February 27 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, noting an omission of money from Bliss’ Jan. statement for “the advance-matter furnished to the magazine” (McClure’s). Sam figured the sale should have netted him $1,000 since the Century Co. would have paid that. “& that is where it should have gone.” Sam scolded Bliss for acting on his own to give the piece to McClure’s and not the Century Magazine:
February 26 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, having resolved the Gordon-Cumming matter in his own mind after seeing the original and subsequent revisions.
“I guess we’ve ‘got’ the late Cummings’s [sic Cumming’s] sensitive relative. I have sent your letter to him, & written him…”
February 25 Friday – Katharine I. Harrison wrote to Sam, enclosing copies of creditor letters of thanks. Katharine thanked him for sending FE which arrived “a few days since” [MTHHR 323 and n1]. Note: more creditor letters, dated Mar. 4 to Apr.16, 1898 would follow; a prior batch of these had been sent on Jan.7 and another would be sent on Apr. 26.
James Whitcomb Riley wrote from Indianapolis to Sam, complimenting him on FE:
February 24 Thursday – A contract signed between Sam and Siegmund Schlesinger concerning the management of a comedy play they’d collaborated on, “Der Gegencandidat, or Woman in Politics” bears this date. The contract itself was in Sam’s hand [MTHHR 317n2].
A detailed review in Neue Freie Presse praised “Stirring Times in Austria,” which ran in the March 1898 issue of Harper’s [Dolmetsch 270].
February 23 Wednesday – Michael Henry Dziewicki replied to Sam from Cracow, Austria, thanking him for his “kind letter”; he’d been busy so had taken awhile to answer. About meeting—there was a chance that he’d be passing through Vienna, but if his novel (unspecified) “really proves a success” he’d prefer to spend his vacation in England.
February 22 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Walter Besant (1836-1901), London novelist, historian, and literary critic, who had reviewed FE in the Feb. issue of Munsey. Besant also wrote for the journal Queen.
It makes me very proud—I have just read it in Munsey for February.
February 21 Monday – Vienna, Austria: Clemens wrote a “Memorandum” and “Note” about his play, Is He Dead? [Univ. of Calif. Press 2003].
February 20 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton referring to Hutton’s Dec. 14 letter which he started to answer then but didn’t send. He found Hutton’s letter “amidst the disorder of my table at this moment” and so answered. He thanked Hutton for his review of FE (Jan.
February 17 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing J. Brander Dunbar’s letter of Feb. 13 (see entry). Sam wrote Dunbar that he copied the quotation in question from a “small book of travels & adventures,” but that he didn’t recall the title or the author. He asked Chatto to write Dunbar and refer him to the chapter and page of Roualeyn Gordon Cumming’s book (unspecified).
February 15 Tuesday – In the evening the battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor, resulting in war between America and Spain. The exact cause of the explosion remains a mystery.