July 4, 1898 Monday

July 4 Monday – Hartford leading men A.C. Dunham (Austin Cornelius Dunham) and Dr. Edwin Pond Parker visited the Clemens family for three days this week. Which days is not clear, but Sam wrote to Whitmore on July 9 that the pair was there when news came of the July 3 defeat of the Spanish fleet under Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete at the Battle of Santiago. [July 9 to Whitmore]. Note: this is also supported by the following notebook entry.

June 30, 1898 Thursday

June 30 Thursday – In Kaltenleutgeben Sam sent his photo-postcard to Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

“Ho. T.B.!— / Why, it has been all of 15 years since I sent you a portrait—then I sent you 56, of different vintages. I am ashamed of the long neglect. Here’s the latest. (Don’t get scared, I haven’t any more)” [MTP].

June 28, 1898 Tuesday

June 28 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking how many new books had been copyrighted in England for the past year. He needed it for an article [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Brainard Warner, Jr., United States Consul in Leipsic (Leipzig).

June 21, 1898 Tuesday

June 21 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, who evidently had requested (not extant) original photos of Mark Twain for the Uniform Edition. Sam directed him to ask Franklin G. Whitmore to get any pictures in his Hartford house, or with Fred Hall or Annie Moffett Webster’s hands in Fredonia; if Bliss wrote to her she “would do the best she can for you” [MTP].

June 20, 1898 Monday

June 20 Monday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Robert Collier, Lord Monkswell (1845-1909). Sam wanted to confirm statistics he’d read in a magazine article on copyright, that there were about 4,000 books published in each country including America, England, France, and Germany. Did those books indeed represent 1,000 “professional authors” in each? He didn’t need to be exact but there were no books in the village and he was depending on what he’d read in Berlin eight years before [MTP].

June 19, 1898 Sunday

June 19 Sunday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to the Vienna correspondent for the London Daily News, Bettina Wirth.

I sent the play to my business friend in New York & said I would translate it if it was likely to make a success there. The response was not sufficiently encouraging—war-plays are all the go there, these days.

June 18, 1898 Saturday

June 18 Saturday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, advising him to put “In Memoriam—Olivia Susan Clemens” into the Uniform Edition, and noted it ran in Harper’s Monthly for Nov. 1897 [MTP].

Sam’s article, “The Spanish American War” ran in the Critic [Camfield bibliog.].

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