February 26 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to (Major “Alligator Jack”) John B. Downing (1834-1914), Mississippi pilot for nearly three decades. Downing’s letter is not extant.
February 27 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.
The enclosed has just reached me from Mr. Rogers.
I don’t quite get the idea. Why should you want to take out repetitions of old copyrights? Do it if you want to, but it doesn’t seem necessary. …
If you are afraid I could be endangered by having property in my own name—but I couldn’t be, for I don’t owe money to anyone; I am out of debt.
February 28 Tuesday – Sam delivered the main after -dinner speech at a farewell banquet for Ambassador and Mrs. Charlemagne Tower at the Hotel Bristol. The dinner was sponsored by the American Colony in Vienna. Dolmetsch writes of Sam’s speech:
March – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow that he was sending a five-year supply of granules that Livy took for dysentery when watermelon wasn’t in season.
“I wouldn’t ask a physician any questions, for they know a great deal less about dysentery than a cow does…Discharge the physician and give them a trial” [MTP].
Sam wrote a maxim to an unidentified person: “Be good & you will be lonesome. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Viennna, March, 1899” [MTP].
March 1 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to John Kendrick Bangs that he added to on Mar. 11 and finished on Mar. 12. At this time Bangs was “Editor of the Departments of Humor” for Harper’s three publications.
March 2 Thursday – Sam inscribed his photograph to Countess Lutzow:
“It is best to do everything to-morrow, because it saves so much time to-day. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / To Madam la Comtesse Lutzow / With salutations & homage of / S.L. Clemens / March 2, 1899” [MTP].
March 3 Friday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to James M. Tuohy of the N.Y. World, “obliged for the good news” that Rudyard Kipling was going to get well [MTP].
March 5 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to James Ross Clemens, who evidently had sent his picture (not extant).
We were very glad to get the picture, & should have been still gladder if you had brought it yourself. You look neither strong nor hearty, & the trip could have done you good. Possibly we may have the pleasure of seeing you by the end of the summer, as we are hoping to end our long exile then, & shall expect to spend a moment or two in England on our way home.
March 7 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam cabled Rudyard Kipling: “I TENDER MY SINCEREST CONDOLENCES / MARK TWAIN” [MTP]. Note: on Mar. 6 at 6:30 a.m., the Kiplings lost a daughter, Josephine (1892-1899). Rudyard had been seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs since early Feb. See Carrington, p.225-6.
March 8 Wednesday – Sam had agreed to give a reading and speech in German at a benefit for a charity hospital in the Festsaal of the Kaufmännische, where he had given his Concordia speech on Oct. 31, 1897. He shared the platform with Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius) .
March 9 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Francis H. Skrine, whose letter is not extant. Evidently the Skrines had offered to rent a house reasonably to the Clemenses when they returned to London.
“If we were going to abide in London again you wouldn’t have to make that offer twice, but we shall merely pass through, on our way home next autumn. If I see anyone here who wants a house I will remember & speak” [MTP].
March 10 Friday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius (Mrs. Adolf von Wilbrandt).
“I am rested-up again, & am young again; & as my first pleasure I wish to thank you in the best & heartiest words for taking half my burden off my shoulders, & for so stirring the hearts of those people with the beauty & pathos of your reading; & for saying those gracious things of me.”
March 11 Saturday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Mar. 1 letter to John Kendrick Bangs that he finished on Mar. 12.
March 11. I got interrupted there; & have since prepared & delivered a lecture for a charity—it cost me a raft of time.
March 12 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added a P.S. to his Mar. 1 and Mar. 11 letter to John Kendrick Bangs:
Please suppress “The Great Republic’s Peanut Stand” till you hear from me again.
March 14 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder.
What is it about the “$100 clause” & my “screed on the subject,” & “that wonderful work” of mine? I can’t guess it out—nor Mrs. Clemens. And what is it the Evening Post is attacking? We don’t see the papers in this remote place.
March 16 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking his help in collecting £100 for an article of 2,000 words sent to a Mr. Bussy some three weeks after Bussy had published it. Sam had an idea to ask the Society of Authors to try to collect it, but he had lost G. Herbert Thring’s address.
March 22 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Poultney Bigelow and his invitation to get together (not extant).
Of course I should like it ever so much—it goes without saying—but if I see England by the middle of September that is the earliest I can hope for.
March 23 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Annette Hullah.
March 24 Friday – The Clemens family awoke to a blanket of snow in Budapest, Hungary. The family headed out for some sightseeing in spite of the weather. First they attended the visitors’ gallery of the new Parliament building. When they entered the chamber “all eyes turned to the celebrities.” Livy and her daughters had caught cold so returned after lunch to the hotel (Katona calls their malady “a touch of the flu” p.111).
March 25 Saturday – Budapest, Hungary. Magyar Hirlap ran an article about Sam’s activities the day before, including Sam joking about bringing something to every place he ever visited: cholera to the Sandwich Islands, starvation to India, the jubilee of the Queen to England, and filibustering to Vienna; the paper added scarlet fever to Australia [Katona 112].
March 26 Sunday – In Budapest, Hungary Sam and his daughters went sightseeing, leaving Livy behind at the hotel with flu-like symptoms. There were many modern features of Budapest, a city of 800,000 with a quarter of those Jews, “even more assimilated and less discriminated against than the Jews of Vienna…” Budapest boasted the first electric streetcars in Europe and the first subway of any city, which would become a model for New York’s subway system.
March 27 Monday – In Budapest, Hungary, Sam sent an aphorism to an unidentified person:“It is not easy for us to bear prosperity. (Another man’s, I mean.) / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / March 27, 1899” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Bertha von Suttner to decline an invitation (not extant) of some sort. He was booked only for one engagement in April and after that he would take a holiday for the season [MTP].
March 28 Tuesday – The Clemens family’s last full day in Budapest, Hungary. On one of their days in Budapest Ferenc Kossuth (1841-1914), leader of the Independence Party in the Hungarian Parliament, called at their hotel. Dolmetsch: “Clemens had heard Lajos Kossuth [Ferenc’s father, a Hungarian hero] lecture in St. Louis in the late 1850s on one of the barnstorming tours of the United States, and like most Americans, the Clemenses venerated this great ‘Champion of Liberty’” [59].
March 29 Wednesday – In the afternoon Sam and daughters went to a tea party with music and instruction for girls in Magyar dances. Clementina Katona Abrányi (1858 -1932), Hungarian feminist author, remembered Mark Twain at this gathering as “sensitive, reflective and introverted,” impressed by his “erudition” and progressive opinions on women’s issues. Dolmetsch: “Anna Katona, ‘the first Hungarian to discover the serious Mark Twain behind the laughter’” [59].
March 30 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria Sam signed sheets for the deluxe Uniform editions which had arrived prior to leaving for Budapest. He shipped them to Frank Bliss by “the best express-firm in Vienna” [Mar. 31 to Bliss].