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To The Person Sitting in Darkness: Day By Day

Return to the US until Livy's death and another return to the US.

Was this when Americas was great?  See America at the Turn of the Century: A Look at the Historical Context, an article published by the Library of Congress from their collection of The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898 to 1906.

Soon after his return, Mark Twain began to take an active part in the campaign begun by “anti-imperialists” — including Howells and William James— in protest against the policies of the United States, Great Britain, and other powers in the Philippines, South Africa, and China. Introducing Mark Twain at a Lotos Club dinner on 10 November 1900, Howells expressed a hope that the humorist might become the satirist-interpreter of his county. No one else has ever been “so fully in the joke of us,” said Howells, “and at no other time in our national life have we been a greater joke or more needed interpretation.” In reply, Mark Twain praised the “righteous war” that had freed Cuba, but deprecated the miscarriage of good intentions in the Philippines (“Mark Twain,’ New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art, 17 November, p- 789). 

New York City 1900-1901

 

Saranac Lake

In June of 1901 the Clemens family - except for Clara, ... - moved into a rustic cottage at the edge of Lake Saranac, New York.  They christened the house "The Lair."

Sam was at the lake save for much of August when he took a cruise with H. H. Roger on board the Kanawha.

From W. B. Northrup's book "With Pen and Camera":

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson

From Hill, 1973

"...the Clemens family loved the house at Riverdale (later known as "Wave Hill" and occupied by Arturo Toscanini and Sir Gladwyn Jebb, British ambassador to the United Nations). It was an enormous fieldstone, three-story mansion with impressive wooded grounds, just inside the New York City limits."

 

York Harbor

From Hill, 1973:

"Clemens' concerns over Olivia's health led him to rent a cottage in York Harbor, Maine, for the summer, where she was transported on Henry Rovers' yacht in late June."

Back to Riverdale

From Hill, 1973:

"When he came to move Olivia from York Harbor to Riverdale on October 15, Clemens fretted about the method of transportation:  asking for the Kanawha, then canceling the yacht and deciding on a train, arranging for a special car and special engines."

 

Quarry Farm - 1903

From Hill, 1973:

"...Mrs. Clemens was doing so well that she and her husband decided to make a trip to Elmira in July, leaving Clara and Jean in Riverdale.  Clemens told the Huttons: 

We carried Mrs. Clemens down the hill at 8:30 in the morning, at Riverdale; lifted her into the launch and all on board Mr. Rovers's yacht, out in the river; steamed down to the DL&W dock at Hoboken, carried the madam aboard the 10 A.M. train and came through to Elmira in the suffocating heat, arriving at 4:40...

Taking Livy to Florence

From Hill, 1973:

On October 5, after a final visit to Susy's grave, the Clemens family moved from Elmira to New York City, where it spent the last weeks before departing at the Grosvenor Hotel....  And on the evening of the twenty-third the family boarded the Princess Irene in high hopes of Olivia's recovery and their continued financial tranquility.

Return to the US

From Hill, 1973:

The Clemens family booked passage on the Prince Oscar and left the Villa di Quarto on June 20, stopping for four days at the Hôtel de Ville in Florence. ...

The family boarded the ship June 28, ...

Then, as the Prince Oscar was preparing to leave, Clemens discovered that the death certificate and consular papers were missing.... the Hamburg-American Steamship Company had forwarded these documents to New York by an earlier ship, ...

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