September 28 Tuesday – Early in the morning the family set out to find more suitable accommodations. In his Sept. 19 to Robert Barr, Sam recounted they’d had to apply at “nineteen hotels” to finally secure rooms at what Dolmetsch calls the “fashionable” Hotel Metropole on Franz-Josefs-Kai [26]. Sam’s notebook gives the total hotels at fifteen, seven on Sept. 27 and eight on Sept. 28 [NB 42 TS 39]. Dolmetsch describes the hotel Metropole:
A huge, old-fashioned Viennese hostelry, its former elegance slightly faded, it lacked such newfangled amenities as lifts [elevators] and private baths in most of its ninety-six suites. Nevertheless, its guest list included many bona fide aristocrats, such as the sister of the German emperor, partly because of its chef de cuisine, Herold, was reputedly Vienna’s finest. Whatever its other attractions for Clemens, the offer of seven spacious, high -ceilinged rooms, consisting of a parlor with balcony, a music room for Clara, a study for her father, and four bedrooms, all for $460 per month, including heat, attendants (both usually charged extra), and meals for five persons, was an irresistible bargain.” ….
Their Metropole suite, Number 62, was at a front corner of the top guest floor…overlooking the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) near its busiest bridge….Front right their windows gave a distant prospect of Vienna’s famed pleasure garden, the Prater, with its glittering brand-new landmark, the giant Ferris wheel, clearly in view [26-7].Insert: Metropole Hotel
Clara writes of the new rooms and her urgent need to see Leschetizky:
The next morning [Sept. 28] Father succeeded in engaging cheerful rooms at the Hotel Metropole and I made an appointment with Leschetizky before we had unpacked our bags, because I could not wait to find out if he would consent to add another pupil to his long list. Father and I drove out to his house in one of those little two-horse victories, for he lived some distance from our hotel.
My heart was fluttering like the smallest leaf on the wind-blown trees, but I did not want Father to suspect it, so I started him on the human race and the argument grew so intense that I forgot where we were bound for, when suddenly the carriage halted in front of Karl Ludwig Strasse 42, the home of the famous instructor in the art of piano-playing. I had never seen any photographs of him, but had created an advance picture of my own. I was, therefore, amazed to see an utterly unimpressive, harmless-looking man of small stature advance cordially to greet us. He tried to stutter a few English words and then burst out laughing. Father laughed hard, too, for never were English words so strangely pronounced before. But nothing sounded funny to me at that moment. I knew that I should be the object of attention before long. There was no escape from it. And in the presence of these two important men I felt my desires rapidly declining. Why had I ever thought it would be nice to study the piano? It was not the last time I asked that question. When the two gentlemen had grown tired of their crippled means of communication, Leschetizky suddenly addressed me. I felt as if some one had sewn up my throat.
Father said: “Herr Professor, my daughter can speak some German. It is the only thing she does a little better than I do. Speak up, Clara, and show how well you can talk this savage language.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, what was it you came all the way from Switzerland to say? Have you forgotten it? Father’s eyes were twinkling with a mixed expression of mercy and amusement. Then he tactfully rose and started to wander around the room, looking at signed photographs of famous musicians. I stammered through my speech to Leschetizky and then at this request stumbled into a piece on the piano. Poor Father had to listen to a long speech addressed by Leschetizky to him explaining what I needed in the way of technical preparation before he would accept me as a pupil for lessons with him. I saw Father’s face droop more and more as this German cataclysm fell upon him, and finally he nervously repeated a few times “Ich versteh, Ich versteh,” believing if he stated he understood, Leschetizky might think he really did and cease talking. Father was anxious for just one bit of information—were we to remain in Vienna? Yes, we were. He was ready then to end the call, and after a great deal of cordial handshaking, which took the place of conversation, the two gray heads bowed farewell to each other and Marcus (one of my nicknames for Father) and I were on our way back to the hotel [MFMT 189-91].
Daughter Jean Clemens suffered from an epileptic attack, logged by her father as her sixth, the first being “a year ago last winter” (1895) [Oct. 5 to Obersteiner].