October 9 Friday – In their winter quarters at 7 Körnerstrasse, Berlin, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing a picture of the Wirt fountain pen he’d lost, and asking them to send him another, or to forward his note on to Webster & Co. if they couldn’t find one. Sam claimed he was “helpless” without it [MTP].
Soon the family would discover the neighborhood was less than desirable. Paine writes that people were shocked and questioned why they would want to stay in that part of the city. He also writes that Körnerstrasse “was not disreputable, but it certainly was not elegant.” He describes “rag wearhouses across the street and women who leaned out the windows to gossip” [MTB 929-30]. Clara Clemens added that these leaning women were “half-clad” [MFMT 95]. A Twain scholar who shall remain unnamed offered that it was a red-light district (though he did not reveal how he knew!) Paine writes “they stuck it out till the end of December” [MTB 931] and that Sam wrote a humorous newspaper letter on the subject of Körnerstrasse that “the family prevailed upon him not to print” [930]. In the letter Sam was renting the place and touring with the agent’s assistant:
He was greatly moved when they came to the street and said, softly and lovingly:
“Ah, Körner Street, Körner Street, why did I not think of you before! A place fit for the gods, dear sir. Quiet? — notice how still it is; and remember this is noonday — noonday. It is but one block long, you see, just a sweet, dear little nest hid away here in the heart of the great metropolis, its presence and its sacred quiet unsuspected by the restless crowds that swarm along the stately thoroughfares yonder at its two extremities. And — “
“This building is handsome, but I don’t think much of the others. They look pretty commonplace, compared with the rest of Berlin.”
“Dear! dear! have you noticed that? It is just an affectation of the nobility. What they want — “
“The nobility? Do they live in — “
“In this street? That is good! very good, indeed! I wish the Duke of Sassafras-Hagenstein could hear you say that. When the Duke first moved in here he — “
“Does he live in this street?”
“Him! Well, I should say so! Do you see the big, plain house over there with the placard in the third floor window? That’s his house.”
“The placard that says ‘Furnished rooms to let’? Does he keep boarders?”
“What an idea! Him! With a rent-roll of twelve hundred thousand marks a year? Oh, positively this is too good.”
“Well, what does he have that sign up for?”
The assistant took me by the buttonhole & said, with a merry light beaming in his eye: “Why, my dear sir, a person would know you are new to Berlin just by your innocent questions. Our aristocracy, our old, real, genuine aristocracy, are full of the quaintest eccentricities, eccentricities inherited for centuries, eccentricities which they are prouder of than they are of their titles, and that sign-board there is one of them. They all hang them out. And it’s regulated by an unwritten law. A baron is entitled to hang out two, a count five, a duke fifteen — “
“Then they are all dukes over on that side, I sup — “
“Every one of them. Now the old Duke of Backofenhofenschwartz not the present Duke, but the last but one, he — “
“Does he live over the sausage-shop in the cellar?”
“No, the one farther along, where the eighteenth yellow cat is chewing the door-mat — “
“But all the yellow cats are chewing the door-mats.”
“Yes, but I mean the eighteenth one. Count. No, never mind; there’s a lot more come. I’ll get you another mark. Let me see — -” [MTB 930-1].