September 29 Wednesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Robert Barr, relating that upon their arrival in Vienna the town was “filled exactly up to the brim.” He liked Barr’s article on him that would run in the Century Jan. 1898. He thanked him again for the thesaurus, not recalling whether he had or not (he had), and enclosed a “heartily & gracefully-said tribute to Kipling,” asking Barr to send it to him. Sam was down with gout, but was glad he and Barr had had their walks in Weggis before the gout struck [MTP].

Sam also sent Chatto & Windus his address at the Hotel Metropole, not to be divulged. “All well & happy & I have the the gout bad in my right foot” [MTP].

Within a day or two of Sam’s arrival in Vienna, Ferdinand Gross, editor-in-chief of Fremden-Blatt and president of the Concordia Press Club invited Sam to address a meeting of the club. Only one foreigner had ever been invited to speak to the group, Henrik Ibsen in 1891 [Dolmetsch 41]. See Oct. 31 entry