September 27 Monday – Salzburg, Austria: a gray and dreary day, rain threatened. At noon the Thomas Cook agent took the Clemens party from the hotel to the train station. At 12:40 the train left the station bound for Vienna, Austria, about 185 miles away. At 7 p.m. they arrived at the Kaiserin Elisabeth Westbahnhof, the western rail terminal in Vienna. There was a steady cold, but light rain. After a search they found two porters (Droschkes) to haul party and luggage [Dolmetsch 24; Sept. 29 to Barr; NB 42 TS 39].

Dolmetsch writes of their difficulties in finding rooms:

Worse still, they were without hotel reservations and had to engage the cabs until they could find suitable lodging. The new Riesenrad (giant Ferris wheel) and the newly opened entertainment “Venice in Vienna,” in the Prater, had brought an unusually large influx of visitors, prolonging Vienna’s tourist season….Undaunted, they doggedly started down Mariahilferstrasse to make the rounds of the Imperial, the Grand, the Bristol, then Sacher’s Hotel de l’Opera, followed with flagging hopes by the Munsch and the Erzherzog Carl on the Kärtnerstrasse before alighting finally at the Hotel Müller at the very end of the Graben [24].

Clara Clemens recalled arriving in Vienna, where her heart had been set on becoming the piano pupil of Theodor Leschetizky.

I don’t remember why all the hotels happened to be crowded on that particular night, but we drove to nine places before finding rooms, and were then forced to be satisfied with a small suite in a dreadful little hotel called the Hotel Muller, in a dreary, dirty street. It was so late at night by this time, however, that we were glad to find shelter anywhere. No one could have believed, as we turned our lights out in our dingy rooms that night, that Vienna would ever come to seem a pleasant place [MFMT 189].

Orion Clemens finished his Sept. 25 letter. “The Chicago Tribune had an editorial about Stead’s account of yourself, and made the comment that it was a lofty distinction to be credited with cultivating and promoting peace among nations” [MTP]