August 31 Monday – The Clemens family returned to Nuremburg. Sam’s notebook referred to it as “the City of Exquisite Glimpses” [NB 31 TS 1; also MTB 923].

August, late – During the latter part of the Marienbad stay Livy, Susy and Sue Crane went north to Berlin to secure winter housing for the family. Paine gives this trip as October, yet analysis of early October does not allow for even a two day trip. The family would arrive in Berlin on Oct. 8 or 9. Dolmetsch reports this “brief house-hunting excursion” as “while the Clemenses were in Marienbad,” which is more likely [“Berlin” 70]. Paine writes:

Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Crane, after some previous correspondence with an agent, went up to that city [Berlin] to engage an apartment. The elevator had not reached the European apartment in those days, and it was necessary, on Mrs. Clemens’s account, to have a ground floor. The sisters searched a good while without success, and at last reached Körnerstrasse, a short, secluded street, highly recommended by the agent [929]. Note: Sam’s second Sept. 20 to Livy reveals Mr. Heller and Mr. C. Prächtel as the rental agents of the Körnerstrasse property. In his notebook Sam called the place “The Rag-picker’s Paradise” [NB 31 TS 16].

In her 1930 memoir, My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens writes of a clash with her father over a handsome young officer whom she’d met at a local ball. The exact dates are not given, but the description puts it during the Marienbad stay.

During the latter part of our stay in that charming town, Mother went to Berlin to look for rooms and took my elder sister with her. Father, Jean, and our good maid Katie, were left behind. It so happened that an invitation came to attend a large military ball.…Father seemed to forget that I had never been permitted to go to a ball, and did not even possess a ball-dress….Out of the hotel I ran, with Katie…she persuaded me to take a most insignificant-looking pink frock, so slightly décolleté that I blushed with shame. At last the great day came, and long before the proper hour I persuaded my father to start for the ball.

We arrived shamefully early. But Father did not seem to mind this. He led me to the seats by the wall from which we could watch the guests as they made their entrance. What a dazzling occasion! Such uniforms defied description, and the bearing of these gentlemen in their gaudy coverings — ah, me!

Father seemed to be having a good a time as I — at the beginning of the evening. But, as he did not dance, his interest faded before mine did. After I had whirled about for a couple of hours he took me home. Very promptly after breakfast the next morning a visitor was announced. It was one of the officers who had danced with me several times at the ball….He had come to pay his respects. To me! …after a few moments I excused myself and ran to Katie.

Sam came and made the young man uncomfortable but at lunch time the young man appeared seating next to their table; and again at dinner time. Clara had been caught “exchanging glances” with the handsome soldier. Livy was not there to advise either Clara or Sam.

What could he do? He decided to proceed radically. I was to be locked up and Katie was to bring me my meals.

At first I thought it was a joke. Some kind of joke. Surely I could not be incarcerated like a damsel of the Middle Ages. Yet that was just what happened. Fortunately, Katie was also romantically inclined, so she not only brought me my meals, but messages from my friend. Somehow she managed to find him in the lobby of the hotel and he sent urgent requests that I should go to my window and exchange glances with him. Of course this helped, but still the imprisonment grew tiresome….When at last Mother arrived she found a lackadaisical daughter in one room and a fiercely irritated Father in another. She brought us together and listened to our vibrating stories. Father’s was a bit exaggerated, but so impressive that I expected Mother to pour our words of indignant condemnation, when to my amazement, she burst with peals of laughter….That was the most victorious moment of my life [MFMT 90-93].

Note: this account reveals that Livy and Sue Crane returned to Marienbad after house-hunting in Berlin. Some accounts imply that they waited in Berlin for the rest of the party. This is clearly in error, since their stay at Heidelberg and Ouchy is well-documented.

August, end – Paine writes,

“They returned to Germany at the end of August, to Nuremberg, which he notes as the ‘city of exquisite glimpses,’ and to Heidelberg, where they had their old apartment of thirteen years before, Room 40 at the Schloss Hotel, with its wonderful prospect of wood and hill, and the haze-haunted valley of the Rhine. They remained less than a week in that beautiful place, and then were off for Switzerland, Lucerne, Brienz, Interlaken, finally resting at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, on beautiful Lake Leman” [MTB 923]. (Editorial emphasis.)

Note: Rodney writes they stayed “only two days” in Heidelberg [136].