July – Noah Brooks’ article, “Early Days of the Overland,” ran in the Overland Monthly p. 3-11. Tenney: “Contains passing reference to MT, pp. 7-9, as one of the contributors to the Overland Monthly” [29]. Note: an excerpt from this article ran in the Apr. 1899 issue of the same publication [30].
June – Sam sent a part-printed subscription form to the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (“ New Free Press”) seeking a run of July 1 to Oct. 31, and asking to “Please send the bill by the postman.” Under the line for “character” (title), Sam wrote “Hasn’t any” [MTP: Bomsey Autographs catalogs, No. 46, Item 103].
A. Hoffman puts this month as the one Clara Clemens decided to give up the piano as a career and to choose what her late sister excelled in, singing. Though he errs on this date, he observes:
May – Sam’s option on the sale of Jan Szczepanik’s Raster machine in America was allowed to expire. Rogers had not been enthusiastic and now America was at war with Spain. Letters from Sam to Rogers for the period reveal Sam’s “increasingly crestfallen responses” to Rogers’ letters on the subject, none of which are extant [Dolmetsch 204]. Note: See photos of both of Szczepanik’s machines p. 202-3. Sam remained friends with the young inventor and also admired his capitalist backer, Ludwig Kleinberg.
April – Overland Monthly p.378-80 ran an anonymous review, Following the Equator in Zigzag: Tenney: “A review, using abundant quotation to illustrate an estimate of Following the Equator as ‘a happy and interesting jumble…a traveler’s miscellany’” [27]. Note: this and many other reviews will be found in Budd’s 1999 Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews.
March – Harper’s Monthly published Mark Twain’s “Stirring Times in Austria” in their Mar. 1898 issue. Dolmetsch writes of the reaction in Vienna to the article, which:
February – In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed an aphorism on his photo (taken by “the official court photographer,” Julius Löwy) to Friedrich Eckstein:“It is one’s human environment / that makes climate. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / With kindest salutations / from S.L. Clemens / Feb. 1898” [MTP; Dolmetsch 273]. Note: See Dolmetsch 270-3, including this portrait on p. 271. Eckstein met the Clemenses when he stayed with the Charles Dudley Warner’s “in the early 1880s”.
Leschy’s Salon – Stirring Times in Austria – Rampant Anti-Semitism & Zola – Debt Free! Honor Be Unto Mark Twain! – Sczepanik, Edison of Austria – Translating Plays Ossip Stuns Clara – War with Spain – Kaltenleutgeben - Summer Jaunt to Ischyl, Hallstatt & Heat – Elegy to Susy - Rogers Won’t Bite on Inventions, Makes Stock Gains – Clemenses Wealthy Again - A Torrent of Magazine Articles – Assassination! –“Burn the Rhymes”– Plans for Home
1896- 7 Winter – Several write-ups of an anecdote exist for James Abbott McNeil Whistler being taken in by Mark Twain over a painting. This by Wientraub places it during this winter and does not see it as their first meeting, as some do:
1895 – The MTP lists this year and unknown place for a line from Sam in the palmreader Cheiro’s Memoirs. See Aug. 8, 1894 for Sam’s meeting of Cheiro. This sentiment was likely written shortly after that meeting, possibly in Cheiro’s guest log book, not in 1895.
Sometime during the year Sam wrote to an unidentified person about why he didn’t prefer writing short stories:
1894 – Sometime during the year Sam inscribed Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar for 1894 to Bram Stoker: Pudd’nhead Wilson’s compts to Bram Stoker. / per / Mark Twain / ~ [MTP].
“Macfarlane” was written sometime during 1894-5, but not published during Sam’s lifetime. It was included in What is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, Baender, ed. (1973) [Budd, Collected 2: 1002].
Sam also wrote a short note to an unidentified person: