Howells wrote: “I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare.”
The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
an embassy than the home of a mere literary man. Celebrities in
every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
home in Vienna. Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
central figure. Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
family. It was following one such event that the next letter was
written.
(Private)
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how
it is: can't get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work,
nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
them. I say “Private” up there because I've got an adventure to tell,
and you mustn't let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would
lay it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same
purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my
memory; and that must not happen with this.
The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of
it Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir
apparent of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful
spirit, and very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me
for writing them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the
hand--just the kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it
the prettiest tale there is.
Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies,
the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your
respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors'
Book kept in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and
everything is squared up and ship-shape.
So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by
the sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for
the book and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called
a servant in livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal
Highness was out but would soon be in. Of course Livy said “No--no--we
only want the book;” but he was firm, and said, “You are Americans?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are expected, please go up stairs.”
“But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--”
“Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded
me to tell you so--and you must wait.”
Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to
resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us
into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she
wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at
any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
anything. So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret. For it
was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the princess
would come, and catch us up there, and that those other Americans who
were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by the portier,
and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the papers, and
be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be perfectly
lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we were not
the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out, and
the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in
a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must
go back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her
distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We
went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
upon us.
Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically
ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that
I would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she
tried to make me promise--“Promise what?” I said--“to be quiet about
this? Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll
tell it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make
it perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all
three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like
to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his
futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging
in here and wanting to know.” But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a
time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful
situation, and if--
Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all
around and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an
hour--and by and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had
been sent for by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the
hotel. We were invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an
hour and a half.
Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were
the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones
come, and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody
suspecting us for impostors.
We send lots and lots of love.