Vol 3 Section 0293
God; & with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for she said nothing that was funny. …
And now comes this tiresome old yellow German woman & leans out of the 6th-floor window the other side of the street, & the pigeons swarm down in a cloud & discharge their excrement on her & she feeds them
is as proud as if is she were in a sentimental German book. I can never keep my temper when she is showing off like that. She reminds me of the loathsome pigeons of St. Mark in V. I wonder why she doesn’t fall out & break her neck.
Sam also railed against news that Helen M. Gould, daughter of Jay Gould, had won awards for her large donations to charity, as he put it, “from her investments of stolen money” [MTHL 2: 691-2]. Note: See notes in source, p. 693-4.
Elizabeth Bacon Custer wrote to Sam: “May I ask the privilege of introducing to you the son of some warm friends of mine in Springfield, Massachusetts. / Mr Brewer Corcoran.” The rest of the letter is simply her expressions of regard [MTP].
April 7 Friday
April 8 Saturday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam, enclosing a clipping on Christian Science. “…there can be
no mistake about it,—Christian Science is yielding a rich pecuniary harvest to somebody.” Joe asked if Sam had seen a book he was reading, Anglo-Saxon Superiority: to what is it due? by a Frenchman, Edmond Demolins. Joe ended with “Come, Mark, when are you going to return to us? I am continually asked the question. You surely can’t have any home but Hartford. Now that Spring weather is here I am affected with a new longing for you all. With love unbounded to Livy and the girls…” [MTP].
April 9 Sunday
April 10 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to ask Chatto & Windus to send the 2-shilling, 6-pence edition of Omar Khayam [MTP].
April 11 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria Sam signed a notice in German to Chatto
Windus. The notice is by another hand, perhaps that of an attorney, unnamed.
I have just been informed that R. Jabobsthal, publisher and bookseller, of Berlin, has issued an unauthorised translation of the story written by me: “Tom Sawyer, Detective”. This translation is a piracy, which infringes both the Berne Convention and the American-German Literary Treaty. As the firm of Rob. Lutz of Stuttgart has acquired the rights of the sole German book-edition for the Continent from the firm of Chatto & Windus, who are alone authorised by me to grant such rights, I empower the said Stuggart firm, to enforce its rights against the said pirating firm by way of legal proceedings, in concert with my publishers in London, Chatto & Windus, and in New York, Harper Brothers, in virtue of the existing literary treaties….[MTP].
April 12 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Apr. 2, 5, 6 letter to William Dean Howells.
April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members; & seems troubled about it & not quite able to understand it. But I have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the poll-booth, keeping game—& that that makes a large difference in these things [MTP].
Note: J.K. Bangs, editor of Literature, took a readership poll to choose the ten living writers for the American Academy. The results were: William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Daniel Willard Fiske, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Henry James, Frank Stockton, Bret Harte, S. Weir Mitchell, Charles Dudley Warner, and
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.