Vol 3 Section 0204
May 19 Thursday – Vienna. This was the Clemens family’s planned move day to Kaltenleutgeben, some 45 minutes by train, but the move was delayed one day for an unknown reason [May 20 to Schlesinger].
May 20 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Siegmund Schlesinger.
“We go to Kaltenleutgeben to-day to see if we shall like it. If we find it pleasant I think the family will be content to spend the summer there instead of going to a more distant place.”
Sam gave their new address as the “Paulhof” Kaltenleutgeben [MTP]. Note: Countess Pauline Fürstin von Metternich found the Villa Paulhof (insert) for the Clemenses [Dolmetsch 134-5].
Kaltenleutgeben – From May 20 to Oct. 14 1898. Dolmetsch writes:
For the Clemens family the countess [Pauline Fürstin von Metternich] did two important favors. She introduced them to Dr. Wilhelm Winternitz, whose Kaltwasserkur (hydrotherapy) was then all the rage among the Austrian aristocracy as a cure for anything from lumbago to cancer, and found them a house, the Villa Paulhof, to rent near hers at Winternitz’s Kuranstalt in Kaltenleutgeben…. The summer there was one of
Twain’s most productive in years, and it was considerably enlivened by the rounds of entertaining in which the countess invited the Clemenses into a circle at the resort that also included luminaries like Count Richard Coudenhove, Countess Bardi, Princess Khevenhüller, and “Carmen Sylva,” Queen of Romania.
More important, she also provided her own daughter, Clementine, as a companion for Jean Clemens throughout the family’s stay in the imperial city as well as at the resort, thus alleviating constant fears and worries Jean’s parents had for her well-being [134-5].
May 21 Saturday – The London Spectator p.735 reviewed FE. Tenney: “It would have been easier to write a straightforward travel book than to write five hundred pages of uneven humor, and it would have given greater pleasure to the reader. ‘To be just, however, there are good chapters here and there, and a few pages of very fair fun; and although the book is not likely to add to the author’s reputation, it is readable and sometimes entertaining’” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Second Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1978 p. 170].
May 22 Sunday
May 23 Monday
May 24 Tuesday – At the Villa Paulhof in Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified man, thanking him for his kind offer to send him some of his books—he would “now & then take advantage.” Sam had forgotten the address of the artist the man had inquired about (not extant) but Ludwig Kleinberg owned the picture and had given Sam permission for it to be reduced and used on postcards. He sent Kleinberg’s address [MTP].
Sam also sent another letter to an unidentified man:
“Yes, the sentence referred to was written either 9 years ago or 20 years, I do not know which. The main body of the article was written in 1878; additions were made to it later—up to 1890, when it was published.”
Sam then added a PS that his “gospel” involved ideas that came into his mind in sharp detail were always “shot from some one else’s head,” and he doubted he had ever had a truly new idea or known any man who had one.
“I am not jesting,” he wrote [MTP]. Note: “Mental Telegraphy” was published in Harper’s Dec. 1891.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.