October 28 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Bettina Wirth, a local novelist and correspondent with the London Daily News. According to Dolmetsch (46), she may have helped Sam draft a speech in German he would give at Concordia Press Club on Oct. 31. Sam wrote:
You have written it superbly, & I am full of thankfulness.
October 31 Sunday – Sam spoke at the Concordia Press Club in Vienna. Dolmetsch on the event:
November – “In Memoriam” for Susy Clemens was first published in Harper’s Monthly for Nov. 1897. It was collected in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (Hartford, 1900) and The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) [Budd Collected 2: 1003].
Sam’s tribute to the late James Hammond Trumbull written in Weggis, Switzerland, ran in the Nov. issue of Century Magazine.
Sam began the unfinished “Chronicle of Young Satan” in Nov. 1897 [Camfield, bibliog.].
November 1 Monday – Sam’s tribute to the late James Hammond Trumbull written in Weggis, Switzerland, ran in the Hartford Courant, p.3.
November 1 Monday ca. – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Marshall White about an article that was “all ready for mail.” Sam detailed three items of changes [MTP]. Note: it’s not clear which article or piece is referred to here.
November 2 Tuesday –In Vienna Sam also wrote to Bettina Wirth.
Mrs. Clemens corrects me. She says “My Grandfather’s Old Ram” is in print. She says it is in a book of mine whose American title is “Roughing It”—but the English & Tauchnitz editions bear another name—a name which we are not acquainted with. She thinks that the “Negro Ghost Story” is also in one of my books, but she doesn’t know the name of that book, & neither do I. The truth is, I am not very well acquainted with my books.
November 3 Wednesday – Again Sam attended a session of the Austrian Reichsrath. During a break in the proceedings, Sam met Dr. Otto Lecher in the restaurant. Lecher had given the marathon speech on Oct. 28- 29, and it’s clear from Sam’s account of that night in “Stirring Times in Austria,” that he admired the man [Dolmetsch 74]. Note: Sam’s notebook for Nov. 3 has several pages of notes from 8:45 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. [NB 42 TS 44-47]
November 4 Thursday – Frank Bliss cabled Sam that there was a letter circulating supposedly from Sam that he had made $82,000 and paid all his debts. Bliss’ cable is not extant but referred to Sam’s following cable and letter replies.
At 10:22 a.m. at the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Bliss’s cable with one of his own: “LIE WROTE NO SUCH LETTER STILL DEEP IN DEBT / CLEMENS” [MTP].
He then wrote to Bliss that the rumor was not true and speculated what had caused it:
November 5 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens.
“I believe I have nothing to report but the love of the family & their tolerable health. Clara has begun her music lessons, Jean her several studies; Livy is busied in her several ways, & I in mine. The weather is good, & we are comfortable & satisfied. / Sam” [MTP].
With her piano lessons under Theodor Leschetizky under way, Sam and Theodor became friends.
November 6 Saturday – The N.Y. Times ran “Mark Twain Still in Debt,” p.4 which included the cable Sam had sent to Bliss on Nov. 4. (The Hartford Courant ran essentially the same article on p. 12)
November 7 Sunday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to William Blackwood.
Livy wrote the note and Sam signed it.
“I want to thank you most heartily for your note of the introduction [not extant] to Mme Laszowska: we have all enjoyed very much meeting her and hope that we may see a good deal of her during our sojourn in Vienna” [MTP].
November 8 Monday – Eleanor V. Hutton (Mrs. Laurence Hutton) wrote to Sam, enclosing a five-page typed discussion of Helen Keller from Dr. Louis Waldstein’s book The Sub-Conscious Self. They were touched by Sam’s poem in Harpers to Susy, “In Memoriam” [MTP].
Joe Twichell wrote to Sam having rec’d his of Oct. 23 , to his “extreme comfort and delectation.” He asked that the distance between them not lead to dropping their friendship.
November 9 Tuesday – This is the day that Sam had invited Francis H. Skrine to dinner at their Metropole hotel apartment [Nov. 3 to Skrine].
November 10 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Nov. 11
November 11 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria Sam finished his Nov. 10 to H.H. Rogers. After thinking about the plan to pay off $30,000 to the creditors for 24 hours, he was convinced it was “sound & rational,” and he wished he’d thought of it “twenty days ago” for it had been “raining & snowing & storming politics here” and he felt he should have been writing about it. He had just received a letter and evidently a photo of Rogers (not extant), and he complimented him on his youthful looks at 58.
November 13 Saturday – Two copies of FE were deposited with the US Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.29, Oxford ed. 1996]. The English version, More Tramps Abroad,, varied slightly and had an official publication date of Nov. 25, 1897.
November 15 Monday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified clergyman, who had evidently written with examples of what Sam called “mental telegraphy,”; and also questioned the forgotten use of a detail, a mole, in TS,D. The clergyman also mentioned James Payn (1830-1898; English novelist, from 1883 editor of the Cornhill Magazine), and offered cases where suggestion had been made by “unsentient things.” Sam replied:
November 17 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam and Livy wrote to H.H. Rogers, including a paragraph from Livy with formal request of the three $10,000 payments to be made to the Webster creditors as outlined in Sam’s Nov. 11.
November 18 Thursday – Sam attended a world premiere of the operetta Blumen Mary (Mary’s Flower Shop) at the Theater an der Wien. He was spotted by a Neue Freie Presse reviewer and his presence was reported the next day on p.6. The operetta was set in New York, with music by Charles Weinberger and book and lyrics by Leo Stein and Alexander Landesburg. Dolmetsch writes:
November 19 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. He had long been interested in the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana for passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1896 evidence surfaced that a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the real traitor. At this time Esterhazy was about to be tried.
November 20 Saturday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Percy Spalding of Chatto & Windus. He sent his poem, “In Memoriam” for Susy. Livy needed 50 copies of, together with a large photo of Susy; he was tardy in requesting these copies [MTP]. See Nov. 30? To C&W.
November 23 Tuesday – True W. Williams (Truman), illustrator of Sam’s Sketches, New and Old, TS and HF, died in Chicago at the age of 58 from an aortic aneurysm. See entries Vol. I.
November 24 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:
November 25 Thursday – A tempest was brewing at the Austrian Reichsrath. Dolmetsch provides the prelude to the sensational ouster of Nov. 26:
November 26 Friday – Sam’s notebook:
Nov. 26. To-day, 1.30, saw the great dramatic incident in the House when 60 policemen marched in & cleared the Presidium of 10 Social Democrats by violence. 4 were imprisoned on the premises. Wolf was arrested at 2 p.m. at 2.30 the Left seemed cowed, & made not much noise. So I left.
November 27 Saturday – Livy’s 52nd birthday.
The New York Times of Nov. 28, datelined Berlin, Nov. 27, ran a squib on p. 1, “Czech Hits Mark Twain,” headlined “The American Author Injured Going Out of the Reichsrath.” The report was false.