November 8 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a note and enclosed a MS to James M. Tuohy of the N.Y. World, who had requested a story for the Christmas season. If Tuohy didn’t want the story sent (“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”) would he please forward it on to H.H. Rogers, and the same with “Wapping Alice” when he received it [MTP]. Note: see Nov. 2.
November 7 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam finished his Nov. 6 to H.H. Rogers with a playful paragraph:
November 6 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to Richard Watson Gilder that he finished Nov. 13. Sam directed him to reject the MS of “My Platonic Sweetheart” if he hadn’t already. Sam felt the article was a mistake, though he’d liked it when he wrote it [MTP].
Sam also began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Nov. 7.
November 5 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “Wrote Pond the Forum check hadn’t come” [NB 40 TS 49]. Note: “About Play Acting” ran in the Oct. 1898 issue of the Forum. “
November 2 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to James M. Tuohy of the New York World, who had requested a story for Christmas (Tuohy’s letter not extant):
For several months I have been at work a little, at considerable intervals, on two stories; & when your letter came both happened to be very close to the finish; I then added the necessary work and now they are done. …
October 28 Friday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an autographed aphorism on a notecard to an unidentified person: “Nothing is so ignorant / as a man’s left hand, / except a lady’s watch”
[MTP: Sotheby’s, NY catalog, Oct. 29, 1996].
The New York Times of Nov. 13, 1898, p. 19 ran “In The Austrian Capital” (unsigned) with a Vienna dateline of Oct. 28. The article included this passage on Mark Twain:
A MEDALLION OF MARK TWAIN
October 23 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote from N.Y. to Sam.
October 22 Saturday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an inscription and an aphorism to Miss Annette Hullah: “To Miss Annette Hullah from her best friend—/ Oct. 22/98. S.L. Clemens / All of us contain Music and Truth, but the most of us can’t get it out” [MTP]. Note: Miss Hullah was an English pupil of Theodor Leschetizky; she wrote a study of her teacher in 1906, Theodor Leschetizky.
October 20 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a letter of introduction for Herr Van Dyke to Laurence Hutton: “any kindness you & Mrs. Hutton may show him is a kindness shown to me.” Sam requested that Hutton introduce Van Dyke to the Players Club and also the Century magazine staff
[MTP]. Note: could this have been Henry Van Dyke, later professor of literature at Princeton?
October 19 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Edmund Kloieda.
“I am sorry that I am not able to comply, but I shall lecture only once during the next twelvemonth, & for that lecture I have already engaged myself. When I was younger I had no distaste for lecturing, but now that I am old it is to me an almost unendurable distress & discomfort.”