Vol 3 Section 0201

If I want more, “say so.” A young person would walk into that trap, imagining it a promise, whereas it has only the gilded outside aspect of one. He would hasten to “say so”—perhaps by cable. Then you would tell him to go to Heligoland, & the incident would be closed. But I am not a young person; I have had it, & cannot catch it again.

Sam then wrote about the “three or four times” he’d had the compliment of gaining the highest price ever paid from a publication and how it felt.

One was 31 years ago, when a now forgotten London magazine went down into its treasury & paid me $12.50 per mag. page for a 4-page article; the other was 22 years ago when the Atlantic paid me $18 per mag. page for a series of articles….

In those days the author hadn’t his to-day’s chance to scrape the fat off’n an editor, but in those days there wasn’t any fat on him—he hadn’t either circulation or advertisements [MTP].

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,

Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian arctic explorer and statesman, staying at the Metropole on a goodwill tour of Austria-Hungary with his wife and small daughter, formed a friendship with the Clemeses. Athough the papers represented it rather grandly as a diner (in Austria, a formal dinner party), the Clemenses hosted a farewell luncheon the day before the Nansens departed for Budapest [147].

May 10 Tuesday

May 11 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam inscribed a copy of TS to an unidentified person:

Part of my plan has been to / try to remind adults of what / they were themselves once. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain/ Vienna, May 11, 1898 [MTP: Alan C. Fox catalog, No.1, Item 146].

May 12 Thursday – Laurence Hutton’s book A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs (1898) likely arrived this day or the next, since Sam read some of it before retiring the following night [May 13 to Hutton].

May 13 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus [MTP].

The books came. Many thanks.

The MS too. I still approve of it. But the attitude of mind which moved Mrs. Clemens to want it suppressed, remains. From the beginning the family have been rabid opponents of the war & I’ve been just the other way. I am indifferent about the article now. The time to print it was before Manila.

Next week we go to the country for the summer—3/4 of an hour from Vienna, by train. Then I will send you the new address [MTP]. Note: the MS was the “Fable” sent to C&W on May 6, followed by Sam’s cable request on May 7 to return it. The decisive battle of Manila Bay took place on May 1.

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