Austria 1897-99 DBD

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 18 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.

The 3 books have come. Many Thanks.

October– In Vienna, Austria Sam inscribed a small card to an unidentified person: “Very Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Oct. ‘97” [MTP].

Sam also inscribed a copy of American Drolleries, a London book by Ward, Lock and Co. (1890), with one of his aphorisms: “By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Wien, Oct./97” [Liveauctioneers.com, Bloomsbury Auctions 25 Nov. 2007, Lot 56A]

October – Ladies’ Home Journal ran “The Anecdotal Side of Mark Twain, p. 5-6.

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 19 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Edmund Kloieda.

“I am sorry that I am not able to comply, but I shall lecture only once during the next twelvemonth, & for that lecture I have already engaged myself. When I was younger I had no distaste for lecturing, but now that I am old it is to me an almost unendurable distress & discomfort.”

October 2 Saturday– In Vienna, Austria, Clara Clemens wrote to Chatto & Windus asking them to forward all letters to the Hotel Metropole [MTP].

Sam also replied to Andrew E. Murphy, whose “letter caught us on the rail & got mislaid.” Murphy’s letter is not extant. Only the American Publishing Co. would know about literary rights and be able to “answer propositions” that Murphy had inquired about [MTP].

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 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 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 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 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 3 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:

Hotel Metropole, Vienna, Oct. 3, 1897. At the next round table to ours sits a princess, daughter of the Dowager Empress Friederich & granddaughter of Victoria; also the young daughter of the above and her intended, the young Prince Henry Reuss (called Henry III); whose mother & sister and Uncle (the Prince von Wernigerode) in Ilsenberg in the Harz mountains six years ago. With them a maid of honor & a couple of equerries. Good looking people. They all smoke [NB 42 TS 39].

October 3 Monday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to H.Q. Russ in Lynn, Mass. who had written (not extant) about ordering a bust of Sam done by the Russian sculptress, Theresa Fedorowna Ries.

October 31 Sunday – Sam spoke at the Concordia Press Club in Vienna. Dolmetsch on the event:

October 4 Monday – At 5 p.m. at the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Sam wrote again to Eduard Pötzl.

Thank you ever so much for the books & the Feuilleton, & for the offer to show me the city: I accept the whole, gratefully. I shall be very glad to have you along when I get arrested on the bridge, because you will be able to explain the case to the police (and divide the punishment.)

October 5 Tuesday– In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to Professor Heinrich Obersteiner (1847-1922), enclosing a letter from Dr. M. Allen Starr (d.1932) of New York concerning seventeen-year-old daughter Jean’s epileptic attacks. Sam disclosed she had her sixth attack a week ago (Sept. 28).

October 5 Wednesday – Henry M. Alden for Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam: