Vol 3 Section 0245
“Oct. 20. Turn back to Sept. 21. Count Coudenhove called to-day. He says that the young man’s brain hangs away down his cheek; his horrible wounds have healed; he suffers little or no pain; smokes; is apparently going to get well, but he does not want to” [NB 40 TS 47-8].
October 21 Friday
October 22 Saturday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an inscription and an aphorism to Miss Annette Hullah: “To Miss Annette Hullah from her best friend—/ Oct. 22/98. S.L. Clemens / All of us contain Music and Truth, but the most of us can’t get it out” [MTP]. Note: Miss Hullah was an English pupil of Theodor Leschetizky; she wrote a study of her teacher in 1906, Theodor Leschetizky.
October 23 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote from N.Y. to Sam.
Last night we were all very low in our spirits, and we fished out a book of your sketches, and read some facts concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut, and laughed our sad hearts light again. John had the book here in the summer, and he says it saved his life, when he was so dreary in the house alone that he wanted to die. You are the greatest man of your sort that ever lived, and there is no use to say anything else. I would have liked to say so in a sort of biographical and critical essay about you for the new edition of your books which Bliss is going to get out, but he had not the courage to pay what I asked for it,—fifteen hundred dollars,—and he wanted something less in quantity than I was willing to do; so the thing is off. All the same, I think it, and perhaps the chance of saying it will offer somewhere again.
….
I got a terrible letter from you at York Harbor, and about a brother author, too; and after getting the worst page of it by heart, I tore that page into a thousand pieces, but I shall be able to reproduce it against you at the right moment. I never knew a man to let himself loose as you do. I am sorry to say that the family enjoyed the letter as much as anything you ever wrote; I really couldn’t say why [MTHL 2: 679-82]. Note: see Aug 16: the torn page likely blasted Charles Dudley Warner.
October 24 Monday
October 25 Tuesday
October 26 Wednesday
October 27 Thursday
October 28 Friday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an autographed aphorism on a notecard to an unidentified person: “Nothing is so ignorant / as a man’s left hand, / except a lady’s watch”
[MTP: Sotheby’s, NY catalog, Oct. 29, 1996].
The New York Times of Nov. 13, 1898, p. 19 ran “In The Austrian Capital” (unsigned) with a Vienna dateline of Oct. 28. The article included this passage on Mark Twain:
A MEDALLION OF MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain seems to find Vienna to his liking, which is no wonder. On the Continent there is neither State nor city that could afford the celebrated humorist more material or more incitement. He is said to be at work on a great book now, although I have not heard it from himself. All the Summer Mark Twain with Mrs. and the Misses Clemens spent at the hydropathic establishment at Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna. The society in which they mostly moved was the families of Count Wyderbuck [sic Wydenbruck], Baron Springer, and other aristocrats. Since the middle of October Mark Twain has been back in Vienna again, but he has not returned to his former apartment, but has taken a large suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the new Hotel Krantz, in the Neuen Market where he has already settled for the winter. He finds the Austrian capital suits him, and the Vienna society knows how to appreciate him.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.