July 16 Friday – Sam and his family went to Weggis, a quiet village of less than 1,400 residents about a half-hour from Lucerne by boat. “By chance” he’d been recommended to the Pension (boardinghouse) Bühlegg, which did not advertise as the other hotels and boardinghouses there did. The boardinghouse was run by Alois Dahinden

Dahinden had purchased the Restaurant Bühlegg in 1889 and opened it as a boardinghouse. He also “built four adjoining houses,” After securing one of the four houses, the Schlössli (“Little Castle”), and having dinner (for five), the Clemens family returned to Lucerne, with the dinner bill unpaid [Locher 6-7]. Insert: Villa Buhlegg.

Sam’s notebook:

Sunday, July 18, ’97. Took up residence in Villa Bühlegg, Weggis—with Sue, Julie Langdon, & Ernst—7 persons. Terms 6 francs a day per person, rent & food included, also candles & 2 lamps; & 14 fr extra per week to have the meals brought up & served in the house.

————

This trustful Frau would not take pay for our 5 dinners yesterday, but said that it could go in the pension [boardinghouse] bill in case we concluded to take the house; & so she let us go back to Lucerne ignorant of our names & address [NB 41 TS 52].

Locher writes:

Dahinden himself—his battle cry was “Courage!” —was in charge of the pension in 1897. He was known as “Toniwisi,” or “Wild Man,” or even “Rigi-Devil,” but in spite of these ferocious nicknames he charged a modest six francs a day per person, which included room, meals, candles, and two lamps….the Bühlegg billed Clemens “14 fr. extra per week to have the meals brought up & served in the house [the Schlössli] [8].

The family did conclude to take the “Little Castle” and would take possession July 18 [Locher 6].

From Weggis Sam sent his calling card with a mourning border to the London Postmaster, asking him to forward any mail for the Clemens family to Villa Bühlegg, Weggis, Switzerland [MTP].

Dolmetsch writes,

It was a lucky find, this lakeside villa in a picture -postcard setting. Behind it was the verdant humpbacked Rigi, and from Bühlegg’s front windows one saw the glistening bottle-green waters of Lake Lucerne (properly, Vierwaldstaettersee) beyond which, when the clouds lifted, loomed the Pilatus, one of the most imposing, if not one of the loftiest, of Swiss peaks. If ever nature’s vaunted powers of rustic solitude, fresh alpine air, and a landscape combining serene, lush verdure and wild ruggedness could heal the heartache of Olivia and Samuel Clemens and their two remaining daughters, it was here in the sort of surroundings the English Lake Poets a century earlier had sought for their inspiration [21].