February 22 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Walter Besant (1836-1901), London novelist, historian, and literary critic, who had reviewed FE in the Feb. issue of Munsey. Besant also wrote for the journal Queen.

It makes me very proud—I have just read it in Munsey for February.

Many a person will privately thank you for compacting into words an unarticulated feeling which we have all had (p. 660)—that, helped by age & long experience, we often see in pictures & books things which artist author did not themselves know they had put there. We find it out when we come to memorize a passage of our own for public delivery—how surely we do, every time! By no chance do we ever know the half that’s in it till we have turned that search-light onto it. …

You have stirred in me again the longing to go back to the seclusion of Jackson’s island & give up the futilities of life. I suppose we all have a Jackson’s island somewhere, & dream of it when we are tired [MTP]. Note: See Gribben 61-3 for more on Besant.

Sam attended Baroness von Suttner’s pacifist group Oesterreichische Gesellschaft der Friedensfreunde (Austrian Friends of Peace) meeting. For his outspoken defense of Alfred Dreyfus and Emile Zola, Sam was widely recognized in Vienna, especially by such groups. His invitation was not to speak but to meet the Baronness, and likely came from his objections to the case. Dolmetsch writes of the meeting:

…Zola’s views received a ringing endorsement, were widely noticed in the Viennese press. The liberal papers reported them without comment, but, predictably the anti-Semitic Reichspost editorialized that “the unavoidable Mark Twain, who seems to have no idea of how he is being mishandled by the Jews in Vienna,” was expressing opinions about things of which “he is really ignorant.” The reporter continued with heavy irony that even as Twain boasted “the idea of peace is making great progress in America,” his country was “grabbing Spain by the throat over blowing up of a warship,” a reference to the sinking of the Maine a few days earlier [173-4].

Note: Dolmetsch points out (p.185) that the sinking of the Maine one week before was not on the agenda for this meeting, but the passage of a resolution supporting Zola, and by association Dreyfus. The group also planned to boycott France’s planned 1900 Paris Exposition over the case.