Vienna 1897-99 Day By Day

May 7 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Bertha von Suttner. This has been misplaced at the MTP. Likely a decline to her early-May form letter invitation.

May 8 Sunday – Sam’s notebook (May 9 about this day):

Visitors yesterday, Countess Wydenbruck-Esterhazy, Austrian; Nansen & his wife, Norwegians; Freiherr de Laszowski, Pole; his niece, Hungarian; Madame XXX, Hollander; 5 Americans & 3 other nationalities (French, German, English.) Certainly there is plenty of variety in Vienna [NB 40 TS 20]. Note: Dolmetsch points out that Sam referred to Laszowski mistakenly as “Freiherr” rather than “Graf” (count) [147].

May 9 before – Sam’s notebook entry right before the May 9 entry:

“During 8 years, now, I have filled the post—with some credit, I trust—of self-appointed Ambassador at Large of the U.S. of America——without salary” [NB 40 TS 20].

May 9 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Today, the Nansens to luncheon” [NB 40 TS 20]. Dolmetsch writes,

May 9 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.

“Wrote you to expect a check from New York, & to have Bliss send the July check to me (care Chatto.)”  [MTP].

Percy Spalding of Chatto & Windus sent a telegram to Sam that he rec’d this evening [May 10 to Spalding].

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 10 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Nov. 11

November 10 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote again to James M. Tuohy of the N.Y. World, to correct the price “Wapping Alice,” sent earlier, to $2,000.

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.

November 11 Friday –At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam answered H.H. Rogers’ Nov. 10 cable with one of his own: “Sign thanks splendid Clemens” [NB 40 TS 50].

Sam then wrote to H.H. Rogers.

November 13 Saturday – Two copies of FE were deposited with the US Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.29, Oxford ed. 1996]. The English version, More Tramps Abroad,, varied slightly and had an official publication date of Nov. 25, 1897.

November 13 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam finished his Nov. 6 letter to Richard Watson Gilder. His P.S. focused on the fact that Gilder had already rejected “Platonic Sweetheart”—he was convinced it was another case of “Mental Telegraphy,” which was :

November 14 Monday – Translation of the article “Mark Twain als Gratulant” from Neue Freie Presse,

Vienna, 15 Nov 1898, p. 6, reveals the celebration the entire Clemens family attended this day:

November 15 Monday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified clergyman, who had evidently written with examples of what Sam called “mental telegraphy,”; and also questioned the forgotten use of a detail, a mole, in TS,D. The clergyman also mentioned James Payn (1830-1898; English novelist, from 1883 editor of the Cornhill Magazine), and offered cases where suggestion had been made by “unsentient things.” Sam replied:

November 15 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an aphorism postcard to an unidentified person: “Never put off till to-morrow what can be done day after to-morrow just as well. / Truly Yours/ Mark Twain / Nov. 15/98” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Louise Yates Waring (Mrs. George E. Waring, Jr.)

November 16 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to John Malone of the Players Club in N.Y.

November 17 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam and Livy wrote to H.H. Rogers, including a paragraph from Livy with formal request of the three $10,000 payments to be made to the Webster creditors as outlined in Sam’s Nov. 11.

November 17 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.

I put in 5 days on 50 pages of Introduction, & then put it in the fire. A thousand dollars’ worth of work for nothing. An author cannot successfully write about his own books nor a mother about her own children—nothing but a poorly-concealed parade of silly vanities results. No one can do the job creditably but an outsider. No one can do it best for me but Howells or Brander Matthews.

November 18 Thursday – Sam attended a world premiere of the operetta Blumen Mary (Mary’s Flower Shop) at the Theater an der Wien. He was spotted by a Neue Freie Presse reviewer and his presence was reported the next day on p.6. The operetta was set in New York, with music by Charles Weinberger and book and lyrics by Leo Stein and Alexander Landesburg. Dolmetsch writes:

November 18 Friday – Estimated to be this day or just before, Andrew Chatto answered Sam’s Nov. 13 “scheme” about a special, limited, expensive edition of “Omar’s Old Age,” which was to be referred to in correspondence as “ABC”:

As a scathing satire on the crazy literary taste of today I consider the ABC a work of great genius—But in all my experience I have never known a case in which the writer of works of like inspiration did not at some time in after life regret the printing of them.

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 – “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904” first ran in the November issue of Century. It was collected in How to Tell a Story, and Other Essays (1900) and The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) [Budd Collected 2: 1004].

November 19 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. He had long been interested in the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana for passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1896 evidence surfaced that a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the real traitor. At this time Esterhazy was about to be tried.

November 19 Saturday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote one sentence on a postcard to Chatto & Windus, perhaps relating to his “quatrains” sent on Nov. 13: “I agree to the unwisdom of it—in fact, in any form or at any figure” [MTP].

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 2 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to James M. Tuohy of the New York World, who had requested a story for Christmas (Tuohy’s letter not extant):

For several months I have been at work a little, at considerable intervals, on two stories; & when your letter came both happened to be very close to the finish; I then added the necessary work and now they are done. …