Vol 3 Section 0155

had conducted a famous concert series in London from 1879, so its possible the Clemenses may have met him before their arrival in Vienna.

December 3 Friday

December 4 Saturday

December 5 Sunday – The full front page of the Oesterreichische Illustrirte Zeitung featured a cartoon with Mark Twain telling tales to the locals [Dolmetsch 139]. Tenney cites the article inside as “Mark Twains humoristische Schriften” [26].

December 6 Monday

December 7 Tuesday – Sam attended the Burgtheater for a premiere of Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die versunkene Glocke (The Sunken Bell). One or both of his daughters may have accompanied him. Livy was still not going out in public [Dolmetsch 113-14].

December 8 Wednesday – Sam and perhaps others of the family attended the opera Die Walkure, with Gustav Mahler in his first season as the Hofoperndirektor, after which he noted, “W.[agner’s] music is better than it sounds.”

Dolmetsch writes,

During his twenty months in Vienna, Samuel Clemens probably experienced more highbrow music willy-nilly than he had in the previous six decades of his life combined. Then, as now, the Court Opera … was one of the two leading musical institutions of the city, the other being the Vienna Philharmonic, which furnished the pit orchestra for the Opera. Leschy had a box at the k.k. Hofoper in which Clemens and his family were frequent guests for performances, and they were also often invited by other boxholders among their acquaintances, though Clara said her father rarely stayed through to the final curtain [97].

December 9 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Livy wrote to Chatto & Windus, who evidently had asked for clarification about the little book containing “Meisterschaft” she had requested on Dec. 2. Sam thought it might be in the book of sketches containing “The £1,000,000 Bank Note,” or perhaps in The Stolen White Elephant. , If it wasn’t in any English volume, not to bother further with it [MTP]. The sketch, originally written for the family’s entertainment, was in neither volume, but appeared in the 1892 Merry Tales. ,

Harold Goodwin for Current Literature Publishers Co. wrote to Katharine I. Harrison and Mark Twain, “greatly touched” by Sam’s efforts and considering the debt owed by C.L. Webster & Co. to them as settled [MTP].

Sam’s completed the essay, “Stirring Times in Austria” [Neider, Essays 235n4].

December 10 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Harold Godwin’s Dec. 9 that “a gratifying large per centage” of his creditors had written letters to him that he was “proud to keep.” Sam thanked him personally for his personal letter and “for the spirit which moved” Godwin to do what he did “in the matter of the indebtedness” [MTP]. Note: For Sam to have answered Godwin’s Dec. 9, he must have received a cable from Katharine Harrison regarding the matter. The cable is not extant.

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell, referencing a cable (not extant) and a Cleveland paper sent by James B. Pond. The paper contained exaggerations about being “hustled out” of the Reichsrath on Nov. 26. After

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.