March 23 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Annette Hullah.

You think I am very slow about thanking you for sending me that delightful book, & you are perfectly right— (probably for the first time this year.) But you must remember that in spirit I have been thanking you all this time. Yes, & very heartily, too. You must let that fact modify the crime a little. It is a great book, & lights up India like Kipling’s masterpiece. Poor Kipling—I am so sorry for the bitter time he is having, but glad he has been spared to a world which he has made a hundred thousand times richer than it was when he entered it [MTP]. Note: Rudyard Kipling had suffered from inflammation of the lungs and the loss of a daughter. See Mar. 7 entry.

The Clemens family traveled 180 miles to Budapest, Hungary, where Sam was to give “some remarks” this evening and a reading on Mar. 25 [Mar. 22 to Bigelow; Dolmetsch 51].

Dolmetsch writes:

…what prompted the Hungarian journalists to invite Mark Twain and what moved him to accept, apparently without honorarium, one may only conjecture. Perhaps the attention he continued almost daily to receive in the Viennese press had as much as anything to do with the invitation, and his unflagging appetite for self-promotion plus curiosity about “the Paris of the Danube” were sufficient motives for his acceptance. …

The Clemens family entrained at Vienna’s Nordbahnhof early on a chilly Thursday morning, March 23, 1899. Their route took them eastward through what is now Czechoslovakia—Pressburg/Pozsony (Bratislava), Galanta, and Ėrsekújvár (Nové Zámky), Slovakian towns then under Hungarian rule—to some surpassingly beautiful scenery from the “Danube bend” (Duna-kanyar) opposite Visegrad and the Buda hills south to the western (Nyugati) station in Pest. They arrived at the Hotel Hungária in Pest at teatime. A note from a reporter for Magyar Hirlap, offering a 1,000-forint note “for the pleasure of a few minute’s interview with Mr. Clemens” awaited them. The interview, published the next day, had been interrupted and foreshortened, however, so Mark Twain could get to the journalists’ association banquet at eight o’clock [54-5].

Katona writes of an interview even before that of the Magyar Hirlap, by “an enterprising young reporter” on the train, who asked his questions “in the presence of his [Twain’s] wife and daughters.” The interview ran the following day (Mar. 24; see entry) in the daily Pesti Naplo, under the heading “With Mark Twain from Galanta to Budapest”[110]. The full text of the interview may be found in Katona’s earlier article in Hungarian Studies Review, 9, No. 2 (1982) p.73-81. Note: neither the Magyar Hirlap nor the Pesti Naplo interview are in Scharnhorst.

Katona agrees with Dolmetsch as to the motivation of the Hungarian journalists, and adds this, even given the “snobbish attitude of the Budapest intelligensia that considered Mark Twain vulgar”:

We should not rule out another, more serious motive either. The occasion itself reminded radical Hungarians of America, the country of freedom and democracy. Ever since the first Hungarian travelogue on the United States appeared in 1834, radicals and liberals upheld America as the model country of the free press and of freedom in general. After the tragic defeat of the 1848/49 Hungarian War of Independence, many Hungarians, among them Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the revolution, went to America. The presence of a great American writer at the Jubilee Celebration must have delighted all those who, even decades after the 1867 Compromise with Austria, harbored feeling of resentment against the Hapsburgs for crushing the revolution. As an American, Mark Twain was the perfect symbol. Since he was highly celebrated in Vienna, he was a safe choice [110].

Sam’s notebook: “March 23, ‘99—Budapest. Speech at Jubiliee of Emancipation of the Hungarian press-banquest” [NB 40 TS 55].

Katona writes of Sam’s arrival:

As soon as the picturesque sight of the Danube Curve caught his attention he demonstrated in unmistakable terms that he wished to be left alone [by the Pesti Naplo reporter interviewing him]. On the arrival, though, at Nyugati railroad station, where he was greeted by a cheering crowd, Mark Twain took leave of the young reporter with a few kind words [110].

Dolmetsch:

The banquet that evening was of a quite different sort from the Concordia “Festkneipe” honoring Mark Twain fifteen months earlier. This was a ceremonial occasion to observe formally and with due solemnity the anniversary of freedom of the press in Hungary. The American guest was not expected to give an address or be the main attraction but merely to make some appropriate remarks in response to the general speechifying. This he did with the utmost diplomacy, according to Anna Katona, who notes that in the Budapesti Hirlap report the next day, Mark Twain was quoted as making “a sharp distinction between liberty of the press, which criticizes vice, and licentiousness, which encourages it” [55].

Dolmetsch further points out that Sam kept another speech in his pocket, the one he sent the last lines to Tuohy of the N.Y. World , one called “German for the Hungarians,” which was later erroneously thought by Albert Bigelow Paine to have been given on Mar. 26. Dolmetsch writes the speech not given would have been “singularly inappropriate if not outrageously offensive,” as it dealt with “the sensitive subject of the Ausgleich, (an agreement ratified each ten years uniting Austria and Hungary in their foreign policy) treating it comically.”

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell:

It was a curious experience to-night, I didn’t make that speech, after all. When I got on my feet I got to talking with interest on a text dropped by the introducer, & I had a very good time; but when I got down to my ‘set’ speech it had wholly disappeared out of my memory…I think I will never embarrass myself with a set speech again. My memory is old & rickety & cannot stand the strain…I was glad I came. It was a great night, & I heard all the great men in the Government talk [MTP]. Note: catalogued as Mar. 22; speech given Mar. 23.