October 10 Sunday – An interview with Mark Twain ran in a supplement to the Vienna newspaper Fremden-Blatt. Dolmetsch calls the interview “The most significant, certainly most penetrating, of the myriad of interviews and articles appearing about Mark Twain in Viennese newspapers during the early days of his stay.” He also writes that while freedom of the press as Sam knew it back home had never existed in Austria-Hungary, “official censorship was sloppily enforced” [32]. “No fewer than forty-five newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, and semiweeklies, plus a dozen humor magazines and some twenty journals of belles letters and criticism were being published in Vienna…” [31]. At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Ferdinand Gross, editor-in-chief of the Fremden-Blatt.

Dear Sir: / What you have written of me in this morning’s Fremden-Blatt has gratified me more than I can say, because of the friendly & hospitable feeling which pervades it, & because it penetrates to my literary inside with a sure instinct & reveals its secret springs & its carefully veiled system of procedure with a find & happy accuracy, & puts the result on paper with felicitous charity and precision [MTP]. Note: interview not in Scharnhorst. Dolmetsch points out Gross’ popularity as a humor writer, and that his interview may have introduced many of Twain’s works to Austrian readers [39].

Sam’s notebook yields a meeting with Princess Pauline Metternich, granddaughter of Queen Victoria:

Sunday, Oct. 10. The Princess did me the honor to send & invite me down to her parlor, this afternoon (& added the further honor of saying that if I was not yet strong enough to leave my quarters she would come up see me. I went down at 4.30 & was received in a way which put me at my ease at once. She came to the door when I was announced, & put out her hand & gave me a hearty grasp & shake, & said, “I am very very glad to meet you & know you, Mr. Clemens—I have read your books & am familiar with them & they have given me great enjoyment” [NB 42 TS 40-1].

Also published this day by Samuel Schlesinger (Sigmund’s cousin) was “Ein Plauderstundchen mit Mark Twain” (A Chat with Mark Twain) in Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt [Dolmetsch 39-40].

An anti-Semitic cartoon featuring Mark Twain ran in this day’s issue of Kikeriki!, “Mark Twain seeks material in Vienna for new stories” [Dolmetsch 169].

A Pen and ink portrait of Mark Twain by Adolf Gelber appeared with a facsimile of Sam’s Oct. 8 handwritten aphorism [Dolmetsch 53].

In the Boston Globe, a long article, “Mark Twain’s New Book,” ran on p. 36, and included a few excerpt from FE.