March 24 Thursday – Sam and Livy left Menton for Pisa, Italy with Joseph Verey, their courier.
March 25 Friday – Sam and Livy were in Pisa, Italy. Sam’s notebook lists the Eden Hotel:
March 26 Saturday – Sam and Livy were in transit from Pisa to Rome, Italy.
March 27 Sunday – In Rome, at the Hotel Molaro, for "a charming five weeks."
Susy wrote to Louise Brownell, on April 21: The ancient parts of the city are just as tremendous as I had imagined them but the modern city is dissapointing. The Italians are not one bit as I expected. There is no brilliancy and intellectual vivacity in their faces, but only beastliness and dirt. It is too bad with their wonderful dark coloring it seems as if they might be so much more. …
On April 29, she again wrote to Louis Brownell, Aunt Sue and I got back from Naples last night. We had a great deal of rain and accomplished only Pompei and Sorrento having to give up Capri and Amalfi. The blue of the Mediterraneon was much more than we had dreamed; but the squalor the sordidness of the Italian life along it’s shores is so revolting, that it left half the impression. I never saw such bad disgusting faces as the Italians have or such a perfectly uniform degradation as in all their ways of doing and living. It’s truly horrible. I don’t see how Italy can ever have any very great charm while the people are what they are. I keep contrasting them with the Germans, the clean, honest, kindly, dignified, self respecting Germans!
April 29 Friday – The Clemens party left Rome and arrived in Florence, Italy for a two-week stay at the Hotel Grande Bretagne.
“No matches /…goblets…/ extra blankets; / Stench of frying fat, & thick kitchen smoke coming up through floor & filling the room; / Bells seldom answered; / Mrs. Crane’s bed not changed after waiting 1 ½ hours. / Carpet-beating in the court & wagon-racket & barking dogs in early morning. / Everything on the cheapest & shabbiest scale, except the bills. / People always yelling downt the lift-well trying to attract attention. / Long vistas of crooked halls with elevations & depressions in them. / Everywhere the dirt of antiquity; everywhere gigantic fleas that threaten your life. / And the frescoes — oh, my God! Every detail of the house is exquisitely cheap & shabby. / In the parlors they peddle cheap copies of the old masters. / This hotel has nothing to recommend it but its reputation. No — its cook [NB 31 TS 39-40].
“Both Mark Twain and Olivia were enchanted by the ambience of Florence and the beauty of the Arno Valley and the surrounding Tuscan hills. So much so that before they left they made arrangements to rent, for the following winter, the Villa Viviani near Settignano just outside the city.
[entered on May 9]: The Villa Ross where we took tea yesterday [May 8] is superb — house, grounds & all — & has a noble view out over distant Florence & the hill-ranges. In this house Boccacio wrote the Decameron. Close by is the house in which Michelangelo was born. Sir John Hawksworth battered part of the house down with his cannon in one of those old forgotten wars.
May 14 Saturday - Arrived at Venice Saturday midnight, May 14. Staid at the Brittannia — did not like it — moved to the Hotel Danieli next morning [May 15] [NB 31 TS 43].
May 20 Friday – [From DBD] In Venice, Italy Livy wrote to Grace King concerning the family’s change in plans for the next winter:
We have given up Paris and have taken a villa in Florence for next winter. Mr Clemens had a great dread of Paris and even a suburb did not attract him. We found the singing advantages would probably be good for Susy and so decided rather suddenly to take up a villa a little way out of town [Rodney 144].
May 25 Wednesday –
The Clemens party left Venice and endured three days of relentlessly slow rail travel to the western shore of Lake Como and another health resort, Cadenabbia, Italy, another favorite haunt of the British. For this reason an Anglican Church, the very first one on Italian soil, was built and consecrated in 1891.
May 26 Thursday – The Clemens party was in transit to Lake Como and Cadenabbia.
May 27 Friday – The Clemens party arrived in Cadenabbia, where they would relax for a week. "Cadenabbia, Lake of Como, Hotel Brittannia, 1st floor — all front rooms, looking across to Bellagio & the snow-clad peaks. Everything 90 fr. per day [NB 31 TS 49].