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 Thursday – Lucerne, 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.
February 15, 1898: The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor "contributing to the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April. U.S. newspapers, engaging in yellow journalism to boost circulation, claimed that the Spanish were responsible for the ship's destruction. The phrase, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" became a rallying cry for action. Although the Maine explosion was not a direct cause, it served as a catalyst that accelerated the events leading up to the war." (See Wikipedia)
April 25, 1898: Spain declared war on the United States. The US noted that the two countries had in effect been at war since Apr. 20. Tensions ran high since the mysterious explosion of the Battleship Maine on Feb. 15.
July 3, 1898: The Spanish Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete (1839-1909) surrendered after the decisive naval battle on July 3, when his fleet attempted to run the American blockade of Cuba.
July 30, 1898: Otto von Bismarck dies. Sam notes in his journal, Aug 7, "I think a few monarchs have died here & there during the past year, I do not now remember. It made a great silence. Bismarck has been dead five or six days, now, but the reverberations from that mighty fall still go quaking & thundering around the planet”
January 9, 1899: The peace treaty with Spain was ratified by the U.S. Congress; it would be signed by President McKinley on Feb. 10.
February 4, 1899: Phillipine guerillas under Emilio Aguinaldo (1869-1964) fired on American troops at Manila. This began a rebellion against US rule of the Phillipines that lasted until Aguinaldo was captured on Mar. 23, 1901 by General Frederick Funston.
February 10 Friday – President William McKinley signed the peace treaty with Spain, with the U.S. paying Spain twenty million dollars for specific Spanish holdings in the Philippines. Many saw the payment as a purchase of the Philippines. The treaty turned Sam off about this being a just war and led to his staunch anti-imperialism. The treaty had been ratified by Congress on Jan. 9.
In a letter to Wlliam D. Howells, April 2, 1899:
Evening. We all belong to the nasty stinking little human race, & of course it is not nice for God’s belovéd vermin to scoff at each other; but how can I help it when the Abendblatt pukes another mess of Helen-Gould adulation onto me. Kipling was mentioned just twice during his illness by this chief Austrian daily; whereas it has mentioned & worshiped Helen Gould a hundred times since she contributed a month’s income to the war from her investments of stolen money.’ I wonder if she was the only neighbor who was hospitable to the Windsor sufferers. Got a badge from the Fire Department making her a holy personage at fires hereafter! Motion offered by General Wheeler for the thanks of Congress for her! ® Hang it, J would contribute a month’s income to a war, myself, if it wrought me no depriva- tion, but left me a million to pull through the rest of the year on. Particularly if I was to become an object of the planet’s worship for it besides, & if the money was stolen & had cost me no labor. Oh, we are a nasty little lot—& to think there are people who would like to save us & continue us. It won’t happen if I have any influence. ^L
From Notes from Mark Twain - Howells Letters (v2 page 694)
8. Helen Gould, daughter of Jay Gould, inherited her fathers' fortunes at his death in 1892 and gave large sums to various charities. In 1898 she gave $100,000 to the United States Government as a contribution to the expenses of the Spanish-American War, and donated $25,000 for supplies to aid wounded soldiers. Clemens’s hostility toward her sprang presumably {rom his hatred of her father, whom he considered one of the principal causes of the “moral rot” of American society in the late nineteenth century (DV 127, untitled sheet of notes, passage beginning “‘The Start,” MTP).
9. The resolution proposed to award Miss Gould a “gold medal with appropriate designs” for her “patriotic devotion and bounteous benevolence” (New York Times, 14 January 1899, p. 4).
April 18 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Annette Hullah,: I know you will forgive me for not signing. I was a peace man, but I have lost interest, since the Finnish episode. I was looking forward to the Abrüstüngs Congress as a kind of holy thing, but it has become a comedy now. This outcome indicates that the human race is still on deck & hasn’t lost its character. It is never serious about anything. I mean, anything that is worth being serious about [MTP].
The Abrüstüngs Congress refers to the Hague Convention of 1899.
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, but it did not take place because of the start of World War I.