August 12 Thursday – The Fisk Jubilee Singers were on a European tour, with stops at Basel, Bern, and Zurich. On July 1 they sang in Lucerne in the great hall of the Union Hotel; this was before the Clemenses arrival on July 14. After disappointing audiences at the July 1 and 3 performances, a second concert at the Hotel was planned for Aug. 8, which was “a great success,” with 200 in the audience. The singers then came to Weggis [Locher 18].
The Clemens family went to see the Jubilee Singers at the Hotel Löwen, Weggis [Locher 24].
Dolmetsch writes, “On August 12 a black American sextet, Fisk University’s famed Jubilee Singers on a European concert tour, arrived at the nearby Gasthof ‘Zum Löwen’ to give a performance of spirituals that Clemens thought ‘made all other music cheap’” [22].
From Sam’s Aug. 22 to Joe Twichell:
Three of the 6 were born in slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were—in spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing, matter, carriage, clothes—in every detail that goes to make the real lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village hotel and bought our ticket and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German and Swiss men and women sat grouped at road tables with their beer mugs in front of them—self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an indifferent audience—and up at the far end of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The singers got up and stood—the talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled out above those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house. It was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. …
One of the Jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a pleasant time [MTP]. Note: the Jubilee Singers came to Sam’s villa the next day, Aug. 13.
Sam wrote to Captain Richard Edgcumbe at the Hotel du Parc in Palais, France:
No, let us hope he is printing the portrait without Elliot & Fay’s consent—I’d like to see that firm spited. I can’t venture away from here, because I am well started on a book & if I went away I should lose my grip on my work. If I stick to it every day & waste no time, maybe I can finish it before we leave for Vienna the first week or second in October.
Ah, Mrs. Edgecumbe is prejudiced—this is the darlingest place on the planet. I want to stay here all the rest of my life. If I could, I’d do it. You stayed at the Paradise—of course that spoiled the whole thing [MTP].
The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show the first 5,000 copies of More Tramps Abroad, (FE) were printed, though the official English publication date would not be until Nov. 25 [Welland 238]. See Nov. 10, 25, Dec. 22, Mar. 8, 1898, Oct. 11, 1900, and Aug. 7, 1907 for other print run amounts, totaling 30,000.