Life in Exile: Day By Day

March 5 Monday

March 6 Saturday – Orion finished his Feb. 28 and Mar. 5 letter to Sam. “In thinking over the past is it best to say, If this event had not occurred a train of events would have ensued whose end would not be misplaced by some unforeseen intervening occurrence?” [MTP]. Note: Orion’s letters were often a mixture of family and local goings-on, rooting for Sam, and this sort of splash of philosophical wonderings.

March 6 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Eduard Pötzl also in Vienna

We were very sorry you did not come in, that evening. There were no strangers present—only friends. My daughter is going to the ball tomorrow night with some friends, & if Mrs. Clemens’s health is meantime quite restored I mean to be there myself a while [MTP]. Note: the “daughter” mentioned was likely Clara who attended many such events. Dolmetsch claims Eduard was Sam’s closest Viennese friend [37].

March 6 Tuesday – Jonas Henrick Kellgren Osteopath, billed £12.12.0 for Mar. 1 through Mar. 6 for Jean’s treatments [1900 Financial file MTP].

March 7 Sunday – Miss Mary L. Craig wrote from Punxsutawney Penn. to Sam. She wrote that she took care of Sam’s mother “during the last year of her life,” and wanted his permission for her sister to do a portrait of Jane from a photogiven to Mary [MTP]. Note: Craig had written on Jan. 5, 1891 asking permission to write a sketch of Jane; see entry.

March 7 Monday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

The copies of the letters from creditors arrived to-day—first in the list the Mount Morris release, and I was very glad to see that. Mr. Dodd clothed it in boiler-iron! All right, I shall be very glad to “let you raise questions” with the Mt. Morris when it comes to further payments. I believe you will find that there are some quite legitimate questions to raise.

March 7 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam cabled Rudyard Kipling: “I TENDER MY SINCEREST CONDOLENCES / MARK TWAIN” [MTP]. Note: on Mar. 6 at 6:30 a.m., the Kiplings lost a daughter, Josephine (1892-1899). Rudyard had been seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs since early Feb. See Carrington, p.225-6.

March 7 Wednesday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote to John Y. MacAlister . The four paragraphs deal with prospective buying and selling Plasmon at a profit, and mixing it with Bovril. Samuel Bergheim is mentioned [MTP]. Note: Bovril is a trade name for a salty meat extract developed in 1870. Samuel Bergheim (d.1904) is identified as the managing director of the Plasmon Co., London [ MTHHR 442n2]. On Jan.

March 8 Monday – The day Sam invited Dr. James Ross Clemens to tea. The doctor likely made the appointment, or at least visited before Mar. 25 when Sam mentioned seeing him [Mar. 5 and Mar. 25 to JR Clemens].

March 8 Tuesday – Sam’s essay “Dueling,” written this day, was not published in his lifetime but collected in Europe and Elsewhere (1923) [AMT-1: 299-302, 707:1898a].

The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that 5,000 additional copies of More Tramps Abroad, (FE) were printed (totaling 23,000 to date in London). The official English publication date was Nov. 25, 1897

March 8 Wednesday – Sam had agreed to give a reading and speech in German at a benefit for a charity hospital in the Festsaal of the Kaufmännische, where he had given his Concordia speech on Oct. 31, 1897. He shared the platform with Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius) .

March 8 Thursday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote and declined an invitation to a festival by the City Liberal Club Chairman and Committee, London. Sam repeated the reason given to others during this period that his work could not presently be interrupted [MTP: Christie’s East Catalog, 14 May 1997, Item 89].

March 9 Tuesday – The official publication date for How to Tell a Story and Other Essays [M. Johnson 78]. Note: the title piece, “How to Tell a Story” ran first in the Oct. 1895 issue of Youth’s Companion. See Apr. 9 as official date for two copies registered to the Library of Congress.

March 9 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Francis H. Skrine, whose letter is not extant. Evidently the Skrines had offered to rent a house reasonably to the Clemenses when they returned to London.

“If we were going to abide in London again you wouldn’t have to make that offer twice, but we shall merely pass through, on our way home next autumn. If I see anyone here who wants a house I will remember & speak” [MTP].

March 9 Friday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam replied to Chester Sanders Lord (1850-1933), a founder of Lotos Club and managing editor of the N.Y. Sun since 1880. Evidently Lord invited him upon his return to America a banquet (Lord’s not extant).

I accept that Lotos complimentary dinner with loud & long-continued applause.

May 1 Saturday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to Frank Fuller (likely still in N.Y.C.):

I was very glad to get your letter [not extant], & hear your cheery voice again; but I’m going to wait a while before I wrote you, because there’s fully 2 weeks’ writing to do on this book yet, possibly 3—& I am rushing.

But when I get the decks cleared, then I’ll write you a letter which I’ve had in my mind a year & more.

May 1-7 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Joe Twichell, enclosing a form letter invitation in German for a committee meeting from Bertha von Suttner.

May 1 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Noon. Plasmon 11 Cornhill. Go down with Mac & Bergheim. / Vote Mac a right to assume the doctor’s stake himself” [NB 43 TS 9].

May 10 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Percy Spalding.

The telegram came last evening & was very welcome. It decided us at once. We shall reach London May 31, by way of Bremen & the steamer “Lahn” to Southampton.

May 10 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Mrs. Hincks–dinner” [NB 43 TS 10]. Note: in the back of this NB Sam wrote Mrs. Hinck’s address: “Maitland House Church street Kensington” [TS 33]

At 30 Wellington Court in London, Sam wrote a short note to Poultney Bigelow.

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 11 Thursday – In his May 13 to William Dean Howells, Sam wrote of this evening: 

Day before yesterday [May 13] the Harper came [May issue with another installment of Their Silver Wedding Journey by Howells], & in the evening I hunted it up & was lying on the sofa, & kept interrupting the family’s repose with laughter & chuckles. Finally Mrs. Clemens (very late, I thought) asked “What is it?” 

“Portraits of you.”

“Where?”

May 11 Friday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, Sam wrote to Adela M. Goodrich-Freer. At the top of the letter he drew a musical staff and notes, suggesting the nature of the invitation he was replying to (not extant).

“Indeed we shall be very glad to drive out there some afternoon—Mrs. Clemens & I—the daughters stick to their tiresome studies & go nowhere. Would Wednesday May 16 or Friday May 18 be convenient for you?” [MTP]. Note: see also Jan. 11.

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 12 Friday - At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to William Dean Howells that he finished on May 13. In his first paragraph at 11 a.m. he apologized for Howells not being selected to write the Introduction for Sam’s Uniform Edition and castigated Frank Bliss for his “stupid uneconomical economy” in refusing to pay Howells’ price ($1,500). 

“Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag.”