Vol 3 Section 0239

September 28 Wednesday – Gribben writes on Alfred von Berger’s Habsburg. Marchenspiel in drei

Acten (Vienna 1898):

Berger is mentioned in Notebook 42 while Mark Twain was in Vienna in December 1897 (TS p. 52). Berger’s verses are mentioned in September 1898 (NB 40 TS p.40) Mark Twain translated fifteen lines of verse from Habsburg into English for Joseph H. Twichell on 28 September 1898 so that Twichell could sample Berger’s “recent fairy-drama” (Yale). “The Memorable Assassination” (1898) closes with eight of these lines “to convey the spirit of the verses” [60].

September 29 Thursday

September 30 Friday

October – Ladies’ Home Journal ran “The Anecdotal Side of Mark Twain, p. 5-6.

Tenney: “Two large-size pages, with a number of photographs of MT: two of them by Alfred Ellis, London; one by Clara Clemens (of MT being wheeled on a hand-truck in a railway station, by Major Pond); one by Walter G. Chase (of MT with Clara and Olivia Clemens); and three by permission of of Major James B. Pond (two show MT’s cats Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Appolonaris, and Buffalo Bill, and one shows MT in bed, talking to reporters). Most of the anecdotes are rather ordinary and unattributed, but there is some interest in the retelling of an account by William Walter Phelps (who had been United States Minister to Germany) of an evening MT spent with Wilhelm II, whose acquaintance with American literature had been limited to James Fenimore Cooper: ‘Kaiser and humorist talked together the whole evening,’ concluded Mr. Phelps, ‘and the rest of the company received little attention from either of them’” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Second Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1978 p. 170].

“About Play-Acting” ran in the Oct. issue of Forum. It would be reprinted in the collections The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories and Essays (1900) and My Debut as a Literary Person, with Other Essays and Stories (1903) [Budd Collected 2: 1004].

The Critic, on p. 227 in Jeannette L. Gilder’s “The Lounger” column, published a photograph of Mark Twain taken at Onteora, New York , “taken by an Onteora amateur when the great humorist was spending a summer [1890] within reach of his camera.” Note: not in Tenney.

October 1 Saturday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, thinking he’d been indiscreet in writing J. Henry Harper on Aug. 30 (see entry).

When yours of the 25th August [not extant] told me terms had been arranged and Bliss started home saying he was happy, I at once did a foolish thing—jumped to the conclusion that nothing I could now say could kick up a new complication; so I wrote Mr. Harper that I was sorry it hadn’t turned out that he could handle all my books in the trade and Bliss handle them by subscription….I wish you would stay close enough by, so that you could kick me upon occasions of this kind [this sentence was circled].

Sam had received his old Harper’s Monthly Dec. 1866 article, “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat”:

To-day I mean to get to work on an article for Harper’s about the Shipwreck of the Hornet—he has sent me the magazine I wanted for a text.

Bliss seems so desperately in earnest that I think he fully means to accomplish something with his Uniform and his de luxe.

The Hornet article will be needed to fill out the new book.

I am pretty well along with a new story, but I am not expecting to get that into that volume. It won’t be long enough for a book by itself, perhaps, yet too long to crowd into that one.

You will be home by Oct. 15—the day we set up shop in Vienna again. Receive my blessing! [MTHHR 366].

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