October 14 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Livy wrote for her husband to Eduard Pötzl. Sam was “pressed for time,” so Livy wrote to say they were sorry Eduard had a cold. She added Sam would not be able to write anything for the Vienna newspapers as he had promised so much to American publishers. She accepted his invitation for her daughters to see the Carnival under his auspices [MTP]. Note: he replied the next day.
Sam’s notebook:
Servants’ fees. Oct. 14. ’97. Monthly
October 15 Friday – In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Eduard Pötzl that “his wife & daughters desire me to thank you cordially for the kind invitation extended to them, & to express their regret that they will not be able to take advantage of it” [MTP]. Note: this may relate to the Oct. 14 invitation for the girls to see a carnival.
October 17 Sunday – A letter purporting to be from Mark Twain about the Oct. 15 city council session to the editors of the Neue Freie Presse was published in that paper. The letter criticized the noise of the city’s traffic, the many street barricades where pipes were being laid, and observations about the Jewish question. Was this letter from Sam? It included an incident that did not happen, of Sam springing to his feet and shouting, “Long live Lueger!
October 18 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Dr. Rudolf Lindau called. He is now 5½ years in the German Embassy at Constantinople. On his way there. With the King of Servia [Serbia] & father apparently, but did not say” [NB 42 TS 44].
Charles A. Dana, longtime editor of the N.Y. Sun, died at Glen Cove, Long Island, N.Y. He was 78. The Nov. 1897 issue of McClure’s Magazine ran a complimentary bio on Dana.
October 19 Tuesday – In the afternoon, Dr. Max Burckhardt, general manager of the relatively new Burgtheater gave Sam a private tour of the house. Sam looked the place over from top to bottom. (See Oct. entry for news article relating this). The special effects capabilities of the theater were the most advanced in Europe.
October 21 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a rather tongue-in-cheek to his cousin James Ross Clemens.
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 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 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 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 27 Wednesday – In Vienna, Sam wrote to an unidentified person:
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.
A. Hoffman writes:
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.