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.
"...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...
"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."
"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 Rogers' yacht in late June."
"...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."
Sam returned to New York May 10th, 1901, where he signed a lease indenture for a cottage that he would name “The Lair” (it would later be called “Mark Twain Camp”) on Saranac Lake, N.Y. The lease to run from June 1 to Oct. 31, 1901 for a total of $650, with $150 at the signing and $250 on July 1 and $250 on Aug. 1. Sam and George V.W. Duryee, owner of the Adirondack Park Co. signed, with Olivia L. Clemens signing as witness.
November 3-5, 1900: The Clemenses visited with William Dean Howells and Laurence Huttons in Princeton, NJ
From November 10th DBD Entry:
The world does move! Mrs. Clemens & the girls have gone off in a hired mobile to the theatre in Harlem. She & I went to Harlem in a coupe three days ago, with a poor tired horse who made less than 4 miles an hour, & it is a pity for the horse that has converted the woman.
Now then, please tell me where in New York we can send & get a mobile at peace-rates when we need one [MTP].
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
On May 10, 1899, Sam wrote in a letter, "We shall reach London May 31, by way of Bremen & the steamer “Lahn” to Southampton.
David Fears wrote (for the August 3, 1899 entry) of a letter to Rogers: "I am unspeakably sorry to lose the steam yachting and the Fairhaven visit, and I wasn’t expecting to lose the whole scheme, but the Swedish project made a sudden and radical change in our plans. You see, Jean’s health has made no real and substantial progress in the past 3 years. None whatsoever. We had tried the baths, and the doctors and everything—all no good. What should we do? For one, I was willing to try anything that might turn the tide— except Christian Science.
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