Twain spent his time in England working on his book, Following the Equator.  Isaac Gewirtz, Mark Twain A Skeptic's Progress  pg 87-9, writes of this:

In many respects, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1897), a recreation of Twain’s 1895—96 lecture tour of Australia, Australasia, the South Pacific, South Africa, and India (July 1895-July 1896), may be read as an expository companion to A Connecticut Yankee. ‘The prideful folly of Hank Morgan’s attempt to compel a deeply traditional society to embrace the idea of progress, as embodied in technological and industrial innovation, and in radical reforms to age-old institutions of religion, justice, political power, and economics, is attested to in Following the Equator by accounts of the misery engendered by the ruin of cultures and societies in lands taken over by the Western powers. Though Twain's anger is directed mostly at the unscrupulous Western exploitation of native peoples and resources, and the brutality with which their program was pursued, he finds that even the good intentions of Western reformers brought misery to the peoples they were intended to help. Though the book has been referred to dismissively as a boring travelogue, it might better be described as an anti-imperialist Pilgrim’s Progress, or a political pilgrim’s visionary chronicle, shaped, in part, by techniques of postmodernist fiction, and featuring fictional characters and events that enhance the drama of crucial scenes and substantiate the conclusions of political jeremiads.  Despite Twain’s reluctance to undertake so arduous a journey and then to write a book about it, both of which projects he accepted only to pay off his enormous debts, the book is an engaging mixture of genres, combining intimate confession; cultural, historical, and political analysis; reflections on the nature of the mind; and the most astringently ironic anti-imperialist polemic. The unsteady rhythm of chronological disjunctions— Twain’s childhood reminiscences and memories of other journeys; the intercalation of diary-style entries with longer, essayistic descriptions of country and city, sprinkled with sometimes laconic, sometimes luxuriant descriptions of local characters, myths, and legends; the quotations from histories and newspapers—casts a dream-like atmosphere over the whole, as do the illustrations, especially those satirizing or condemning white colonial exploitation of native peoples in violent, nightmarish images. Twain worked closely with his illustrators, and their paintings vividly convey his outrage at these crimes. A team of artists and several photographers were hired, and even members of Twain's family and entourage were enlisted in the effort, providing snapshots with easily portable Kodak cameras. The Berg Collection has a complete set of the artwork for all of the non-photographic illustrations, painted in gouache.

The Clemens left their Tedworth Square house July 8, 1897 and took rooms at the Hans Crescent Hotel In London