November 5 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens.
“I believe I have nothing to report but the love of the family & their tolerable health. Clara has begun her music lessons, Jean her several studies; Livy is busied in her several ways, & I in mine. The weather is good, & we are comfortable & satisfied. / Sam” [MTP].
With her piano lessons under Theodor Leschetizky under way, Sam and Theodor became friends.
November 4 Thursday – Frank Bliss cabled Sam that there was a letter circulating supposedly from Sam that he had made $82,000 and paid all his debts. Bliss’ cable is not extant but referred to Sam’s following cable and letter replies.
At 10:22 a.m. at the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Bliss’s cable with one of his own: “LIE WROTE NO SUCH LETTER STILL DEEP IN DEBT / CLEMENS” [MTP].
He then wrote to Bliss that the rumor was not true and speculated what had caused it:
November 3 Wednesday – Again Sam attended a session of the Austrian Reichsrath. During a break in the proceedings, Sam met Dr. Otto Lecher in the restaurant. Lecher had given the marathon speech on Oct. 28- 29, and it’s clear from Sam’s account of that night in “Stirring Times in Austria,” that he admired the man [Dolmetsch 74]. Note: Sam’s notebook for Nov. 3 has several pages of notes from 8:45 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. [NB 42 TS 44-47]
November 2 Tuesday –In Vienna Sam also wrote to Bettina Wirth.
Mrs. Clemens corrects me. She says “My Grandfather’s Old Ram” is in print. She says it is in a book of mine whose American title is “Roughing It”—but the English & Tauchnitz editions bear another name—a name which we are not acquainted with. She thinks that the “Negro Ghost Story” is also in one of my books, but she doesn’t know the name of that book, & neither do I. The truth is, I am not very well acquainted with my books.
November 1 Monday – Sam’s tribute to the late James Hammond Trumbull written in Weggis, Switzerland, ran in the Hartford Courant, p.3.
November 1 Monday ca. – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Marshall White about an article that was “all ready for mail.” Sam detailed three items of changes [MTP]. Note: it’s not clear which article or piece is referred to here.
November – “In Memoriam” for Susy Clemens was first published in Harper’s Monthly for Nov. 1897. It was collected in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (Hartford, 1900) and The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) [Budd Collected 2: 1003].
Sam’s tribute to the late James Hammond Trumbull written in Weggis, Switzerland, ran in the Nov. issue of Century Magazine.
Sam began the unfinished “Chronicle of Young Satan” in Nov. 1897 [Camfield, bibliog.].
October 31 Sunday – Sam spoke at the Concordia Press Club in Vienna. Dolmetsch on the event:
October 28 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Bettina Wirth, a local novelist and correspondent with the London Daily News. According to Dolmetsch (46), she may have helped Sam draft a speech in German he would give at Concordia Press Club on Oct. 31. Sam wrote:
You have written it superbly, & I am full of thankfulness.
October 27 Wednesday – In Vienna, Sam wrote to an unidentified person:
October 25 Monday – In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Thomas S. Frisbie in Hartford, thanking him for the now famous composite photograph of Mark Twain being hauled in a cart by a horse and cow, and driven by a black man with a black boy rider. The photo was incorporated into 60 copies of FE after the trade edition issued, along with a facsimile of this letter. Sam’s 1895 pose onboard the Warrimoo was superimposed on the cart picture.