June 29 Monday – In Aix-les-Bains, France Sam wrote again to Susy and Clara Clemens in Geneva. The girls had written.
Dear Sweethearts:
Mamma is a great deal more comfortable this p.m. & I am pretty well satisfied with the way the doctor has got the best of the disease. (Ouch!) Notice to stop using my right hand. Your letters are well done & delightful [MTP]. Note: Livy’s heart condition would not have been helped by the baths, though rest from travel may have helped.
June 28 Sunday – Of this period Paine writes, “The Clemens party went to Geneva, then rested for a time at the baths of Aix” [MTB 921]. Kaplan writes, “Clemens and Livy…looking for relief for the rheumatism that now crippled both of them, visited the fashionable watering places, Aix-les-Bains and then Marienbad.” No letters from Sam are extant until June 28. Powers writes, “…they sank into the pungent sulfuric baths every day for five weeks” [MT A Life 539].
June 27 Saturday – On or about this day, the Clemens party without Susy and Clara continued on to Aix-les-Bains, France, across the Swiss border and a bath since Roman days, where Sam wrote Susy and Clara on June 28. Baedecker’s 1887 travel guide lists the distance as 55&1/2 miles, a 3&1/2 hour trip by train.
June 26 Friday – The Clemens party was in Annecy trying the baths there. Rodney writes that the Clemens party went to Annecy, “not far over the French border” and stayed a week at a spa there, “convinced that the baths were not restorative” [134]. Note: the chronology for this week based on Rodney.
June 25 Thursday – The Clemens party was in Annecy trying the baths there.
June 24 Wednesday – The Clemens party was in Annecy trying the baths there.
John Cowden wrote a very long (and rather dry, rambling, hard to read) letter from Pittsfield, Ill. to Sam about the history of the Mississippi area and experiences there [MTP].
June 23 Tuesday – The Clemens party was in Annecy trying the baths there.
June 22 Monday – The Clemens party was in Annecy trying the baths there.
The Thermes de Saint Gervais Mont-Blanc is a spa organized around thermal springs, located in the valley of the Arve, in the hamlet of Fayet, in the municipality of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains in Haute-Savoie.
Haute-Savoie is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France, bordering both Switzerland and Italy. Its prefecture is Annecy. To the north is Lake Geneva; to the south and southeast are Mont Blanc and the Aravis mountain range.