Despite their not having a reservation, the Clemenses’ plans for sojourning in Vienna were not unheralded. Before leaving Weggis Clemens had advised the American embassy in Vienna of his wish to have a furnished flat or house in the city, and by September 30, Bailey Hurst, the American consul general, had located a capacious furnished house, the Villa Silling, in a section called the “Cottageviertel” in suburban Döbling. Clemens had had a sudden attack of gout in his right foot that laid him up for a week, so he sent Olivia and Clara out in a fiaker the next day to inspect the villa. Whether, as he wrote Rogers, the offer from the hotel's manager, eager for the publicity a resident celebrity like Mark Twain might bring, to reduce their rent on a large suite by 40 percent made staying there cheaper than keeping house or, as he told Hurst, his daughters preferred to remain in the city (or both), the family decided to settle in at the Metropole for the next nine months.
See Dolmetsch, Carl - Our Famous Guest (page 26).
May 20, 1898: “We go to Kaltenleutgeben to-day to see if we shall like it. If we find it pleasant I think the family will be content to spend the summer there instead of going to a more distant place.”
The family returns to Vienna October 14, 1898.
The family travels to Budapest from March 23 to March 29, 1899