A Tramp Abroad: Day By Day

July 20 Sunday – The Clemens family arrived in London in the morning. Sam wrote in his notebook that the family arrived in London at 8 AM; that it was rainy and cold. They stayed at the Brunswick House Hotel, Hanover Square. “Have had a rousing big cannel-coal fire blazing away in the grate all day.

July 22 Monday – Sam’s notebook:

“Day before leaving Heidl. Where is that, this & the other thing? It is packed—& so we live without a convenience” [2: 109].

July 23 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Heidelberg to Chatto & Windus, publishers, about money matters. He also requested a copy of Ouida’s Friendship, bound in full dark blue morocco [MTLE 3: 72].

July 24 Wednesday – The Clemens party started out on a three-day carriage trip through the Black Forest. They stayed at inns along the route. From Sam’s notebook:

“Stopped at Forbach at noon—trout under a grape arbor, & 3 Germans eating in general room.

The village assembled to see a tinker mend a tin boiler.

School where they sang—something like our singing geography—one monotonous tune of ½ doz. notes.”

July 24 Thursday – Walter F. Brown, illustrator, wrote from Paris. “I have just received your check for £92.16.0 for which many thanks. I enclose receipted account in full. / You may depend on me to see Mr. St. Gaudens probably today. / I will send the remaining drawings very shortly…P.S. the three faulty drawings will be duly corrected” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Walter F. Brown receipts in full—about $700”.

July 25 Thursday – The second day of the carriage trip over country that Sam and Joe would tramp in early August. Eclectic entries from Sam’s notebook:

Hotel with nobody visible—one (very nice) room-girl for 3 floors—

& an awful bell to call folks to supper.

I wish I could hear myself talk German.

Superb view from Teufelstein, Luisaruhe & Englekanzel.

C[lara] when down & visited the waterfalls.

Beautiful bright green grass everywhere.

July 26 or July 27 Saturday –The Clemens party returned by rail to the Hotel de France in Baden Baden [MTNJ 2: 116n3]. Sometime during their stay in Baden Baden, Rosina Hay saved Clara Clemens, age four, from crawling outside the balusters of a hotel corridor six-stories up [MTNJ 2: 367]. Note: See Harnsberger p.31.

July 26 Saturday – Sam met Lewis Carroll, who later wrote in his diary, “Met Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain), with whom I was pleased and interested” [Green 382]. Paine incorrectly indicates the meeting was in 1873, and uses Sam’s 1906 Autobiography for the recollection of the meeting:

July 28 Sunday – Sam went to the “English Church” and sat behind the Empress of Germany. From his notebook:

She contributed 20 marks & snapped her smelling bottle a good deal & curtsied at the name of the Savior instead of merely inclining the head, as others did….Church not crowded—the Empress does not “draw” well for an Em[press.] [MTNJ 2: 119].

July 28 Monday – The Clemens family traveled just over 70 miles to spend a week in Condover Hall, in North Shropshire on the west English coast. Paine: “For more than two years they had had an invitation from Reginald Cholmondeley to pay him another visit” [MTB 646]. From Sam’s notebook:

July 29 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:

Lot of loud Americans at breakfast this morning—loud talking & coarse laughter. Talking at everybody else.

Took a nasty glass of hot mineral water at 7 AM, with teaspoon of Carlsbad salt dissolvd in it.

Never knew before what Eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.

The fact that we have but 1200 soldiers to meet 6,000 Indians is well utilized here to discourage immigration to America. The common people think the Indians are in New Jersey.

July 30 Tuesday –Sam wrote to Mr. Tyler (a merchant) about a “sorry old table” from the Heidelberg College prison he hoped to purchase. Sam had been unable to attend to the errand. He wrote that he expected to be at Lang’s Hotel on Aug. 6 with “a jolly preacher [Twichell] who will arrive here day after tomorrow” [MTLE 3: 73].

July 4 Thursday – Sam gave a short talk at the Anglo-American Club of Students, Heidelberg using both German and English.

July 8 Monday – Mr. Jewel wrote to Sam: “for exchange cows / 45 dollars” [MTP]. (No first name given, nor is any context.)

July 8 Tuesday – The Clemenses hired Joseph Verey at $2 per day to be their courier from “Paris through Holland to London.” Sam wrote in his notebook that Verey’s wages “to begin July 8” [MTNJ 2: 327]. Verey was the “young Polander” who “spoke eight languages and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was very shrewd, bright, and punctual” [A Tramp Abroad, ch 32].

July 9 Tuesday – Mack in Nevada, a history of the state on Adolph H. Sutro’s completion of the tunnel, which took nearly thirteen years:

 – During the last week in Heidelberg, Sam was in bed with attacks of rheumatism. Livy wrote her brother, Charles Langdon on July 21 about the treatment:

June 1 Saturday – Francis D. Millet wrote from Paris to Sam. “What good fortune that you are over here. I certainly appreciate your suggestion that I meet you in Germany—it will be no trifle that deters me from coming where you are if it be agreeable to you all. I want to see you all very much for I feel as if you owned a part of me.” He was hard at work on a book [MTP]. Note in file: “Note SLC’s reference to this letter in ‘Mental Telegraphy’ (Harper’s, Dec. 1891).”

June 1 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:

Still this vindictive winter continues. Had a raw, cold rain to-day; to-night we sit around a rousing wood fire [MTNJ 2: 312].

June 10 Monday – Sam wrote from the Königsstuhl in Heidelberg (near his rented den) to Bayard Taylor. His letter revealed his new daily routine: He only ate and slept at the hotel; in the mornings he walked to the…

June 10 Tuesday – Sam wrote two notes from Paris to Frank Bliss on contract and illustration matters for the new book, TA [MTLE 4: 71-2].

Sam also wrote to Charles E. Perkins, letter not extant but referred to in Perkins’ June 26 reply.

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell, writing “gossip” while a woman in the next room stopped coughing.

June 11 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:

30 or 40 little school girls at the Wirthschaft to-day when I left, all drinking beer at the tables in the open air. What an atrocious sight to the total abstinent eye!

I think that only God can read a German newspaper.

The chief German characteristic seems to be kindness, good will to men.

The best English characteristic is its plucky & persistent & individual standing up for its rights.

France seems to interest herself mainly in high art & seduction.

June 11 Wednesday – Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog, Mass. to advise he received Sam’s note just before a letter from Tauchnitz, offering to add Aldrich’s book Marjorie Daw to his series. He thanked Sam “heartily.” He expressed what a “charming time” they’d had in Paris with the Clemenses [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “unpublished, I believe / From T.B. Aldrich”

June 12 Thursday – Sam wrote from Paris to Elizabeth S. Stevens, probably a fan, who asked if Sam had any poetry he might send. “My pen is bad, my ink is pale, / But my affection for you will / never fail / Yours/ S.L. Clemens” [MTLE 4: 75].

June 13 Friday – In Paris, France Sam wrote a short note of suggestion to Frank Bliss about the pictures for the new book [MTLE 4: 76].