Vol 3 Section 0191

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.

Must get Mrs. Krause to tell us the details of her marvelous ghost story again.

Midnight. At Miss Bailie’s Home for English Governesses. Two comedies & some songs & ballads. Was asked to speak, & did it. (And rung in the Mexican Plug.) “The Princess Hohenlohe wishes you to write on her fan.” “With pleasure—where is she?” “At your elbow.” I turned & took the fan & said “Your Highness’s place is in a fairy tale; & by & by I mean to write that tale.” Whereat she laughed a happy girlish laugh, & we moved through the crowd to get to a writing table—& to get to a stronger light, so that I could see her better. Beautiful little creature, with the dearest friendly ways, & sincerities, & simplicities, & sweetnesses—the ideal princess of the fairy tales. She is 16 or 17, I judge [NB 40 TS 18].

Note: Hohenlohe or Hohenloch is the name of a German princely family and their region; several ladies before and after held the title Princess Hohenlohe; this one has not been further identified. Dr. Wilhelm Winternitz (1835-1917) was the founder of the “Austrian cold water cure,” with a treatment facility which straddled a mountain brook. Not to be confused with Dr. Alfred Winternitz, who partnered with Ludwig Kleinberg on Szczepanik’s inventions. Katy Leary’s father, Fenton Leary, died on Mar. 29.

Joe Twichell wrote to Sam, telling of being introduced to “the great atheist” Robert G. Ingersoll in a smoking car while in Pennsylvania and:

       of having a lot of talk with him…in the course of which he said not a word that was out of order, though he knew that I was a minister. He was exceedingly entertaining and altogether amiable. I didn’t guard my speech in the slightest degree; in fact by things I said without thinking, I laid myself open to him several times, but however tempted he was he held his peace and was only charming [MTP]. Note: A section of the top front page is torn out.

March 29 Tuesday – The performances at Miss Virginia Bailie’s Home for English Governesses ran past midnight into the wee hours.

March 30 Wednesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, thanking him for the FE with special binding that had arrived for Princess Pauline Metternich. He also said that his niece, Annie Moffett “has those old pictures of me” and offered her address in Fredonia, N.Y. [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Dr. Rudolf Lindau:

At last the books which I ordered from America for her Royal Highness have arrived, & will be addressed to you at Meiningen & forwarded to-day. I do not think much of the Joan of Arc, but the binding of the other one suits my barbaric tastes very well.

Rudolph the incomparable paid us some visits here which were red-letter days for us; he is one of the head saints in this family’s calendar [MTP].

Note: Lindau had been with the foreign office in Berlin and a friend during the Clemens family’s stay there in 1891-2. See several entries MTDBD 2. Two Rudolfs or Rudolphs with Berlin ties to Sam were Rudolf Mosse, a Berlin real estate agent, and Professor Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (1821-1902) the notable anthropologist— “Rudolph the incomparable” is more likely the latter, at this time age 77.

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