Submitted by scott on

May 24 Wednesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Dr. James R. Clemens, sharing their plans to leave Vienna on May 26 and to stay the Prince of Wales Hotel, Kensington, upon their arrival in England. The Clemens family intended to travel by daylight trains only [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Francis H. Skrine, another who had invited the Clemenses to stay with them upon arrival in London (invitation not extant):

It is lovely of you to make us that generous offer of hospitality, & we very highly appreciate it; but we are not a band of angels, but a menagerie, & must live in a Zoo or a hotel, where we can be properly restrained & kept down. This duty will fall upon the manager of the Prince of Wales hotel in De Vere Gardens, Kensington, where we expect to arrive in the early days of June & shall be glad to shake you & Mrs. Skrine by the hand there [MTP].

Sam also telegraphed (not extant) and then wrote to Percy Spalding.

Thank you ever so much for the trouble you have taken about the hotels. I have telegraphed you to-day that we wish to try the Prince of Wales hotel. I wanted to speak sooner, but couldn’t, for I had asked for an audience & couldn’t know what date, the Emperor [Franz Josef I] would appoint, for sometimes there is a month’s delay.

But our movements are definitely charted out, now.

We leave here May 26 & go by Prague, Nuremburg, Cologne, Brussels, Calais, Dover—traveling in the daytime only. We may reach London at 7.30 p.m. May 31, but perhaps it will be 24 hours later.

Sam would telegraph Spalding from Cologne or Brussels so the hotel might know the exact date of their arrival [MTP].

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Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.