January 23 Sunday – Sam read a newspaper article in today’s Tagblatt, which inspired him to write the essay, “The New War-Scare.” [Sotheby’s sale catalog, The Maurice F. Neville Collection of Modern Literature, 13 April 2004, Lot NO7980] Note: source reads in part:
January 25 Tuesday – The New York Times, Feb. 5, p. BR94 ran “Vienna Letter,” by Johannes Horowitz, datelined Jan. 25.
January 26 Wednesday – William H. Payne of the Mt. Morris Bank wrote H.H. Rogers accepting $6,612.46 as a “correct and will be satisfactory to us” amount to settle all notes owed [MTHHR 320-1n1].
January 27 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam replied by postcard to Miss Clara A. Nichols (her query not extant) at the Chelsea Typewriting Office, Chelsea, London on some question with Chatto, likely about typing some future MS for Sam. “Yes, do it. I am sure Messrs. Chatto will consent, with pleasure. / It may be that I shall have some MS ready before the end of Feb” [MTP].
January 29 Saturday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper. Sam posed the question to himself, “The Books Which Have Most Influenced My Life?” and then proceeded to answer it by listing ten of his own works! Then he asked Harper to publish the supposedly “private letter” as “from Mark Twain to a friend”:
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.