September 24 Tuesday – The Clemens party left Milan and traveled north to Bellagio on Lake Como. They stayed at the Grand Bretagne Hotel.
Sam’s notebook:
“Rainy, sour, cold, dreary. Removed a screen in our room & discovered a regular fire-place—for wood. Right away we had the first wood fire we had seen since we left our own house. This made the day cheery”.
Sam enjoyed some valipolicella wine; he observed blind musicians at Bellagio with a little Russian girl passing the plate.
September 19 Thursday – The Clemens party spent the day looking around Milan.
September 20 Friday – Sam (and probably the ladies) went to see Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. “If there is anything worse than the original, it is the 15 or 20 copies in oil & water”. They also visited the “great picture gallery” (Brera).
“There are artists in Arkansas to-day who would not have had to paint signs for a living if they had had the luck to live in the time of the old masters”.
September 17 Tuesday – The family spent the day in Turin, shopping and enjoying the sights.
September 18 Wednesday – The family left Turin at 9:15 AM and arrived at Milan at 1:30 PM.
Sam’s notebook is full of things they saw in Milan, and observations on a host of items and situations. Some favorites:
I think the arcade system is borrowed from Turin.
Saw a starchy suit of clothes marked $9—doorway full of dummies dressed—stepped in to order one like the $9—nothing inside! The old man hauled in the dummy, stripped him & I ordered the clothes sent to the hotel.
September 16 Monday – The Clemens family left Chambéry for Turin by the fast express train, which Sam noted “makes 4 miles an hour—the other trains make only 3 1/4 . By 11 we were out of sight of Chambery.” Three hours from Turin, the train barely won a race with a team of oxen, Sam wrote. It took eight more hours to arrive in Turin, at about 7 PM. They took rooms in the Hotel d’Europe, which Sam noted had “wonderful rooms”. They went to supper and drank Barolo wine.
February 28 - July 10th 1879. See Munich to Paris
Up in the balloon with Mark Twain – Mrs. Twain, Miss Spaulding & Guilwoodford” [Rees 8]. (June 23, 1879)
July 10 Thursday – The Clemens family left Paris at 7:20 AM for Brussels, Belgium.
Enroute to Hamburg, April 24, 1878, Sam’s notebook mentions passengers getting off at Cherbourg [MTNJ 2: 69].
September 14 Saturday – Sam was awakened at 3 AM by a braying jackass in front of the hotel. The party left Geneva for Italy, stopping at Chambéry, France for a break. More from his notebook:
Next morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. If I remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder. The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out. Five other diligences left at the same time, all full.
September 4 Wednesday – Sam and Joe set off [from Ouchy] on their last Alpine tramp. Bound for Chamonix, France, they took the train to Martigny, Switzerland, where they arrived at 9 PM and took rooms at the Hotel Clerc
September 5 Thursday – The two “tramps” left Martigny on foot at 8 AM, bound for Chamonix, nineteen uphill miles in the hot sun. They skirted the Tête Noir Mountain. Sam noted the beauty of Argientiere as they approached. They dined at Argientiere and hired a wagon for the last six miles into Chamonix.
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