October 20 Tuesday – In London Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus about material (unspecified) he’d sent, asking them to “look it over & see if it will do.” After his signature, some clue as to what he’d sent:
This Diary is full of underscorings (for use on the platform) PAY NO ATTENTION TO THEM [MTP].
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
October 20 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a letter of introduction for Herr Van Dyke to Laurence Hutton: “any kindness you & Mrs. Hutton may show him is a kindness shown to me.” Sam requested that Hutton introduce Van Dyke to the Players Club and also the Century magazine staff
[MTP]. Note: could this have been Henry Van Dyke, later professor of literature at Princeton?
October 20 Friday – In London, Sam wrote on his calling card to T. Douglas Murray: “When I made it appear to my wife, My dear Mr. Murray, that you manifested an interest (which I enlarged,) in my portrait, she was mightily pleased, & hopes you will not regard it as an intrusion if she begs you to let her offer you this one” [MTP: ebay.com item #2254961173]. Note: evidently this card accompanied a photo of Sam as a gift.
October 21 Wednesday – In London Sam wrote to Frank Bliss:
As I understand the idiotic law, the renewal of a copyright is not possible until the original one lacks 6 months of running out.
October 21 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a rather tongue-in-cheek to his cousin James Ross Clemens.
October 21 Saturday – A New York Times article datelined London, Oct. 21, which ran Oct. 22, p.7, “Gen. Harrison in London,” cites Mark Twain was among the invitees to a banquet on Oct. 25. Sam did not go, as he was declining all public appearances for the present. See Oct. 26 to Whitmore.
Academy (London), p.445 ran a brief quotation from Mark Twain on his Christian Science article in Cosmopolitan [Tenney 30].
October 22 Thursday – Gribben writes that Sam discovered the book The History of a Slave (not further identified) in the London Library [315; NB 39 TS 32]. Also found, Sir Basil Home Thomson’s The Diversions of a Prime Minister (1894) [702; NB 39 TS 12]. Sam also noted he’d withdrawn a copy of William Knighton’s The Private Life of an Eastern King, etc. from the London Library [Ibid.]. See also Jan.
October 22 Friday – Sam had a dispute with a cab and wrote in his notebook he would “settle it in court” [NB 42 TS 44].
October 22 Saturday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an inscription and an aphorism to Miss Annette Hullah: “To Miss Annette Hullah from her best friend—/ Oct. 22/98. S.L. Clemens / All of us contain Music and Truth, but the most of us can’t get it out” [MTP]. Note: Miss Hullah was an English pupil of Theodor Leschetizky; she wrote a study of her teacher in 1906, Theodor Leschetizky.
October 23 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “Today the barber is to begin. He is to come at sharp 9.30 a.m., every day for a month. Pay, 5 gulden for the month. Trinkgeld, 1 gulden for the month” [NB 42 TS 44].
At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote Chatto & Windus, asking them to send early copies of the new book (FE) to a list of persons:
Capt. Edgecumbe, 33 Tedworth Square
———
Others to
October 23 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote from N.Y. to Sam.
October 24 Saturday – In London Sam wrote in his notebook:
Wrote the first chapter of the book to-day — Around the World [MTB 1026; NB 39 TS 14]. Note: FE.
October 24 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote a postcard to Robert Lutz in Stuttgart, Germany, promising a portrait of himself [MTP: G.A. Baker & Co catalog, Mar. 30, 1939].
October 25 Sunday – In London, Livy wrote to Mary Mapes Dodge.
How well I remember the evening at Puddinhead Wilson your coming into our box. You sat there some time chatting with us before you recognized Susy. Then you leaned forward and said, “Why Susy is this you??” She gave a little pleased self-conscious laugh, and my mother’s heart was proudly touched because the tone of affection with which you said “Susy” [MTP].
October 25 Monday – In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Thomas S. Frisbie in Hartford, thanking him for the now famous composite photograph of Mark Twain being hauled in a cart by a horse and cow, and driven by a black man with a black boy rider. The photo was incorporated into 60 copies of FE after the trade edition issued, along with a facsimile of this letter. Sam’s 1895 pose onboard the Warrimoo was superimposed on the cart picture.
October 25 Wednesday – At 30 Wellington Court (Albert Gate) in London, Sam wrote to H. Walter Barnett, photographer, complimenting him on recent pictures taken, writing that they “have the distinctions of their predecessors,” and that Barnett didn’t seem to know how to make a bad one [MTPO].
October 26 Monday – At the Tedworth Square house in Chelsea, London, Sam began work on the manuscript of Following the Equator [Dec. 18 to Rogers]. Note: he may have started even earlier, as he added a note to Bliss on Oct. 21 that he was working on it.
He also wrote to Chatto & Windus, supposed they hadn’t received the Bourget-Max O’Rell article he’d sent by messenger. He had another piece for them:
October 26 Thursday – In London, England, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, who evidently had requested more money for taxes and other expenses.
Such money as is in Mr. Rogers’s hands draws interest & we don’t want to disturb it; so I am enclosing a request that Bliss let you have it. I do it without blushing, for I have been spending a hundred dollars’ worth of time to beguile the Harpers to make a concession or two in Bliss’s favor & by this morning’s mail they have done it & will so inform Mr. Rogers…
October 27 Tuesday – In London Sam sent a postcard to Chatto & Windus asking if they’d received the printed “Californian’s Tale” and the amended Bourget article which he’d mailed [MTP].
Sam also wrote to J. Henry Harper asking him to give only “Care Chatto & Windus” as his address.
We wish to remain strictly in hiding. To make sure of the Monthly, the Weekly & the Bazar, I would like to have them sent to this private address, if you will.
October 27 Wednesday – In Vienna, Sam wrote to an unidentified person:
October 27 Friday – Samuel S. McClure wrote from N.Y. to Sam that he’d cabled his brother in London to see if they couldn’t get some articles and stories from Mark Twain for their magazine—“That seems to be the only important magazine that does not get struck by your lightning; you are in Harper’s and the Century, and even in the Cosmopolitan, but you are not with us” [MTP]. Note: every significant editor seemed to notice the unauthorized piece that Bliss had given Cosmopolitan.
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 28 Friday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an autographed aphorism on a notecard to an unidentified person: “Nothing is so ignorant / as a man’s left hand, / except a lady’s watch”
[MTP: Sotheby’s, NY catalog, Oct. 29, 1996].
The New York Times of Nov. 13, 1898, p. 19 ran “In The Austrian Capital” (unsigned) with a Vienna dateline of Oct. 28. The article included this passage on Mark Twain:
A MEDALLION OF MARK TWAIN
October 28 Saturday – Sam drafted “My First Lie and How I Got Out of It,” which would run in the Sunday supplement of the N.Y. World of Dec. 10, 1899 [Oct. 30 to Alden; Budd, Collected 2: 1005]. Note: On Dec. 20, 1901 Frederick A. Duneka of the World wrote to Sam and mentioned that the subject for this “First Lie” piece “having been suggested by myself through Mr Tuohy in London in ’99.”
October 29 Thursday – In London Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus.
1. Please send me two proofs of Max O’Rell [Bourget] article. I wish to send one to Harper.
2. When am I to send next cheque for rent? To whose order shall it be drawn? And won’t it be best for me to send it through you? Also, what is the amount?