Vol 3 Section 0208
Summer – Budd lists a private dinner where Sam spoke. “See Kate Douglas Wiggin, My Garden of Memory (1923), p. 293-4. However, Wiggin’s dating is incompatible with the place she gives” [“Supplement to MT Speaking”].
June – Sam sent a part-printed subscription form to the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (“ New Free Press”) seeking a run of July 1 to Oct. 31, and asking to “Please send the bill by the postman.” Under the line for “character” (title), Sam wrote “Hasn’t any” [MTP: Bomsey Autographs catalogs, No. 46, Item 103].
A. Hoffman puts this month as the one Clara Clemens decided to give up the piano as a career and to choose what her late sister excelled in, singing. Though he errs on this date, he observes:
Sam and Livy preferred Clara’s unpredictability to Jean’s contrariness. Sam and Livy disagreed on whether Jean’s personality resulted from her disease or from her essential self. Livy was the more forgiving of the couple [423].
Note: like many errors in biographies, this one simply ignores the facts of many letters (which may not have been available to the biographer) Clara continued with her piano instruction throughout the year. Harnsberger puts her decision at “one day early in 1899,” [183] which depends on Clara’s later recollection. Closer to the change, in his Mar. 5, 1899 to cousin James Ross Clemens, Sam wrote: “Clara forsook the piano four months ago…” which puts her decision to December, 1898.
June 1 Wednesday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam, pasting a Hartford Courant clipping from May 27 at the top of the first page (not in file).
Dear Mark: / So you see I set your eulogy—and a choice bit of criticism it is—circulating: for which Mr. Coggins might to be, and will be, a grateful man. But he deserves it. For in reading his article (which I shouldn’t have done but for you) I saw that every word you had said about it was true. I wonder if he is a young fellow just beginning to try his wings. If he is, there are certainly great possibilities in him. For a tyro his restraint seems to me most remarkable.
Joe also bragged that his son Dave had enlisted in the Army and was a sergeant of artillery. He gave news about a few Hartford people Sam knew—the Warner’s, Dr. Parker, and then remarked he was 60 years old last Friday. “I’m afraid it is now too late for me to think of amounting to much” [MTP]. Note: David Cushman Twichell (1874-1924).
June 2 Thursday
June 3 Friday
June 4 Saturday – Sam wrote a sketch given this date in Kaltenleutgeben, unpublished until 2009: “A
Group of Servants” [Who Is Mark Twain? xxvi, 61-9; AMT 1: 120-4]. Note: title assigned by Paine. Sam describes the new servants in this getaway village near Vienna, including one “garrulous older maid” he nicknamed “Wuthering Heights.” See
last source p. 500 n121.21 for speculation as to why Sam chose the name of Emily Brontë’s classic novel.
June 5 Sunday
June 6 Monday
June 7 Tuesday
June 8 Wednesday – Clara Clemens’ 24th birthday. Sam’s notebook entry of June 11 describes the family’s collective ignoring of such events since the death of Susy:
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.