January 22 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to William Dean Howells’ Jan 9.
Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it “Hartford, 1871.” There was no Susy then—there is no Susy now. And how much lies between—one long lovely stretch of scented fields, & meadows, & shady woodlands; & suddenly Sahara! You speak of the glorious days of that old time–& they were. It is my quarrel—that traps like that are set. Susy & Winnie given us, in miserable sport, & then taken away.
Sam then wrote of a story he’d mentioned to Howells the last time they were together, probably in the spring of 1895 before Sam’s world tour. This was a tale with a “culminating disaster” that he still intended to write. He told of burying himself in work—“Long hours—8 & 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days, Sundays included.” A lot of what he wrote didn’t please him, but lately he was doing dramatic work (including “Is He Dead?” a comedy he wished Rogers to burn—he didn’t.)
If you were here I think we could cry down each other’s necks, as in your dream. For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our passengers gone & the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
Of course a good deal of this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land—on the Webster & Co. debts, I mean. (Private.) We’ve lived close to the bone & saved every cent we could, & there’s no undisputed claim, now, that we can’t cash….There are only two claims which I dispute & which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are small. Both together they amount to only $12,500 [MTHL 2: 669-71]. Note: this last amount was $9,000 disputed to the Mt. Morris Bank, and the balance to the Grant family.
William H. Payne of the Mt. Morris Bank wrote H.H. Rogers offering to settle their claim on unpaid notes for $6,750. Rogers would suggest a small adjustment, bringing the total owing to $6,612.46, which Payne accepted by letter on Jan. 26 [MTHHR 320-1n1].
Literary Digest ran “Mark Twain as a Globe-Trotter,” a review of FE, p.115-16. Tenney: “consists largely of excerpts showing MT’s observation and humor, but little on his social commentary” [28].
Dr. Alfred Peter Hillier’s Raid and Reform was excerpted in Academy p.96. Tenney: “An extract from his diary, describing MT’s visit to the prison camp in Pretoria during his world lecture tour. MT told the prisoners that prison life provides valuable leisure, and promised to ask the president to extend their sentences” [29] Note: Hillier (b. 1858).
A similar notice appeared in the London Academy, Feb. 19, p.207.