May 5 or May 6 Monday – The Clemens family arrived in Heidelberg, Germany and stayed at the beautiful Schloss Hotel, which overlooked the old castle with its forest setting, the flowing Neckar River, and the distant valley of the Rhine [MTLE 3: 50]. Rodney notes that the hotel’s “family-style accommodations suited the needs of the party.
May 4 Saturday – Sam wrote from Frankfort on the Main, Germany to Howells. Sam felt a relaxing sense of escape, described as only he might:
“Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of being ‘out of it all.’ I think I foretaste some of the advantage of being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don’t read any newspapers or care for them.”
May 3 Friday – The Clemens family traveled to Frankfort where they rested a day or so [MTNJ 2: 46]. “The prettiest effect is a cloud-ceiling in fresco in our parlor at Frankfort” [74].
May 2 Thursday – The Clemens family traveled by rail through the Harz Mountains, to Cassel (Kassel) [MTLE 3: 49-50]. They took rooms at the Hotel du Nord in Cassel [MTNJ 2: 73]. From Sam’s notebook:
Who is buried here?
Nobody.
Then why the monument?
It is not a monument. It is a stove.
We had reverently removed our hats. We now put them on again.
May 1 Wednesday – From Hamburg, the Clemens family traveled south by rail to Hanover and Göttingen. They took an excursion to Wilhelmshöhe [MTNJ 2: 46]. MTNJ says they “stopped briefly” at these places [73n65]. From Sam’s notebook:
“Woman at Napoleon’s prison-palace at Wilhelmshöhe–Heinrich said ‘If she look at you, if she say something, if she do anything, she all time look like a cat which is unwell’” [MTNJ 2: 74].
April 25 Thursday – The Clemens family arrived at Hamburg and took rooms at the Crown Prince Hotel [MTLE 1: vii; MTNJ 2: 46, 71].
April 24 Wednesday – The Holsatia stopped at Cherbourg and/or Le Havre, France. The American-Hamburg line went through Havre and normally took twelve days from New York to Havre, then an additional day from Havre to Hamburg, a deep-water port in Germany. However, Sam’s notebook mentions passengers getting off at Cherbourg [MTNJ 2: 69].
April 22 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
“It breaks out hearts, this sunny magnificent morning, to sail along the lovely shores of England & can’t go ashore. Inviting” [MTNJ 2: 68].
Sam reflected on “Lying story-books which make boys fall in love with the sea.” He referred to more realistic stories, such as Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840). Sam wrote:
April 20 Saturday – Sam wrote a letter, en route on the SS Holsatia from New York to Hamburg, to Olivia Lewis Langdon. He wrote the letter on a ship’s menu.
April 17 Wednesday – From Sam’s en route letter of Apr. 20 to his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon:
“On the 17th we had heavy seas, then easy ones, then rough again; then brilliant skies, with thick driving storms of rain, hail, sleet & snow—sunshine again, followed by more snow, hail, rain & sleet—& so on, all day long; we sighted an ice-berg in the morning & a water-spout in the afternoon” [MTLE 3: 47-8].