October 3 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:

Hotel Metropole, Vienna, Oct. 3, 1897. At the next round table to ours sits a princess, daughter of the Dowager Empress Friederich & granddaughter of Victoria; also the young daughter of the above and her intended, the young Prince Henry Reuss (called Henry III); whose mother & sister and Uncle (the Prince von Wernigerode) in Ilsenberg in the Harz mountains six years ago. With them a maid of honor & a couple of equerries. Good looking people. They all smoke [NB 42 TS 39].

In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking for the “rest of the Ellis photographs.” He had been in bed with the gout [MTP]. See July 30 for Alfred Ellis information and photograph.

Eduard Pötzl, the Neues Wiener Tagblatt’s top writer, wrote a humorous sketch about Mark Twain titled, “Der Stille Beobachter” (The Silent Observer). Dolmetsch calls Pötzl an “obscure figure today but during his lifetime…immensely popular,” and describes the article:

…it narrates an imaginary incident in which Twain, standing on a city bridge to observe the passing scene, notebook in hand, is greeted by two typical city workmen who endeavor to converse with him in Weanerisch (Viennese dialect) . The result is a hilarious series of misunderstandings an befuddlements [35]. Note: see Sam’s Oct. 4 to Pötzl.