Mark Twain on the Danube

Acclaimed novelist, lecturer, humorist, journalist, and travel writer—Mark Twain (1835-1910) received a celebrity’s welcome when he arrived in Vienna in September 1897. Bookstores could not keep up with the demand for English and German editions of his works. Reporters flocked to his quarters at the Hotel Metropole. Newspapers ran front-page interviews, sketches, and biographical profiles. In October, Twain addressed Concordia, a distinguished press club, with the city’s cultural elite in attendance. He was a guest at elegant dinners and soirees. Sigmund Freud came to his lectures, and Emperor Franz Joseph issued him an invitation.

Twain would spend just under two years in Vienna, at the height of its glory days as an imperial capital and a wellspring for artistic and intellectual experimentation.

Many scholars have downplayed Twain’s late career, treating the period after 1890 as a time of decline, during which Twain, suffering from financial reversals, career misgivings, and personal bereavement, became increasingly isolated and embittered.[1] In 1891, Twain had moved with his family to Europe, where he could live more cheaply and earn money through lecture tours and travel writing. The family lived nomadically, spending time in Berlin, Paris, Florence, and London, before traveling to Vienna, where daughter Clara hoped to study music with the pianist Theodor Leschetizky. The journey also promised Twain a chance to renew his spirit.

Looking afresh at Twain’s Vienna experience, some scholars have challenged the orthodox view of his later career and writings.[2] Samuel Clemens had started out as a newspaper reporter, adopting the pen name “Mark Twain” as his byline when he covered Nevada politics in 1863-64 for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Writing in Vienna years later, Twain was still much attuned to social and political cross-currents, these scholars suggest. For all its famous splendor, Vienna was a city beset by anti-Semitism and the rivalries endemic to a multiethnic empire. The Dreyfus Affair, inaugurated in 1894, roiled the Viennese; for defending Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer accused by the French military of spying for the Germans, Twain earned the wrath of the anti-Semitic press.

Examining his Vienna writings, scholars[3] find a surprising affinity between an essay and a short story, both works of sharp political and social observation: “Stirring Times in Austria” (Harper’s Monthly, March 1898) and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (Harper’s Monthly, December 1899).

“Stirring Times” covers a series of explosive parliamentary debates taking place in late 1897 over a bill introduced by the conservative prime minister, Count Kasimir Badeni, to replace German with Czech as the official language within Czech-speaking portions of the empire. In exchange for introducing the bill, Badeni had gained Czech support to renew the Ausgleich treaty, which was needed to preserve the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Opposing Badeni’s measure were pan-German groups. The outcome of the sessions was disastrous: the forcible ejection by the police of Socialist MPs protesting a change in parliamentary rules, the emperor’s dismissal of Badeni, and the dissolution of parliament.

Twain’s recounting of these events is fiery. He views parliament as a cauldron of “jealousies, hostilities, and warring interests.” As for the sessions themselves, Twain describes a cacophony of name calling and the spectacle of legislators yelling, screaming, and banging on their desks with boards. These noise makers, Twain reminds us, are distinguished citizens from all walks of life, from princes to judges to shopkeepers. “They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, devoted, and they hate the Jews.” The essay ends on a note of sorrow, portending a bleak future: “And now we see what history will be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted battalion of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the floor of the House—a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute force. It was an odious spectacle—odious and awful.”

Twain’s notebooks indicate that he conceived “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” within days of the events described in “Stirring Times.”[4] The story portrays an elaborate revenge scheme concocted against citizens of a small town who pride themselves on their moral uprightness. Believing he has been wronged by the townspeople, a stranger tempts them with the prospect of unimagined wealth. Soon the good citizens are prepared to lie and cheat their way to the fortune. The story’s third chapter depicts a town meeting, held to determine the rightful recipient of the riches. In a rambunctious scene recalling “Stirring Times,” the gathering degenerates into rounds of shouting and chaos, exposing the townspeople’s dishonesty and puncturing their inflated views of themselves.

Far from the familiar figure of the genial humorist turned lonely old man, Twain in Vienna proves urbane and worldly, enjoying the pleasures available to him as a renowned author but alert to the political dangers and portents everywhere surrounding him. The experience in Vienna opened Twain’s mind and fueled his writing. Additional works inspired by his stay include “Concerning the Jews” (Harper’s Monthly, 1899), his reflections on anti-Semitism; The Mysterious Stranger, an unfinished novel with themes of dreams and magic, published posthumously; and “What Is Man?,” an essay in the form of a philosophical dialogue.

[1] Carl Dolmetsch, “Our Famous Guest”: Mark Twain in Vienna (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992), vii-viii, 12-15

[2] Ibid. See also Cynthia Ozick, Fame & Folly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), ch. 7, “Mark Twain’s Vienna”; Walter Grunzweig, “Comanches in the Austrian Parliament: Austria as a Metaphor for Mark Twain’s Disillusionment with Democracy,” Mark Twain Journal, Fall 1985, 3-9.

[3] Dolmetsch, 234; Ozick, 159; Grunzweig, 8.

[4] Grunzweig, 8.