March 14 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder.
What is it about the “$100 clause” & my “screed on the subject,” & “that wonderful work” of mine? I can’t guess it out—nor Mrs. Clemens. And what is it the Evening Post is attacking? We don’t see the papers in this remote place.
March 15 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Livy had tea with Amelia S. Levetus, a British correspondent in Vienna.
Sam was not in at the time. His notebook tells what happened when he arrived and heard Livy tell of exciting new inventions by Jan Szczepanik (1872-1926), who had become well known as an inventor of the Fernseher, or “telectroscope,” a rudimentary television system: insert diagrams.
March 16 Wednesday – After writing Amelia S. Levetus, a meeting was arranged for this evening, and the young inventor, Jan Szczepanik, visited the Clemens’ suite at the Metropole. The invention Sam was most excited about was the Raster, a labor-saving machine for electrically copying graphic images directly into woven fabric. Sam was ever-enamored of labor-saving devices.
Sam’s notebook of Mar. 18 relates what he did prior to the evening meeting:
March 16 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking his help in collecting £100 for an article of 2,000 words sent to a Mr. Bussy some three weeks after Bussy had published it. Sam had an idea to ask the Society of Authors to try to collect it, but he had lost G. Herbert Thring’s address.
March 17 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam, instead of waiting to meet the banker Ludwig Kleinberg at 4 p.m., sent for him at breakfast. There he agreed to a two -month option at Kleinberg’s price of $1.5 million, payable in installments and extendable by request, for American rights to the Raster, invented by Jan Szczepanik (see Mar. 16 entry). Sam would receive a twelve percent commission if he sold the rights for that amount.
March 18 Friday – Clemens inscribed a cabinet-size photo of himself: “To Sigmund Schlesinger with cordial greetings. Mark Twain, Mar 18” [Sotheby’s June 19, 2003 Lot 7].
At 4 p.m. Sam again met with Jan Szczepanik’s banker, Ludwig Kleinberg: “Friday I went with Mr. Kleinberg & Mr. Wood to see the ‘rasters.’” [NB 40 TS 15].
More from Sam’s notebook:
March – Harper’s Monthly published Mark Twain’s “Stirring Times in Austria” in their Mar. 1898 issue. Dolmetsch writes of the reaction in Vienna to the article, which:
March – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow that he was sending a five-year supply of granules that Livy took for dysentery when watermelon wasn’t in season.
“I wouldn’t ask a physician any questions, for they know a great deal less about dysentery than a cow does…Discharge the physician and give them a trial” [MTP].
Sam wrote a maxim to an unidentified person: “Be good & you will be lonesome. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Viennna, March, 1899” [MTP].
March 19 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “Saturday, March 19. Susy’s birth-day. It was then that that dear life began which ended a year & seven months ago” [NB 40 TS 15].
The New York Times, p.BR185 reprinted an article from the London Academy.
Honor Be Unto Mark Twain.
From the London Academy.
March 2 Wednesday – Berta Tucholsky wrote from Vienna to Sam, congratulating him on his success and telling “how dearly I should like to translate your books into German” [MTP].
In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed a picture to Katy Leary: “To Katy Leary, with the affectionate good wishes of S.L. Clemens” [MTP].
March 2 Thursday – Sam inscribed his photograph to Countess Lutzow:
“It is best to do everything to-morrow, because it saves so much time to-day. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / To Madam la Comtesse Lutzow / With salutations & homage of / S.L. Clemens / March 2, 1899” [MTP].
March 20 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam added a PS to his Mar. 17 letter to H.H. Rogers
P.S. But really you should come yourself—for some good sense and good diplomacy are necessary, on account of the promised auxiliary invention. You might find it worth while to wait to include it in the present Option, and you are the very man to know how to make them do it.
March 21 Monday – By his letter of Mar. 20 to Rogers, Sam seemed anxious to go to the reopening session of the Austrian Parliament this afternoon. In his Mar. 23 to Rogers he confirmed that he went:
“I was present at the opening of Parliament, but it was peaceable & dull; so I have not been there since.”
March 22 Tuesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, this time about a play he was “sending by very slow express,” Bartel Turaser by Philipp Langmann. Sam had translated it for Rogers to “exploit in American through” his “sub-theatrical agent.” He had also contracted to translate a comedy titled In Purgatory, by Ernst Gettke and Alexander Engel. Again Sam pushed for Rogers to visit Vienna [MTHHR 333].
March 22 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Poultney Bigelow and his invitation to get together (not extant).
Of course I should like it ever so much—it goes without saying—but if I see England by the middle of September that is the earliest I can hope for.
March 23 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers
March 23 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Annette Hullah.
March 24 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, detailing the visit of Ludwig Kleinberg of the previous night. Sam closed with:
You & Mrs. Rogers need not hurry. If you reach here by the 1st of May it wil do. The country will be lovely, then.
March 24 Friday – The Clemens family awoke to a blanket of snow in Budapest, Hungary. The family headed out for some sightseeing in spite of the weather. First they attended the visitors’ gallery of the new Parliament building. When they entered the chamber “all eyes turned to the celebrities.” Livy and her daughters had caught cold so returned after lunch to the hotel (Katona calls their malady “a touch of the flu” p.111).
March 25 Friday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a short note to Frank Bliss suggesting he begin the Uniform Edition with IA, and then Harper” [MTP].
On Mar. 18 in his meeting with William M. Wood about the raster machine, Sam offered to make an appointment for the two of them for Mar. 25 at Jan Szcepanik’s laboratory [Dolmetsch 201]. Note: it is assumed they kept the appointment.
March 25 Saturday – Budapest, Hungary. Magyar Hirlap ran an article about Sam’s activities the day before, including Sam joking about bringing something to every place he ever visited: cholera to the Sandwich Islands, starvation to India, the jubilee of the Queen to England, and filibustering to Vienna; the paper added scarlet fever to Australia [Katona 112].
March 26 Sunday – In Budapest, Hungary Sam and his daughters went sightseeing, leaving Livy behind at the hotel with flu-like symptoms. There were many modern features of Budapest, a city of 800,000 with a quarter of those Jews, “even more assimilated and less discriminated against than the Jews of Vienna…” Budapest boasted the first electric streetcars in Europe and the first subway of any city, which would become a model for New York’s subway system.
March 27 Monday – In Budapest, Hungary, Sam sent an aphorism to an unidentified person:“It is not easy for us to bear prosperity. (Another man’s, I mean.) / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / March 27, 1899” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Bertha von Suttner to decline an invitation (not extant) of some sort. He was booked only for one engagement in April and after that he would take a holiday for the season [MTP].
March 28 Monday – Sam’s notebook covers this day and a midnight reading at a home for English Governesses:
Monday, March 28, ’98. A splendid spring day. Charley Langdon and Jervis have reached London, & will come here about mid-April. They will tell us about Katy Leary, who was cabled for, two or three weeks ago, left us, after nearly 18 years’ service in our family. Prof. Dr. Winternitz called & examined Livy & Clara, to see if the Kaltenleutgeben baths will suit the complexion of their ailments.
March 28 Tuesday – The Clemens family’s last full day in Budapest, Hungary. On one of their days in Budapest Ferenc Kossuth (1841-1914), leader of the Independence Party in the Hungarian Parliament, called at their hotel. Dolmetsch: “Clemens had heard Lajos Kossuth [Ferenc’s father, a Hungarian hero] lecture in St. Louis in the late 1850s on one of the barnstorming tours of the United States, and like most Americans, the Clemenses venerated this great ‘Champion of Liberty’” [59].