May 22 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to John Y. MacAlister, who had written an offer (not extant) for a place for the Clemenses to stay upon their arrival in London.

I thank you ever so much for your kind offer, but as we shall be in London a couple of months only, it will no doubt be handiest to stay in a hotel.

We intend to try the Prince of Wales hotel in De Vere Gardens Kensington & see how we like it.

We expect to leave here next Friday 26th & reach London by Calais & Dover about 6 days later.

And when I get there I will reform you [MTP].

The London Times, May 23, 1899 p. 4 datelined “Vienna, May 22” ran “Mark Twain’s Bequest.”

Vienna, May 22—Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) has been obliged to postpone his departure from Vienna until the 26th inst. in consequence of a flattering communication which has just been made to him through the United States Minister, Mr. Addison Harris. The Emperor Francis Joseph will receive the distinguished American author in audience on Thursday next. Mark Twain, whose works have long vied in popularity in the German-speaking countries with those of the best-known native contemporary writers, has, during his two years’ stay in the Kaiserstadt, become quite a familiar and welcome figure to the humor-loving Viennese and a great favorite in Austrian society. …

Mr. Clemens has kindly given me permission to telegraph to The Times some particulars of a pet scheme of his to which he has already devoted a great deal of his time and which will occupy a great part of the remainder of his life. In some respects it will be unparalleled in the history of literature. It is a bequest to posterity, in which none of those now living and comparatively few of their grandchildren even will have any part or share. This is a work which is only to be published 100 years after his death as a portrait gallery of contemporaries with whom he has come into personal contact [Scharnhorst 332-3]. Note: abridged in NY Journal and Adveriser, June 4, p. 42; NY Tribune, June 10, p. 8.

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), American author and socialist, died from tuberculosis at his childhood home in Chicopee, Mass. Sam admired Bellamy for his famous novel, Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888), which Sam began reading on the train, Nov. 5, 1889. Sam met Bellamy on Jan. 3, 1890 in Hartford. See entries Vol. II.