Uniform Edition de luxe – $ 10,000 Tumbles In – “Splendid Bird, Set Her Again” Politics of Peace – Hadleyburg – Making Fun of Mrs. Eddy Budapest Reading – Karl Kraus & Critics – Twain in Top Ten– Authorized Bio Sketch – “Concerning the Jews”– Vienna Farewell – Kellgren’s “System” Becomes Osteopathy Club Dinners Galore – Sanna for the Damned – Boer War Not Boring – London Hermits

1899 – Sam recorded he was paid $10,621.10 this year by the American Publishing Co. and noted “N: E. Co.” by the entry. He estimated the Co. cleared $2,000 [NB 46 TS 17].

Sometime during the year Sam wrote from an unknown place to Ann W. Denslow thanking her for a copy of her husband’s book, Father Goose. Sam felt it marked a new era in nursery literature, and predicted parents would buy the buy ostensibly for the nursery but to privately enjoy themselves [MTP: Paraphrase: Chicago Tribune, Dec. 18, 1899]. Note: William Wallace Denslow (1856-1915); see Gribben 185.

Early in 1899 Sam wrote three short reminiscence sketches: “Horace Greeley,” “Lecture-Times,” and “Ralph Keeler” which the MTP included in the new “authoritative edition” of his Autobiography [AMT 1: 145-154]. Note: the source offers: “He had apparently abandoned (at least briefly) the autobiography as he had originally conceived it in favor of a ‘portrait gallery of contemporaries,’ as he told one interviewer in May 1899” [145]. See source for each text.

Early in the year, through Ambassador Charlemagne Tower, Sam tried to invest in a health food derived from skim milk, “Vienna albumen,” later given the trade name, “Plasmon.” Ad. H. Goerz, brother in law of Georg Siemens, was forming a syndicate in London to market the stuff world wide. It would become another investment debacle of sorts for Sam [Dolmetsch 301]. Note: he was unable to invest in the syndicate at this time, but did so in 1900: see Apr. 8 & 9, 1900 to Rogers, in which he divulges he used Plasmon in 1897 to cure himself of a “fiendish dyspepsia of 8 years standing.” In the spring of 1902 the Plasmon Syndicate became The Plasmon Company.

Sometime during 1899 Sam wrote about Albumen (Plasmon) investment possibilities to Mr. Hogue. Since he mentions that “Mr. Tower is away” (the consul to Vienna), and the term “Plasmon” is not used in the letter (as it would later be called) this was written in Vienna, likely in 1899. Sam asked if he had to go to London or New York with statistics and facts about Plasmon, would Lilienfeld go with him? He cautioned Hogue not to mention his name as it “would raise the prices here” for investment [MTP]. Note:

Sam’s directives and advice give weight to Hogue being an investor and possibly an associate of Dr. Leon Lilienfeld (1869-1938), who announced a synthesis of albumen on Aug. 5, 1898 [International Journal of Science Vol. 58 Aug. 18, 1898 p. 368]. MTP has this cataloged as “ca. 1890.”

Sometime “a few months later” after a silver wedding anniversary celebration of Joseph and Marianne Krantz (owners of the Krantz Hotel; Nov. 14, 1898), the Clemenses attended the christening of the Krantz’s twin granddaughters of in the Capuchin Catholic Church on the Neue Markt Square [Dolmetsch 299]. Note: The Official name—Church of St. Mary of the Angels, but commonly called the Capuchin. Founded in 1617 it stands on the subterranean crypt of the Habsburg dynasty.

In 1899 or 1900 Sam wrote “Goose Fable,” a short allegory using animals about misplaced trust reflected in humans [Fables of Man 149-51].

William Archer in America Today: Observations and Reflections (NY – Scribner’s): Tenney: “On MT, pp. 212-

        ‘If any work of incontestable genius, and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English language in the past quarter century, it is that brilliant romance of the Great Rivers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intensely American though he be, “Mark Twain” is one of the greatest living masters of the English language.’ (Apparently this may have appeared previously in Pall Mall Gazette or Pall Mall Magazine, according to a note on p. vii.)” [30].

Thomas Wentworth Higginson ’s Cheerful Yesterdays (Houghton, Mifflin) p. 284-5. Tenney: “Visiting Darwin, in 1872, learned of his ‘hearty enjoyment of Mark Twain, who had then hardly begun to be regarded as above the Josh Billings grade of humorist; but Darwin was amazed that I had not read “The Jumping Frog,” and said that he always kept it by his bedside for midnight amusement.’” [30]. Note: Higginson (1823-1911); see entries Vol. I & II.

Rudyard Kipling in his From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel reprinted “An Interview with Mark Twain,” which originally ran in The Pioneer Mar. 18 1890. See also Tenney 31; MTCI 117-26, uses the NY Herald reprint of Aug. 17, 1890, as “Rudyard Kipling on Mark Twain.”

Will M. Clemens’ book, A Ken of Kipling. Being a Biographical Sketch of Rudyard Kipling, With an Appreciation and Some Anecdotes, included on p.109- 137, “Kipling and Mark Twain,” a brief headnote with a reprint of Kipling’s “An Interview with Mark Twain” from the N.Y. Herald of Aug. 17, 1890

[Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 186]. Note: See Sam’s opinion of Will Clemens in Gribben p.147 or June 13, 1900 to Rogers.

Marshall P. Wilder’s book, The People I’ve Smiled With: Recollections of a Merry Little Life, Akron, Ohio, included on p.194-9 a quote of Mark Twain’s speech at the 100th-night dinner of The Taming of the

Shrew [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 186]. Note: the 100th night bash was Apr. 13, 1887. See entry.