April 21 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to H.H. Rogers’ letter (not extant) of American marketplace facts for the Raster textile-designing machine.
You have furnished me facts which are intelligible—and worth a good deal more than foggy guesses gotten out of a census-report 18 years old.
April 20 Wednesday – Charles J. Langdon and son Jervis Langdon II left Vienna after a nine-day visit with the Clemens family [Apr. 21 to Rogers].
In the evening Ludwig Kleinberg and his partner (likely Dr. Alfred Winternitz) visited the hotel and told Sam about a machine that made “blankets and other cloth out of peat—peat-fibre mixed with cotton—or with wool if you want better goods” [Apr. 21 to Rogers].
April 19 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim, the letter not extant but referred to and quoted in the following notebook entry for this day:
Apl. 19, ’98. Concerning my portrait on post-cards I have to-day written to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim the following—a definite promise, yet on which binds me to nothing more than the withholding of authorization— a promise easy to keep:
April 16 Saturday – Literary Digest “ran a brief anonymous item noting the unanimous praise by the British press for MT’s paying off the last of the Webster and Company debts” [Tenney 28]
April 15 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Arthur E. Gilbert, the pipe dealer in London, suggesting wording for his testimonial on what Gilbert wanted to call the “Mark Twain pipe.” Sam offered “It is the sweetest & cleanest of all pipes,” and then confessed under “Private” that “For weeks it was a terrible tongue-biter,” but after breaking it in he’d be in “bad shape indeed” should he lose it.
April 12 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote two letters to George Barrow—however at the top is written: “(Disapproved by Mrs. C. & not sent).” Sam reacted to Barrow expecting interest on Sam’s debt to him, and referred him to H.H. Rogers [MTP]. For the full text of these unsent letters to Barrow, see MTHHR 341n1. Also see next to Rogers.
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers
April 11 Monday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Eupemia A. Suverkrop, an editor of American Machinist (New York; published continuously since 1877).
April 10 Sunday – Sam inscribed a copy of FE to James H. Scott: Mr. James H. Scott / with the
compliments & respects of / The Author. / Good friends, good books & a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Vienna, Apl. 10, 1898 [MTP].
April 8 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to an invitation (not extant) from Walter Besant. Sam would like to make the event (likely The Society of Authors, of which Besant was the founder), but he would have to write Mr. Thring that his “spring- movements” were “not prophecyable.” (Also active in the Society was G. Herbert Thring (1859-1941). It wasn’t likely he’d be in London in May or June, since Clara’s musical education would interfere.
April 7 Thursday – The front page of the Apr. 8 Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt displayed a drawing engulfing nearly the entire page of firemen rescuing a suicidal countess at the Hotel Metropole. Mark Twain is pictured gawking out one window [Dolmetsch 52].