April 3 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam finished his Apr. 2 to Poultney and Edith E. Bigelow.

Apr. 3. Would you recommend Guernsey? Or the Isle of Wight? I sort of warmly incline to the former.

Mrs. Clemens’ idea is not an inn, and of course not a pension [boarding house]. Nothing remains, then, but a furnished dwelling. That is probably not to be had.

How’s Devonshire? …

P.S. Says she wants a hotel—not an incompetent little inn, and not a dwelling house [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Robert Lutz, informing him he would send the biographical sketch he had begun which his nephew had edited for addition to his Uniform edition, as soon as he had received it back for final review. He again (as on Feb. 27) asked Lutz to suppress the unauthorized bio sketch in the “Lebensgeschichte.”

“There has never been an ‘authorised’ Biographical Sketch of me, but this new one will have that character, & you will be doing me a favor for which I shall be very grateful if you will use it & wholly suppress the other”

[MTP].

Charles R. Hall, President of the New York Building-Loan Banking Co., N.Y.C. wrote to Sam, enclosing the card of one Adolphe M. Glaser, who purported to be a “representative of Mark Twain, Vienna, Austria.” Hall had been solicited by Glaser for subscription to the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain’s works—was this a publisher’s scheme to “boom the sale” of Sam’s works, “Exploited by the owners of the copyright, and from which you will not derive any pecuniary benefit”? If so, Hall did not care to subscribe [MTP]. Note: Sam replied to Frank Bliss on Apr. 15, enclosing Hall’s letter. See entry.