January 12 Wednesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Sam wrote to Henry Loomis Nelson, editor at Harper’s Weekly (1894-1898) .

January 13 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Jan 13 ’98 Sent 3 fables to Century” [NB 42 TS 53].

At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Henry C. Robinson’s Dec. 29, 1897 letter.

January 14 Friday – Sam’s notebook:

Jan. 14, 1898. Began to write comedy “Is He Dead?” (Francois Millet.)

———

Make Plays—with a German for Principal character (Dutchy) an Irishman, a Scotchman, a Chinaman[,] a Japanese, a negro (George) Uncle John Quarles who was very like the Yankee farmer in Old Homestead.

Write an Old Homestead of the South” [NB 42, TS 53]. Note: Denman Thompson and George W. Ryder’s The Old Homestead (4-act play 1886) [Gribben 700].

January 15 Saturday – Charles De Kay (1848-1935), art and literary critic of the N.Y. Times for eighteen years, wrote a review of FE which was published this day in the Times, “Mark Twain’s Mixed Pickles,” p. BR 40:

Mark Twain’s new book will challenge comparisons with “Innocents Abroad,” because it is cast on similar lines, being a salmi of plain information spiced with wit and humor. With such works each reader must decide whether the mixture suits him or not. …

January 16 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to James Whitcomb Riley in Indianapolis, thanking him for a book sent in fulfillment of a “promise made …in Washington so many years ago…” He wrote he’d direct his Hartford publisher to send him a copy of his book (likely FE). After his signature he noted, “London weather in Vienna! / —fog to smell & the electric to work by at noon-day” [MTP].

January 19 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:

January 20 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

“Yours of the 5th is to hand. It is very good news: that when you have paid Barrow up, & the last 25% div. to the other creditors (except Grant & the Bank) we shall still have about $1,000 left in cash. This is exceedingly bully; the best music we have heard lately.” [Note: there is no extant HHR letter for Jan. 5, but there is one for Jan. 6—possibly Sam refers to the Jan. 6 letter].

January 21 Friday – Sam’s notebook:

Jan. 21. The other day I wrote Percy Mitchell (Paris) & asked him to try & get a copy of “Aurore” for me (containing Zola’s grand letter.) This is his answer:

“I hasten gladly to send you Zola’s letter. I had put it away among my archives under ‘Clean French literature.’ The compartment is empty now” [NB 40 TS 7-8]. Note: L’Aurore. Littéraire, artistique, social. (French periodical) [Gribben 32].

January 22 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to William Dean Howells’ Jan 9.

January 23 Sunday – Sam read a newspaper article in today’s Tagblatt, which inspired him to write the essay, “The New War-Scare.” [Sotheby’s sale catalog, The Maurice F. Neville Collection of Modern Literature, 13 April 2004, Lot NO7980] Note: source reads in part:

January 25 Tuesday – The New York Times, Feb. 5, p. BR94 ran “Vienna Letter,” by Johannes Horowitz, datelined Jan. 25.

January 26 Wednesday – William H. Payne of the Mt. Morris Bank wrote H.H. Rogers accepting $6,612.46 as a “correct and will be satisfactory to us” amount to settle all notes owed [MTHHR 320-1n1].

January 27 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam replied by postcard to Miss Clara A. Nichols (her query not extant) at the Chelsea Typewriting Office, Chelsea, London on some question with Chatto, likely about typing some future MS for Sam. “Yes, do it. I am sure Messrs. Chatto will consent, with pleasure. / It may be that I shall have some MS ready before the end of Feb” [MTP].

January 29 Saturday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to J. Henry Harper. Sam posed the question to himself, “The Books Which Have Most Influenced My Life?” and then proceeded to answer it by listing ten of his own works! Then he asked Harper to publish the supposedly “private letter” as “from Mark Twain to a friend”:

January 30 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam’s recent letter to T.H. about Emile Zola (1840-1902) ran in the New York Herald as “Zola and Dreyfus.” Sam had been moved by Zola’s publication this month of J’Accuse to the French newspaper, L’Aurore. Zola cut up the French authorities for framing Captain Alfred Dreyfus:

February – In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed an aphorism on his photo (taken by “the official court photographer,” Julius Löwy) to Friedrich Eckstein:“It is one’s human environment / that makes climate. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / With kindest salutations / from S.L. Clemens / Feb. 1898” [MTP; Dolmetsch 273]. Note: See Dolmetsch 270-3, including this portrait on p. 271. Eckstein met the Clemenses when he stayed with the Charles Dudley Warner’s “in the early 1880s”.

February 1 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote in German to Siegmund Schlesinger. Translation courtesy of Holger Kersten:

Dear Mr. Schlesinger:

Gut! Also werde ich Sie am 3hem Februar expect. Esfruit mich sehr dass Sie unseres heiliges Werkes schon so weit gebrasht habe. (Wiese is mein eigenes Grammatik—Komment nicht aus des Buches.)

Dear Mr. Schlesinger:

Good! So I will expect you on February 3rd. I am glad that you have advanced our holy work this far already.

February 2 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook: “Wednesday, Feb. 2. Our wedding anniversary—28 years married. The first sorrow came in the first year—the death of Livy’s father. Our Susy died August 18, 1896—the cloud is permanent, now” [NB 40 TS 8]. Note: Sam omitted the death of his son, Langdon, from this list.

February 3 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to the Louisville Courier-Journal, thanking them for publishing a “biographette” of his mother. He made two corrections to the article, that his mother lived to her 88th year, and that his “father’s name was John Marshall Clemens, named after the great Virginian” and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the man whose funeral cracked the liberty bell [MTP: Paine’s 1917 Mark Twain Letters, p. 657-60].

February 4 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Frank Marshall White (whose letter is not extant).

“It wouldn’t do to print the Comedy, because it would destroy the stage-right in England & could damage it in America.

“That would be rather sorrowful, after all the work I have put on it.”

February 5 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished on Feb. 6.

Yours of Jan. 21 [not extant] was just full of charm. It will be a nobby thing if you do get that letter out of the Mount Morris. I am afraid to think about it, & almost to write about it, I am so superstitious. But if you should land those fellows! (I’ll shut up & wait.).

February 6 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Feb. 5 letter to Rogers after receiving one from him

February 7 Monday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a formal letter of acceptance to H.H. Rogers for the Mt. Morris Bank’s Jan. 22 and Jan. 26 letter offers of settlement [MTHHR 320].

Alvora Miller wrote from Cheshire, Mass. praising Sam’s ability to make people laugh, and relating a story of finding a 20-year lost copy of IA, and of reading several of his shorter works as well. Sam wrote at the top of the letter “Brer: Read it—all through. / answered” [MTP].

February 8 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote “Private ” to J. Henry Harper, bemoaning the fact that he had let the book about Dreyfus drop after Chatto told him there was no interest in the case in England; Sam didn’t think of asking Harper’s London office, and now the entire world was excited:

February 9 Wednesday – H.H. Rogers wrote notice of receipt from Sam for $653.34 “which added to the $1,959.99 previously received makes the full amount of my claim against the late firm of C.L. Webster & Company at the time of its failure” [MTHHR 321].