October 18 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.
The 3 books have come. Many Thanks.
Come! Haven’t you found out yet, that you mustn’t agree upon the details of a contract & then go back to Hartford before it is signed? Now do go down there, & get Mr. Rogers’s help, and stay there until the thing is completed beyond recal. You have had experience enough to know that no other way will ever succeed. When the contract has actually been signed, cable me so, & under that inspiration I will drop everything & write an introduction. There’s no inspiration now for the contract seems as far off as ever.
Your sample page is very attractive. Please keep a sharp eye on the proofs / Truly yours / SLC [PBA
Galleries, Apr. 30, 2009, Sale 402 Item 200659].
Note: Sam is referring to the supplement to the Dec. 31, 1896 contract made between Bliss, Harper & Brothers and Livy, which would be signed on Nov. 11. See the complete text in MTHHR p.688-90.
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers. He was punishing himself for saying to the Harpers that he’d wished they had all his trade books and Bliss the subscription ones; for the contract supplement had not yet been signed, and though he thought all had been settled, he guessed “nothing is really settled with the Harpers until they have signed.” He was having second thoughts about sending “The Memorable Assassination” to the Ladies’ Home Journal and Edward Bok. He didn’t want to be in print too frequently as he felt it would hurt his market. And, after receiving a copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which he’d never seen before, he was downcast:
Why, bless my soul, it is a mere literary night-cart. I would rather steal nickels for a living than earn it writing for such a rag as that. It is full of Wanamaker & his Sunday schools & other hypocricies. It ought to be medicated, & restricted to the Bleeding Piles Hospital
[Note: John Wanamaker, Philadelphia retailer, had been the object of a lawsuit by Sam in Aug. 1886 for selling Grant’s Memoirs below cost. The lawsuit failed. Wanamaker’s Bethany Presbyterian Church Sunday school was one of the largest in America. See entries MTDBD Vol. 2.]
Sam added a PS about Bliss not paying the $1,000 he’d promised for the McClure’s Magazine excerpt of FE [MTHHR 369].
In the evening Sam attended a peace rally at the Etablissement Ronacher organized by Bertha von Suttner, followed by a gala supper given by the Baroness at the Hotel Sacher. The rally at the old vaudeville theatre and ballroom was free to the public and the place was packed. Sam had to follow the principal address by Lt. Col. Manfred von Egidy, “who had been cashiered from the Prussian army for his antiwar pamphlet Ernste Gedanken (Serious Thoughts) and was making the rounds of peace groups in the Germanic World” [Dolmetsch 189].
Dolmetsch writes of Sam’s address on disarmament at the peace rally:
This florid rhetoric was a hard act to follow, but Mark Twain rose to the challenge. He excused himself for using English in his talk, pointing out that, as the czar’s manifesto had been issued in Russian and had been understood by people of every culture, he had no fears he would not likewise be perfectly understood. He noted thankfully that the war between his homeland and Spain was over, that it had cost much in money and human suffering on both sides and had achieved nothing that could not have been done without a war. Although he personally had had doubts about the idea of world peace, thinking it was just so many words, the fact that the czar of Russia was issuing such a call and was ready to disarm was now enough for him. He had only a penknife with him, but he was ready to disarm, too! [189-90].