tour: At least 49  engagements under the management of James Redpath (All  but Brookville and Johnstown are listed courtesy of Barbara Schmidt’s TwainQuotes website, designated as [Schmidt].)

Sometime  during this period Clemens wrote to an unidentified man, his photo  enclosed:

“All  right—will smoke with you, if Redpath can arrange a night that will suit all  around. Confound that ferry!” [MTPO: Sales catalog, Thomas R. Madigan, 1935,  item 67].

November  1 Monday – Sam  gave his “Savages lecture in Pittsburgh,  Pa., Academy of Music [MTPO].

Elisha  Bliss wrote: “We want to pay up.  Shall we forward statement & check to you at Elmira or await your arrival  here?…Can’t you send us list of engagements so far made. … Are you married? We  hear of it so often & have contradicted it…Post us up!” [MTP].

James  Redpath wrote a one liner: “we  have nothing between second and eighth” [MTP].
 

November 2 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Brookville, Pennsylvania – As reported by the Pittsburgh Gazette [MTL 3: 385].

November 3 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Johnstown,  Pennsylvania [MTL 3: 385].

Note: It is possible that Sam did  not speak in Brookville or Johnstown – more newspaper evidence  might confirm. Letters Sam wrote Livy between Nov. 6 and 9 (Livy’s numbers 129-132) are  lost [MTL 3:  391n4].
 

November 7 to 13 Saturday – sometime during this week Horatio G. Smith of Boston photographed Clemens with Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) and Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke) and titled the photo “American Humorists” [MTL 3: 406, 408n10]. The “V” for “Vesuvius.”

November 9 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Harrington’s Opera House, Providence, Rhode Island. Sam spoke to 1,800 there and later wrote: “Gave good satisfaction.” He wrote from Boston to his sister Pamela:

November 10 Wednesday – Sam lectured to a full house of 2,600 in Music Hall, Boston, Mass. – Sam’s letter of Nov. 9 to his sister was no exaggeration—the Boston lecture was critical to Sam’s continued success on the lecture circuit. Boston was the literary capital of the country, and success there meant easy sledding elsewhere in New England. Sam wrote from Boston to Livy his plans to spend New Year’s Day at home.  

November 11 Thursday – Sam lectured at Trinity Church, Charlestown, Mass. [MTPO].

Sam wrote from Boston at midnight:

“…bought full wedding outfit to-day (haven’t got a cent left) & occasionally the packages will arrive by express directed simply to J. Langdon, Elmira. Now your mother must unpack them & put them away for me & be sure not to let Mr. Langdon go wearing them around. I tell you, they are starchy.”

November 12 Friday – The New York Press Club sent a circular letter inviting Twain to a Press Club dinner Sat. Nov. 27, 5 p.m. at Delmonico’s. Tickets cost $3 [MTP].

November 13 Saturday – Sam lectured in Norwich, Conn. “Around the World Letter No. 3” ran in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 89].

November 14 Sunday – Clemens stayed another night in Norwich. See Nov. 15 to Livy.

November, mid – Sam, visited unannounced the offices of The Atlantic Monthly at 124 Tremont Street in Boston to thank the unsigned reviewer of Innocents Abroad for a very positive review. This is the famous first meeting between William Dean Howells (who wrote the review) and Sam Clemens. Sam first saw James T. Fields, who had hired Howells.

November 15 Monday – Sam lectured at Clinton Hall, Clinton, Mass.[MTPO].

He began a letter from to Livy that he finished on Nov. 16.

Livy Darling — / I had to submit to the customary & exasperating drive around town in a freezing open buggy this morning [at Norwich] to see the wonders of the village

November 16 Tuesday – Sam finished the letter to Livy. Later that evening he lectured in Holyoke, Mass.  

Livy Darling—

November 17 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Gothic Hall, Danvers, Mass. [MTPO].

November 19 Friday – In Boston prior to his lecture, Sam wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

November 20 Saturday – Sam wrote from Boston to James K. Medbery, declining to write a Christmas book for the American Literary Bureau [MTL 3: 400].

November 23 Tuesday – Sam lectured (“Savages”) in Allyn Hall, Hartford, Conn. The Hartford Courant (Nov. 25, p2) review summarized both traditional the traditional lecture audience “class” and expectations, and Sam’s unique “conversational” approach which mixed both serious and comedic:

November 24–25 Thursday – Sam wrote late from Hartford to Livy, who was in New York City at the St. Nicholas Hotel with her father, sister Susan Crane, and John Slee and wife making wedding preparations.