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Upon completion of their tour around the world, July 31, 1896, the Clemens family arrived in Southampton and took rooms at the South Western Hotel.  August 4th, Susy, in Hartford, as she and Jean did not accompany the family on the tour, was diagnosed with spinal meningitis.

August 11 Tuesday, Sam and Livy with Clara took temporary residence at Highfield House, Portsmouth Road, Guildford, England.

August 14 Friday – In the morning word reached the Clemenses in Guildford that Susy Clemens was quite ill. Sam cablegrammed Charles Langdon throughout the day for clarification but none came.

August 15 Saturday – Upon arriving at Southampton, the Clemenses found another cable waiting from the family gathered in New York. Susy’s recovery (from an unspecified disease) would be “long but certain.” This convinced Sam to stay in England. Livy and Clara boarded the S.S. Paris bound for New York.

August 18 Tuesday – At 7:07 p.m. in Hartford, Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens, age 24, died of spinal meningitis in the Farmington Ave. house.

August 19 Charles Langdon sent a cablegram which reached Sam with the news of Susy’s death.

August 22 Saturday – The S.S. Paris arrived in New York with Livy and Clara. Only the day before they learned on Susy death from a newspaper on board the S.S. Paris.

August 23 Sunday –  Susy was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira. Livy, Jean, and Clara Clemens were all at the graveside, along with Sue Crane and members of the Langdon clan. Sam had remained in Guildford, England.

September 9 Wednesday – Livy, daughter Clara, and Katy Leary arrived in Southampton.   Day By Day does not mention Jean but she, too , must have accompanied Clara and Katy to England.


Following the death of Susie, the Clemens family remained in a life of self-enforced exile in England and Europe.  There seems to be no mention of Jean in Day By Day until the family reaches Wiggis.


July 12, 1897 Monday – At 8 a.m. the Clemens family left London, bound for the Continent. Rodney points out they would be in “exile” for three more years [209]. Sam’s notebook gives particulars of the first day of their two-day trip, with stops at Rochester, and Queenboro, then across the channel to Flushing, Belgium.

July 13 Tuesday – The Clemens family left Flushing, Belgium and traveled on to Cologne, arriving after midnight (July 14); they took rooms at the Victoria Hotel.

July 14 Wednesday – The Clemens family arrived in Cologne, Germany at 12:30 after midnight. They had to settle for rooms at the Victoria Hotel,

July 15 ThursdayLucerne, Switzerland. 

July 16 Friday – Sam and his family went to Weggis, a quiet village of less than 1,400 residents about a half-hour from Lucerne by boat.

September 19:  The Clemens party left Weggis, Switzerland and took an overnight train trip to Innsbruck, Austria by way of Lucerne and Zürich, some 150 miles. They took rooms at the Hotel Tirolerhof, where they stayed two days.

September 22 Wednesday – The Clemens party left Innsbruck and traveled about 100 miles by rail to Salzburg, Austria, where they would say for three days.

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:

Sam’s notebook:

Sund, July 25. At 6 this am, for the first time in the week, sun & surface were just right for mirror-effects—so the lake was full of pictures.

Mark Twain stayed in Vienna with his wife Olivia and his daughters Clara and Jean from the end of September 1897 till the end of May 1899, except for a few weeks in the summer of 1898, spent at the summer resort of Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna.

The family took quarters in Hotel Metropole, beautifully situated on the Franz-Joseph's Quay, on the right bank of the Danube Canal.  Later they moved to the Hotel Krantz, opposite the old Capuchin Church and Monastery, in the center of the city.

The Clemens family returned to the United States believing that Jean could receive proper treatment in New York City.  They sailed on the Minnehaha.

From the New York Herald, October 15, 1900:

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do

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