Day By Day Dates

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 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 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 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 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 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 22 Friday – The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that between Apr. 22, 1898 and June 6, 1906, six printings totaling 11,000 additional copies of HF were printed , totaling 43,500 [Welland 236].

April 25 Monday – The Salt Lake City Tribune ran “Dan De Quille and Mark Twain. Reminiscences by an Old Associate Editor of Virginia City, Nevada” (C.A.V. Putnam) in honor of Dan De Quille, who died on Mar. 16.

Spain declared war on the United States. The US noted that the two countries had in effect been at war since Apr. 20. Tensions ran high since the mysterious explosion of the Battleship Maine on Feb. 15.

April 26 Tuesday – A final batch of letters of thanks from paid creditors of the C.L. Webster & Co. were forwarded by Katharine I. Harrison to Sam [MTHHR 323 and n1]. See also Feb. 25 from Harrison.

April 29 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder who had replied (not extant) to Sam’s article, “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904.” “All right, measure it by the page & call it $140 per page.”

April 30 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to ask Chatto & Windus to send one each of his books P&P, JA, PW, TS, and HF for a “vast Fair (benevolent) to be held here May 17”

[MTP: Remember When Auctions, Inc. catalogs, Mar. 21-2, 1998, No. 43, Item 882].

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.

May 5 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.

He gave his future address the Villa Paulhof in Kaltenleutgeben; Sam often did this when about to move; they would not go to the health resort until May 20.

May 6 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing an article intended to “excite public curiosity about the Fable, & make people hunt around & get hold if it and circulate it everywhere.”

listed in American Book Prices- Current Vol. 21 p.753 (1915) . See also Dolmetsch, 187 -9, 337n9 for the claim that this piece was written in Feb. of 1898. The article was about France’s treatment of Monaco. It was for:

May 7 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam telegraphed Chatto & Windus:

RETURN THE THICK LETTER POSTED YESTERDAY = TWAIN [MTP]. Note: Livy wanted the May 6 article suppressed; see May 13.

May 8 Sunday – Sam’s notebook (May 9 about this day):

Visitors yesterday, Countess Wydenbruck-Esterhazy, Austrian; Nansen & his wife, Norwegians; Freiherr de Laszowski, Pole; his niece, Hungarian; Madame XXX, Hollander; 5 Americans & 3 other nationalities (French, German, English.) Certainly there is plenty of variety in Vienna [NB 40 TS 20]. Note: Dolmetsch points out that Sam referred to Laszowski mistakenly as “Freiherr” rather than “Graf” (count) [147].

May 9 before – Sam’s notebook entry right before the May 9 entry:

“During 8 years, now, I have filled the post—with some credit, I trust—of self-appointed Ambassador at Large of the U.S. of America——without salary” [NB 40 TS 20].

May 9 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Today, the Nansens to luncheon” [NB 40 TS 20]. Dolmetsch writes,

May 11 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed a copy of TS to an unidentified person:

Part of my plan has been to / try to remind adults of what / they were themselves once. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain/ Vienna, May 11, 1898 [MTP: Alan C. Fox catalog, No.1, Item 146].

May 12 Thursday – Laurence Hutton’s book A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs (1898) likely arrived this day or the next, since Sam read some of it before retiring the following night [May 13 to Hutton].

May 13 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus [MTP].

The books came. Many thanks.

The MS too. I still approve of it. But the attitude of mind which moved Mrs. Clemens to want it suppressed, remains. From the beginning the family have been rabid opponents of the war & I’ve been just the other way. I am indifferent about the article now. The time to print it was before Manila.

May 14 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a long letter to Lawrence B. Evans, who had written (not extant) explaining a review. Sam thought Evans was defending England against him, though he couldn’t imagine why, giving several reasons he did not dislike the country [MTP: Varleriani]. Note: full text not available. Evans had been a professor in Berlin during the family’s 1893 stay there. He was later chairman of the history dept. at Tufts University.

May 16 Monday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Mollie Clemens.

The “boy-picture holding the printers’ stick”—I remember it well. It was a daguerrotype. I destroyed it in Pamela’s house in St Louis in the spring of 1861 [Note: Sam did not destroy all copies of the picture, which the MTP puts a Nov. 29, 1850 date on and the photographer as G.H. Jones]

May 17 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote two notes to Chatto & Windus. The first was to send their new address in Kaltenleutgeben; the second was to ask them to “send this shilling book,” which implies an enclosure. Sam thought they would leave on May 19 [MTP]. Note: they left on May 20.

May 18 Wednesday – Carl Kaiser-Herbst (1858 -1940), Viennese artist, wrote from Vienna to Sam: “Many thanks for your book, which I shall value highly. But you have sent me a finished work in return [for] an unfinished sketch—and I remain your debtor!” [MTP]. Note: the subject of the unfinished sketch was not determined.

May 19 Thursday – Vienna. This was the Clemens family’s planned move day to Kaltenleutgeben, some 45 minutes by train, but the move was delayed one day for an unknown reason [May 20 to Schlesinger].