May 14 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a long letter to Lawrence B. Evans, who had written (not extant) explaining a review. Sam thought Evans was defending England against him, though he couldn’t imagine why, giving several reasons he did not dislike the country [MTP: Varleriani]. Note: full text not available. Evans had been a professor in Berlin during the family’s 1893 stay there. He was later chairman of the history dept. at Tufts University. The work being reviewed is unspecified.
Sam also wrote to Rudolf Lindau, assigning only the 14th date. The MTP puts this letter as between May 14 and Sept. 14, 1898. Research into Lindau’s movements may pinpoint the exact date; Sam recorded his visit on July 15 (NB 40 TS 26), which may answer here. Sam laid out plans for Lindau’s travel to Kaltenleutgeben (where they would arrive on May 20): He should leave the Sudbohm Station at 2:30 or 3 p.m, travel 50 minutes with a change of cars at Liesing. He asked Lindau to telegraph him of the time his train would leave Vienna and Sam would meet him at Kaltenleutgeben’s station. They would take a walk in the woods and then take Jaüsa (tea?) with the family at the Anstalt; at 7:30 he would take supper with them at their house and later he would have to return to Vienna "because this village hasn’t at present an unoccupied bed that any but a protected cruiser might venture to sleep in” [MTP].
The New York Times, May 29, 1898, p. 19, “Inventions in Vienna,” signed by Dr. Johannes Horowitz and datelined May 14, included a passage on Jan Szczepanik’s new loom invention, which mentioned Mark Twain.
At the Jubilee Exhibition, now open here in Vienna, for the present only two gobelins woven by Szczpanik’s new loom will be shown. One of them contains Mark Twain’s portrait. For some time the great humorist has been giving the well-known Polish painter Henryk Rauchinger almost daily sittings for a portrait for the gobelin. The other day I visited the studio, and found the portrait nearly finished. It will be the best picture of Mark Twain ever painted [Note: Gobelin: made at or resembling a tapestry made at the Gobelins factory in Paris].