January 30 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam’s recent letter to T.H. about Emile Zola (1840-1902) ran in the New York Herald as “Zola and Dreyfus.” Sam had been moved by Zola’s publication this month of J’Accuse to the French newspaper, L’Aurore. Zola cut up the French authorities for framing Captain Alfred Dreyfus:
February – In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed an aphorism on his photo (taken by “the official court photographer,” Julius Löwy) to Friedrich Eckstein:“It is one’s human environment / that makes climate. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / With kindest salutations / from S.L. Clemens / Feb. 1898” [MTP; Dolmetsch 273]. Note: See Dolmetsch 270-3, including this portrait on p. 271. Eckstein met the Clemenses when he stayed with the Charles Dudley Warner’s “in the early 1880s”.
February 1 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote in German to Siegmund Schlesinger. Translation courtesy of Holger Kersten:
Dear Mr. Schlesinger:
Gut! Also werde ich Sie am 3hem Februar expect. Esfruit mich sehr dass Sie unseres heiliges Werkes schon so weit gebrasht habe. (Wiese is mein eigenes Grammatik—Komment nicht aus des Buches.)
Dear Mr. Schlesinger:
Good! So I will expect you on February 3rd. I am glad that you have advanced our holy work this far already.
February 2 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Wednesday, Feb. 2. Our wedding anniversary—28 years married. The first sorrow came in the first year—the death of Livy’s father. Our Susy died August 18, 1896—the cloud is permanent, now” [NB 40 TS 8]. Note: Sam omitted the death of his son, Langdon, from this list.
February 3 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to the Louisville Courier-Journal, thanking them for publishing a “biographette” of his mother. He made two corrections to the article, that his mother lived to her 88th year, and that his “father’s name was John Marshall Clemens, named after the great Virginian” and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the man whose funeral cracked the liberty bell [MTP: Paine’s 1917 Mark Twain Letters, p. 657-60].
February 4 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Frank Marshall White (whose letter is not extant).
“It wouldn’t do to print the Comedy, because it would destroy the stage-right in England & could damage it in America.
“That would be rather sorrowful, after all the work I have put on it.”
February 5 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished on Feb. 6.
Yours of Jan. 21 [not extant] was just full of charm. It will be a nobby thing if you do get that letter out of the Mount Morris. I am afraid to think about it, & almost to write about it, I am so superstitious. But if you should land those fellows! (I’ll shut up & wait.).
February 6 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Feb. 5 letter to Rogers after receiving one from him
February 7 Monday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a formal letter of acceptance to H.H. Rogers for the Mt. Morris Bank’s Jan. 22 and Jan. 26 letter offers of settlement [MTHHR 320].
Alvora Miller wrote from Cheshire, Mass. praising Sam’s ability to make people laugh, and relating a story of finding a 20-year lost copy of IA, and of reading several of his shorter works as well. Sam wrote at the top of the letter “Brer: Read it—all through. / answered” [MTP].
February 8 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote “Private ” to J. Henry Harper, bemoaning the fact that he had let the book about Dreyfus drop after Chatto told him there was no interest in the case in England; Sam didn’t think of asking Harper’s London office, and now the entire world was excited:
February 9 Wednesday – H.H. Rogers wrote notice of receipt from Sam for $653.34 “which added to the $1,959.99 previously received makes the full amount of my claim against the late firm of C.L. Webster & Company at the time of its failure” [MTHHR 321].
February 10 Thursday – Sam’s notebook:
“Dinner at the Embassy. Present, the German Ambassador; Marquis Hoyos; Nigra, Italian Minister; Paraty, Portuguese Minister; Löwenhaupt, Swedish Minister; Ghika, Roumanian Minister; Secretaries &c from the various Embassies—& ladies. 30 guests” [NB 40 TS 12]. Note: Charlemagne Tower was the American ambassador and host for this evening. Dolmetsch (p.154) gives a good bio sketch of Tower.
February 11 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, replying to a letter (not extant) of several weeks before.
Considering all the circumstances a 20,000 sale is certainly a little disappointing, for it is a most attractive-looking book; however, maybe the times will improve. They have been bad about long enough.
February 12 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied again to Arthur E. Gilbert, who evidently had queried him about the shape of the stem for the pipe he was naming after Mark Twain.
Yes, large bowl with inclined stem—don’t like straight stem. Send the one you are naming for me.
I enclose the address of a pipe-dealer—the only one my wife knows. She buys my pipes for me. This dealer tries to keep the Peterson, but is generally out of stock when I want one.
February 13 Sunday – J. Brander Dunbar wrote to Sam questioning his use of a quotation on p. 305 of More Tramps Abroad, (FE). The quotation was by Roualeyn Gordon Cumming (1820-1866), Scottish traveler and sportsman who had written many African hunting safari articles, including some to Harper’s. Dunbar (and Dunbar’s cousin) claimed to have the original quotation, and judged that Sam’s use of it “is at variance with it.” He asked what source Sam used for the quote [MTP].
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.
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 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 21 Monday – Vienna, Austria: Clemens wrote a “Memorandum” and “Note” about his play, Is He Dead? [Univ. of Calif. Press 2003].
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 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 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 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 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 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: