Wagner in Bayreuth

The Wagner Opera festival opened in Bayreuth [Brooklyn Eagle, July 19, 1891 p.7]. This paper reported in a dispatch from London, “Bayreuth is overflowing with visitors, fully 50 per cent of them being Americans.” The Clemens party would arrive there on July 31 [July 10 to Hall]. The festival was held each year in the town of Wagner’s birth. Performances were given in a theater designed by Wagner in 1872, the Festspielhaus, with excellent acoustics.

Taking the Waters

From June 21 to June 27, 1891, Sam was in Annecy. I have found no direct mention of where the Clemens' were while at Haute-Savoie but it is possible they tried the Thermes de Sant Gervais Mont-Blanc.  From June 27 to July 27, 1891, he was at Aix-les-Bains.  Scharnhorst reports they departed for Geneva on the 28th.

From Hartford to Geneva

June 5 Friday – Sam, Livy, and Jean left Hartford for New York, where they met their other daughters and Sue Crane. The party stayed at the Murray Hill Hotel.

New York to France:  Gascoigne

June 6 Saturday – At 5 a.m. the Clemenses sailed from New York for France on the Gascoigne. The family would not return for more than eight years and would never again live in Hartford.

Voyage Home to US

They dallied in Liverpool for two days, and then boarded the newly commissioned Cunard steamer Gallia, “a very fine ship.” Coincidentally, they sailed with Sams friend the Earl of Dunraven, “an uncommonly clever fellow.” During the transatlantic voyage, the body of a passenger who had died en route was packed in ice and stored in a lifeboat, and Sam added a grisly note to this news in his notebook: “the hilarious Passengers sing & laugh & joke under him” as “the melting ice drips on them.” The family landed in New York on September 2 after a tour that had lasted nearly eighteen mont

England

“We had a comfortable passage, very smooth sea, none of us were sea sick, but crossing the channel is not pleasant at the best,” Livy wrote her mother the next day from the Brunswick House Hotel on Hanover Square in London. ...

Netherlands

They traveled on July 14 to Rotterdam and registered at the Victoria Hotel. Sam was impressed. by the countryside, “so green & lovely, & quiet & pastoral & homelike,’ and, as usual, by the “very pretty & fresh & amiable & intelligent” Dutch damsels. ‘The next day they railed fifty miles to Amsterdam, where they spent two nights at the Hotel Doelen. Sam delighted in Rembrande’s paintings in the Rijksmuseum, especially The Night Watch, and Livy bought “a beautiful etching” of it for twenty dollars to hang in the Hartford house.

Belgium

In early July Sam hired Joseph N. Verey for two dollars a day to serve as their courier during a hasty tour of the Low Countries.

Munich

Munich German city. Midway through the long European trip that Mark Twain undertook in order to write A Tramp Abroad, he and his family stayed in this Bavarian capital from November 15, 1878 through February 27, 1879. Members of the family regarded the Munich months as a pleasant winter rest, during which they busied themselves with studying German and art instruction and enjoyed a Bavarian Christmas, while Mark Twain worked on his book. He did write at least one chapter about Munich, but omitted it from the final manuscript.

Subscribe to