Vol 3 Section 0127
snappy, humorous, moving; & the story flows from the sources to the mouth without a break—& stays between the banks all the way, too. The characters are alive, & are distinctly discriminated. If I have seemed to offer you any advice in the literary trade, I take it back. If I have made myself clear, you will see that I have had great pleasure in this book.
You have left a large emptiness here; the tribe & I send our warm regards & wish you were back to fill it.
Sincerely yours [Sotheby’s catalog, sale of June 19, 2003, Lot 89].
Note: A Woman Intervenes, or, The Mistress of the Mind by Robert Barr (1896). The MTP has recently changed the catalog date of this froms 20 ? September to 16? September; Sam’s heading, “Weggis, next day, 1897,” puts it logically a day after his Sept. 18 thank-you note. Sam’s expression of a “large emptiness” that Barr had left bespeaks of a stay in Weggis; Barr’s visit prior to Sept 18 has not been dated.
Sometime before leaving Weggis, Sam had advised the American Embassy in Vienna that he wished to find a furnished house or flat in the city [Dolmetsch 26].
The Clemens party left Weggis, Switzerland and took an overnight train trip to Innsbruck, Austria by way of Lucerne and Zürich, some 150 miles [23].
September 20 Monday – The Clemens party arrived in Innsbruck and took rooms at the Hotel Tirolerhof, where they stayed two days [Dolmetsch 23].
September 21 Tuesday – The Clemens party spent the day resting in Innsbruck, Austria.
September 22 Wednesday – The Clemens party left Innsbruck and traveled about 100 miles by rail to Salzburg, Austria, where they would say for three days.
September 23 Thursday – The Clemens party spent the day in Salzburg, Austria.
September 24 Friday – The Clemens party spent the day in Salzburg, Austria. Sam’s notebook:
“From the din of unpleasant church-bells it would seem that this village of 27,600 people is made up mainly of churches. Money represents labor, sweat, weariness. And that is what these useless churches have cost these people & are still costing them to support the useless priests & monks” [Dolmetsch 23: NB 42 TS 38].
Dolmetsch writes,
Indeed, his impressions of the city on the Salzach and its imposing nine-hundred-year- old fortress castle were mostly negative, though he was amused by the frequency with which ubiquitous “Verboten” sings on the Getreidegasse, the Pferdschwemme, and Saltzor were ignored by local citizens, noting, “There are prohibitions at every turn, but nobody obeys them. It is a very free town” [23-24: NB 42 TS 37-8].
September 25 Saturday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam thanking for the $50 rec’d on Sept. 22. “Billy Claggett was here last week. He is thin and old and almost beyond recognition. His unsmiling sadness may be caused by the continued alienation from his wife and the loss of his fortune.—the latter a guess.” Orion added to the letter on Sept. 27 [MTP]. Note: William H. Claggett (1838-1901), old mining buddy of Sam’s; see Vol. I.
September 26 Sunday –The Clemens party spent the last of three days in Salzburg, Austria.
September 27 Monday – Salzburg, Austria: a gray and dreary day, rain threatened. At noon the Thomas Cook agent took the Clemens party from the hotel to the train station. At 12:40 the train left the station bound for Vienna, Austria, about 185 miles away. At 7 p.m. they arrived at the Kaiserin Elisabeth
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.