July 29 Friday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow, this year a correspondent for the London Times during the Spanish-American War. On May 23 in Tampa, Florida, Bigelow wrote an article exposing the unpreparedness of American troops for combat which ran in Harper’s Weekly. He was denounced as unpatriotic. An excerpt of Bigelow’s article:
THE CONDITION OF THE ARMY
Who Is Responsible ?
August – From this month through October, Sam wrote “The Great Dark,” unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. It first ran in Letters from the Earth, 1962, Bernard DeVoto, ed. [Budd Collected 2: 1004].
Sam inscribed a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Lowden Sabbath Morn (1898) “To Livy / on her next birthday. / SL Clemens / Kaltenleutgeben, August, ‘98” [Gribben 663]. Note: Sam had requested the “new Stevenson book” from Chatto on July 26.
August 2 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam inscribed a printed drawing of himself with printed signature to Dr. Edwin Pond Parker: “Dear Parker: / Motto to chew on: Saintliness is next to Selfishness* / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / *Being the offspring of it, you see” [MTP].
Sam also sent another printed postcard with signature and drawing to an unidentified person [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote from York Harbor, Maine to Sam.
August 3 Wednesday – On a warm day in Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
I must stop work a minute and congratulate you upon to-day’s telegraphic peace-prospects. I imagine you are feeling comfortable now.
Here the matter would be immensely discussed and written about—would have been, a week ago—but now it is cut down to a dozen lines, for now the whole reading-matter space in the papers is crowded with Bismarck’s life and death. It has been so for several days ….
August 4 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Aug. 4, ’98. Finished ‘My Platonic Sweetheart[’] a day or so ago” [NB 40 TS 27].
August 5 Friday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote a sappy poem to Charles J. Langdon, whom he addressed as “Dear Cholley” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Mrs. Kate S. Littlewood (Mrs. Walter Littlewood); (d.1927) in Liverpool [MTP].
Oh yes indeed, your young wards can freely have any book of mine they want—the whole set if they like.
I enclose an order.
August 7 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “Aug. 7 ’98. I think a few monarchs have died here & there during the past year, I do not now remember. It made a great silence. Bismarck has been dead five or six days, now, but the reverberations from that mighty fall still go quaking & thundering around the planet” [NB 40 TS 28].
August 10 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:
Aug.10. Last night dreamed of a whaling cruise in a drop of water. Not by microscope, but actually. This would mean a reduction of the participants to a minuteness which would make them nearly invisible to God & he wouldn’t be interested in them any longer.
Lying thinking about this, concluded to write a dispute between a microscope & a telescope—one can pull a moral out of that [NB 40 TS 29-30].
August 11 Thursday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Sam wrote to the edtor of the Forum asking if it was not too late he would like to add a sentence to his piece, “About Play-Acting” which he’d mailed on Aug. 3:
“And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough Civilization saving its Honor by condemning an innocent man to multiform death & hugging & whitewashing the guilty one” [MTP; Aug 3 to Rogers].
August 12 Friday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Aug 28 to Rogers.
August 16 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben Sam replied to the Aug. 2 letter of William Dean Howells.
August 17 Wednesday – The Clemens family was in Bad Ischl or Hallstatt, Austria.
August 18 Thursday – The Clemens family was in Bad Ischl or Hallstatt, Austria on this the second anniversary of Susy’s death.
Sam wrote an eleven-page elegy to Susy Clemens, “Broken Idols”
August 19 Friday – In Bad Ischl, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, thanking him for the news that George Barrow & Son had finally settled, the notice (not extant) of which arrived on Aug. 16 just as they were leaving on a “pleasure trip” to Bad Ischl. Sam was now fully out of debt.
August 20 Saturday – In Bad Ischl, Austria, Sam wrote to John Brisben Walker, owner of Cosmopolitan. Sam had received a check for $120 and a receipt to sign, but in the “confusion of packing” the family for a summer outing, it had been lost. They would return to Kaltenleutgeben in about ten days [MTP].
August 22 Monday – Sam’s notebook shows the family went to Hallstatt (Halstadt), Austria:
August 23 Tuesday – The Clemens party was in Hallstatt, Austria. Sam’s notebook:
Hallstadt, Aug. 23/98. Beautiful lake in a cup of precipices; surface littered with refuse & sewer-contributions; men (but not many—& not tourists) swim in it. Pre-historic remains are found here.
August 27 Saturday – The Clemens family left Bad Ischl, Austria and traveled the 174 miles to Vienna, where they arranged housing for the winter with the Krantz Hotel. They then traveled back in Kaltenleutgeben, arriving in the evening [Aug. 28 to Rogers].
The Pall Mall Gazette’s piece by Carlyle G. Smythe ran in the N.Y. Times as “Mark Twain’s Literary Taste,” p. BR567:
August 28 Sunday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam replied to Frank E. Bliss’ Aug. 16 (not extant) statement. Sam pointed out the $1,000 for the FE excerpts given to McClure’s wasn’t on the statement— it would be all right if Bliss sent that amount to Rogers. Sam didn’t have any idea what to put in the suggested introduction to his Uniform Edition, and had never seen an intro that had value.
August 29 Monday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam finished his Aug. 28 to H.H. Rogers.
P.S. Next Day. / Yours of the 19th has arrived [not extant], enclosing letter of Mr. Harper and opinion of Mr. Rives.
Good, I am glad a settlement is close at hand, though I wish Rives wouldn’t always keep on interfering with people’s arrangements.
August 30 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria Sam wrote to William Dean Howells.
“This morning I read to Mrs. Clemens your visit to the Spanish prisoners, & have just finished reading it to her again—& lord, how find it is & beautiful, & how gracious & moving. You have the gifts—of mind & heart” [MTHL 2: 679]. Note: Harper’s Weekly of Aug. 20 had published Howells’ “Our Spanish Prisoners at Portsmouth.”
September – Pall Mall Magazine issue for Sept. ran “The Real Mark Twain,” p. 28-36 by Carlyle G. Smythe, Sam’s “down under” tour manager and companion in London prior to Susy’s death [Gribben 464]. Review of Reviews (London) for this month summarized Smythe’s article and quotes passages on “His Literary Tastes” [Tenney 27].
September 2 Friday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, suggesting “My Platonic Sweetheart” as suitable “for a periodical whose specialty is the fireside, the home.” It was longer than Bok had wanted and Sam’s price was $1,000, but Sam was mailing it that day—if Bok didn’t want it would he please mail it to H.H. Rogers.
September 6 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook:
Am sending to Bok “My Platonic Sweetheart” (about 9,000 words—price $1000). Am writing him if he doesn’t (or does) want it, inform Mr. Rogers.
Am sending “Concerning the Jews” to Mr. Rogers. If Bok keeps the above send this one to Harper. But if Bok declines, send both to Harper, let him have his choice, then send the remaining one to Century [NB 40 TS 32].
September 9 Friday – Sam’s notebook:
“Sept. 9. Man hanged himself today, leaving wife & 2 chn & nothing else. He had lost 28 gulden gambling. Countess Wydenbruck took up a collection. Result, 180 gulden—just ten times what he lost
————
Man is fearfully & wonderfully made out of microbes” [NB 40 TS 32].