April 25 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Samuel E. Moffett about the biographical sketch of Mark Twain to be used for the Uniform Edition:
Your letter [not extant], with the picture of the cordial boy, has arrived, & I have five minutes in which to answer.
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 27 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to John Kendrick Bangs.
Dear Sir: Do you think you could persuade Mr. Howells to come out of that polling-booth & let me keep game a while? / Supplicatingly / Mark Twain [MTP: Bangs, Francis H. John Kendrick Bangs. (1941) p.205]. Note: see Apr. 2 to 13 to Howells.
April 28 Friday – Sam’s notebook:
“Miss Harrison—date, Apl. 28/99: To our credit, $ 51,995.29 cash. Invested in American Smelting Co., $5,000—now worth $6,300. 50 pfd & 35 com—selling at 90 & 52” [NB 40 TS 55].
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 29 Saturday – Wilfred R. Hollister and R. Harry Norman wrote to Sam of their intent to publish a book, Five Famous Missourians (published 1900 by Hudson-Kimberly Publishing, Kansas City, Mo.) Could he provide contacts who might report on “unpublished incidents” in Sam’s life? On May 13 Sam asked his nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, to answer their letter [MTP].
April 3 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an afterthought to his Apr. 2 to Richard Watson Gilder: “P.S. / This should be the heading: / From the London Times of 1904. / The MS was mailed / before I thought of / the change. / S L C” [MTP].
April 3 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam finished his Apr. 2 to Poultney and Edith E. Bigelow.
Apr. 3. Would you recommend Guernsey? Or the Isle of Wight? I sort of warmly incline to the former.
Mrs. Clemens’ idea is not an inn, and of course not a pension [boarding house]. Nothing remains, then, but a furnished dwelling. That is probably not to be had.
How’s Devonshire? …
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].
April 30 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus asking them to spend one pound, no more, to obtain some illustrated books including Jack and the Beanstalk which were for sale at a charity bazaar [MTP].
April 4 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to yet another invitation by James B. Pond for lectures. Sam said no, he didn’t like lecturing and only wanted to do it twice a year or so for fun—“…talking for money is work, & that takes the pleasure out of it.” Sam doubted any terms would entice him and didn’t “expect to see a platform again until the wolf commands.” He shared family plans to return to America early in October, and sent his love to “the Lotos boys” [MTP].
April 5 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Apr. 2 letter to William Dean Howells. He related reading the serial segment of Howells’ Their Silver Wedding Journey up to the point where Jean came and took the magazine away. Sam confessed that after he had sold his stock at “a fine profit early in January” it has “never ceased to advance, & is now worth $60,000 more than” he’d sold it for.
April 6 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Apr. 2 and 5 letter to William Dean Howells.
Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning—well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and baseness & hypocrisies & cruelties that make up Civilization, & cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.
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].
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 8 Saturday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam, enclosing a clipping on Christian Science. “…there can be no mistake about it,—Christian Science is yielding a rich pecuniary harvest to somebody.” Joe asked if Sam had seen a book he was reading, Anglo-Saxon Superiority: to what is it due? by a Frenchman, Edmond Demolins. Joe ended with “Come, Mark, when are you going to return to us? I am continually asked the question. You surely can’t have any home but Hartford.
August 10 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:
Aug.10. Last night dreamed of a whaling cruise in a drop of water. Not by microscope, but actually. This would mean a reduction of the participants to a minuteness which would make them nearly invisible to God & he wouldn’t be interested in them any longer.
Lying thinking about this, concluded to write a dispute between a microscope & a telescope—one can pull a moral out of that [NB 40 TS 29-30].
August 11 Thursday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Sam wrote to the edtor of the Forum asking if it was not too late he would like to add a sentence to his piece, “About Play-Acting” which he’d mailed on Aug. 3:
“And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough Civilization saving its Honor by condemning an innocent man to multiform death & hugging & whitewashing the guilty one” [MTP; Aug 3 to Rogers].
August 12 Friday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Aug 28 to Rogers.
August 16 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben Sam replied to the Aug. 2 letter of William Dean Howells.
August 17 Wednesday – The Clemens family was in Bad Ischl or Hallstatt, Austria.
August 18 Thursday – The Clemens family was in Bad Ischl or Hallstatt, Austria on this the second anniversary of Susy’s death.
Sam wrote an eleven-page elegy to Susy Clemens, “Broken Idols”
August – From this month through October, Sam wrote “The Great Dark,” unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. It first ran in Letters from the Earth, 1962, Bernard DeVoto, ed. [Budd Collected 2: 1004].
Sam inscribed a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Lowden Sabbath Morn (1898) “To Livy / on her next birthday. / SL Clemens / Kaltenleutgeben, August, ‘98” [Gribben 663]. Note: Sam had requested the “new Stevenson book” from Chatto on July 26.
August 19 Friday – In Bad Ischl, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, thanking him for the news that George Barrow & Son had finally settled, the notice (not extant) of which arrived on Aug. 16 just as they were leaving on a “pleasure trip” to Bad Ischl. Sam was now fully out of debt.
August 2 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam inscribed a printed drawing of himself with printed signature to Dr. Edwin Pond Parker: “Dear Parker: / Motto to chew on: Saintliness is next to Selfishness* / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / *Being the offspring of it, you see” [MTP].
Sam also sent another printed postcard with signature and drawing to an unidentified person [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote from York Harbor, Maine to Sam.