February 14 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
The publishers sent me your book three or four weeks ago, & it gave me a most stimulating & delicious time—& did also partly & timely justify & reinforce some laudations of you which I had dictated the day before (in my Autobiography.)
February 15 Monday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
February 16 Tuesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Lady Augustus Gregory.
February 17 Wednesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
February 18 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Report that Count Massiglia is to arrive from Siam Saturday. Probably not very welcome news for his widow” [NB 47 TS 6]. Note: Count Annibale Raybaudi (Rebaudi) Massiglia (1853-1942), was a diplomat in several countries, but not all at once.
February 19 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “The peasant whose thumb was bitten off by the Countess’s mad donkey proposes to sue for damages. Recommended to him to Senator Lucchini” [NB 47 TS 6].
February 21 Sunday – Lady Augusta Gregory wrote from Gort, Ireland to Sam, sorry to hear “so sad an account of your dear wife’s health.” Mr. Yeats was sailing home and she had given him Sam’s “kind message.” She was alone there making repairs from a great storm of last year, and would soon go to London to help her son, who had taken up art with charcoal and pencil.
February 22 Monday –Sam’s notebook: “At midnight Livy’s pulse went to 192, & there was a collapse. Great alarm. Subcutaneous injection of brandy saved her” [NB 47 TS 7].
February 23 Tuesday – George Gregory Smith wrote to Isabel V. Lyon, thanking her for her “very clear letter with enclosures of Express receipts, &c.” He had written the American Express agent in Paris and enclosed copies “of the whole matter” [MTP].
February 24 Wednesday – Miss Clara Anderson wrote from Moline, Ill. to Sam, having been given his name by an inventor of hearing-aid devices, Mr. M.R. Hutchison. She noted so much deception in the field and wanted to confirm Sam’s endorsement. On the back of the letter Clemens wrote” Answered Mar 13, 1904” [MTP].
February 25 Thursday – Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence: Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished on Feb. 26.
February 26 Friday – Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence: Sam finished his Feb. 25 to H.H. Rogers.
Feb. 26, 8 a.m. News comes that Mrs. Clemens slept a little while lying down.The first time for many weeks. / P.S.[enclosure:]
February 27 Saturday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Dr. H. Laing Gordon, and marked it “Private” at the top:
February 28 Sunday – Lyon’s journal: Isabel and the Clemenses went “to the theatre to see a play by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), acted by his wife” on an unspecified date during the month [TS 14, MTP].Note: Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright and poet who wrote in French. He won the Nobel prize in Literature in 1911. By 1904 he had written at least fourteen plays.
February 29 Monday – Miss Emily Katherine Bates (usually seen as E. Katherine Bates) English novelist, travel writer, member of the English Society for Psychical Research, wrote from Rome to Sam.
Dear Mr. Clemmens [sic] / I am writing to you instead of to Mrs Clemens because I think it may be easier to find you!
March – Metropolitan Magazine ran “An Interview with Mark Twain” by Clara Morris, the actress [Tenney 39: The Twainian (Feb. 1943)]. “Recollections of ain interview, apparently years earlier, in Wallack’s Theatre; the conversation with ‘Mr. Twain’ is reconstructed vaguely and imperfectly from memory. Illustrated with a drawing of MT by Edmund Frederick. (NYPL)” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 189]. See Insert.
March 1 Tuesday – Elmira College Club wrote to Sam that his annual dues of $1 per year had not been received [MTP]. Note: “Sent 2.00.”
March 1, after – Isabel V. Lyon wrote a note for Sam to Livy concerning a Feb. 29 letter received from Miss Emily Katherine Bates.
March 2 Wednesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence, Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Francis P. Elliott (1861-1924), at this time editor of The New Age, Washington, D.C.
March 3 Thursday – Dr. H. Laing Gordon for the British Relief Fund wrote the gratitude of the committee to Sam and those who helped with the performance of Cousin Kate [MTP].
Ubaldo Traverso, Florence attorney, wrote to Sam that he was required to give evidence in a case before the court in Berlin. “To avoid the inconvenience of appearing on the 7th ins., I have asked Dr. Kirch to send me a medical certificate to the effect that you are unable to come to Florence for some days” [MTP].
March 4 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “Apparently they finished cleaning the cesspools to-day. They have been several days at it. / Suddenly at 4 p.m. Smith brought word from Higgs that he had promised the Aurora to a lady unless I decided to-night to take it. / I think we don’t wish to be hurled into it” [NB 47 TS 7]. Note: Sam was still trying to lease another villa.
March 5 Saturday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam began a letter to George B. Harvey that he added a few lines to on Mar. 6.
Won’t you run over here & give us a glimpse of you? And can’t you pull Howells along, too? Would God I could put you up, but in this majestic barrack with its inumerable rooms there is not a spare chamber which one self-respecting American would offer to another. But we’ll feed you, & drink you thereto, & be glad of the chance.
March 6 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam finished his Mar. 5 to George B. Harvey. “March 6. All night I had flittings through my head of the thought ‘the idea of that old rake fetching up in Bath, that place so full of ghosts of other Beaux—& now we add Beau Howells’” [MTP].
Sam’s notebook: “I was out of bed 2 hours to-day, the first time in 12 or 15 days. Bronchitis” [NB 47 TS 7].
March 7 Monday – E.Y. Elliot wrote from San Francisco to ask for Sam’s autograph [MTP].
Dorothy Williams, “an earnest student of astrology,” wrote from Phila. Pa. to ask Sam if she might do his horoscope—what was the hour and day of his birth? “Answer to wit: Date, Nov. 30,/35 hour not known /Ans. Mar. 21, 1904” [MTP].
Ida White wrote from Brighton, England to thank Sam for his autograph received [MTP].
March 8 Tuesday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
March 10 Thursday – Miss G.S. Godkin wrote from Florence, sorry to hear that Sam was “ailing with the bronchitis.” She and her cousin would like to call next Thursday, his reception day, if he was well. She enclosed an article written by her brother in the NY Evening Post sent by her sister-in-law (not in the file) [MTP].