February 13 Monday – Chatto & Windus wrote to Sam “in reply to your letter of February 7th,” giving a list of his works which had not been given permission for translation into French: 1. More Tramps Abroad (FE); 2. JA; 3 TS,D; 4 TSA; 5 PW; 6 £ 1,000,000 Bank Note. Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 had already been translated into German by Robert Lutz of Stuttgart [MTP].
Carl W. Tichler (Pichler?) in Vienna wrote to Sam in German, a picture-postcard (a frowning man wearing a derby and an apron, street-sweeping) [MTP].
Greetings from Vienna. 13 Feb 1899
Dear Mr. Twain!
I hope that you won’t regard it as bad luck that it is on the 13th that you are, for the first time, looking at a [Viennese] street cleaner, whom I permit myself to present to you here [the reference is to the illustration on the postcard], because your letter to a certain “. . . . . . liker” deeply touched my heart, and by looking at this artistic card I thought to myself: I can be of help in this matter.
If only you had indicated in your essay on what day you slipped out of your boots; since that time, I have been searching the area every day, without success, and could not find your boots,that’s I why I’m sending you, as your admirer, a boot in writing [a written boot].**
Getting to know [me?] will not interest you much because I am [last line almost completely illegible] – man in every respect. / Most humbly yours, Carl W. Pichler [MTP]. Note: translation courtesy of Holger Kersten, who adds the following observations:
The name might actually be Carl W. Pichler, not Carl M. Tichler as the MTP catalog says. If you compare the characters closely you might arrive at the same conclusion.—I found an obscure reference on the web: “Illustriertes Preisverzeichnis von Carl W. Pichler & Co. : Christbaumpichler ; Wien VII., Mariahilferstraße No. 74 B ; Faschings-Preiskurant Nr. 68” [web address deleted here] There is, of course, no evidence that this would be the same person. **: This sentence makes no sense in German. I checked to see if “Stiefel” means something else than “boot” in Austrian German and it does indeed. “Stiefel” (or its variants “Schdüfe” and “Stüfe” means “unsinniges Gerede” (= nonsense) in standard German. The writer of the card might have intended a pun here: since he could not find the real “Stiefel” (boots) that Clemens lost somewhere, he now sends him a “Stiefel” in written form (= a written nonsense card).