August 4 Saturday – Sam stayed with the Harry Harper family on the Long Island shore.
Harry Harper is open & honest & frank; & was not afraid to tell me (after I said I couldn’t quite afford to let the book [JA] go at the terms offered,) that he was charmed with the book & that Alden would be deeply disappointed if it was allowed to slip out of his hands.
August 5 Sunday – A few minutes after returning from Long Island, Sam wrote to Livy about going after his JA MS on Friday afternoon and leaving with Harry Harper for a two-day visit. No letter from her awaited him. Sam explained that he needed to be accessible to H.H. Rogers, for Urban H.
August 6 Monday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam agreeing to amend the contract for JA with the increased royalty from the time they used his real name as author [MTP].
August 7 Tuesday – In New York on Players Club stationery, Sam wrote a paragraph to his brother Orion in Keokuk, Iowa, asking his forgiveness for losing his temper.
…I was infernally provoked to reflect that I had written 200 letters trying to settle that picayune trade & then hadn’t accomplished it.
August 8 Wednesday – In New York at the Players Club, Sam wrote a letter to daughter Susy in Etretat, France. This morning he’d gone to see a palmreader, a young man, 26-years-old, named Cheiro (1866-1936), one of the most colorful and famous occult figures of his day. He was a clairvoyant who used palmistry, astrology, and Chaldean numerology, to predict world events, some of which were frighteningly accurate.
August 9 Thursday – In New York at H.H. Rogers’ office, Sam wrote to Livy an hour before a scheduled meeting with the lawyers and the assignee in the Webster & Co. bankruptcy case.
August 11 Saturday – Sam wrote a letter of recommendation for Mrs. Mary B. Willard to G.W. Knowlton, of Knowlton Brothers, Watertown, N.Y., who considered sending a “young lady,” perhaps a daughter or relative, to Willard’s school for American girls in Berlin, Germany, where Clara Clemens had studied. Sam provided Willard’s address.
She will be well cared for, well taught, & will have the comradeship of excellent girls of her own nationality [MTP].
August 15 Wednesday – Sam sailed for Southampton, England on the Paris [N.Y. Times, Aug. 15, 1894 p.7 “Departures for Europe”]. The New York newspapers reported on Sam’s departure, including the Times and the Sun. The Times, not always the friendliest paper to Mark Twain, included the story within one about Mayor Thomas F. Gilroy sailing for Europe. Comparing adjectives and treatment of the two articles reveals a subtle but definite contrast.
August 16 Thursday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. An article published Sept. 9, 1894, p.5 and datelined August 22, described the voyage and the weather:
On one day only rain interfered with deck amusements and promenading, a dense fog enshrouded us off the banks and at subsequent short periods further eastward. …Aside from this disagreeable feature, we have had an exceptionally smooth voyage, the glassy surface of the ocean disturbed alone by swells from our huge steamship.
August 17 Friday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The second day at sea the Paris made 423 miles distance [Ibid.]
August 18 Saturday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The third day at sea the Paris made 429 miles distance [Ibid.]
August 19 Sunday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The fourth day at sea the Paris made 430 miles distance. In the evening, Rev. A.J.F. Behrends gave a brief sermon in the grand saloon [Ibid.]. Sam may have attended.
August 20 Monday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The fifth day at sea the Paris made 455 miles distance [Ibid.]. The Brooklyn Eagle article (Sept. 9, 1894 p.5 “A Mid-Ocean Letter”) wrote up a charity concert event that included a reading by Sam:
August 21 Tuesday – Sam was en route aboard the American Line S.S. Paris for Southampton. The sixth day at sea the Paris made 447 miles distance [Ibid.]
…an entertainment was given in the second cabin, consisting of songs, recitations, an illusion act and minstrel performance, realizing about $25 for the benefit of a steward, who met with an accident on Sunday last [Aug. 19]. Eighty dollars in addition was raised for him among the first cabin passengers [Ibid.]
August 22 Wednesday – At 4 p.m., the S.S. Paris docked at Southampton. The seventh day at sea the Paris made 441 miles distance, within 67 miles to Southampton [Brooklyn Eagle, Sept. 9, 1894 p.5 “A Mid-Ocean Letter”].
H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, the letter not extant, but mentioned in Sam’s Sept. 2 to Rogers.
August 23 Thursday † – Sam reached Etretat, France on the Normandy coast by this day, reuniting with his family [Sept. 2-3 to Rogers].
Mrs. James French-King’s article, “Character Reading of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain),” ran in Freedom, a weekly Boston paper, p.3. This was a journal devoted to “Mental Science” [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn, 1980) 172].
August 24 Friday – Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam (the letter is not extant but is mentioned in Sam’s Sept. 9 to Rogers) that they’d sent a typed copy of JA, express paid. Sam still had not received the MS itself by Sept. 9.
Rogers signed a contract for Livy with Frank Bliss for the publication of PW by the American Publishing Co. [MTHHR 71-2].
August 25 Saturday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers:
I find the Madam ever so much better in health and strength; but disappointed, for she hoped you and Mrs. Duff would come and let her take care of you as she proposed; but I told her I didn’t get the letter, which was true. But I don’t see how she would take care of anybody in this little Chalet des Abris, which is such an incredibly small coop that the family can’t find room to sleep without hanging their legs out of the windows.
August 26 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam worked this day and the next on an unspecified magazine article, which he did not finish.
August 27 Monday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam about delays in receiving a duplicate set of illustrations to use in PW [MTP].
August 28 Tuesday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, concerned about the mix-up in the publication date for PW. Publication had to be coordinated between England and the US to ensure copyright.
Oh, my God, this is a state of things! Mr. Hall, & the Assignee [Bainbridge Colby] & everybody else knew, away back yonder the last of April, & you ought of course to have been told that at the time.
September – The North American Review published the final segment of Sam’s essay, “In Defense of Harriet Shelley” (July–Sept.).
September 1 Saturday – At the Chalet des Abris in Etretat, France, Sam wrote to Charles W. Dayton, New York Postmaster about a notification of a registered letter sent from Austria.
I am all in a tremor & a sweat to get that registered letter from Austria, for I feel almost certain it is the Emperor resigning in my favor. Do shove it right along…[MTP].
September 2 Sunday – In Etretat, France (“In bed — noon”) Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Sept. 3.
The facts are distorted in that “Sun” squib. (When you see it in the Sun it ain’t so.) [See Aug. 15 for Sun article, which is possibly the one Sam referred to.]
September 3 Monday – Sam finished his Sept. 2 letter to H.H. Rogers.
Monday morning, Joan. I hadn’t any trouble there. That is a book which writes itself, a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen.
Sam had written ten or eleven thousand more words for six days of work so far in Etretat, and planned it as a two-volume work: