April 19 Tuesday – In London William Dean Howells wrote to Sam that he’d heard from the young (40) Dr. John Crawford, whom Howells had given a letter of introduction to Sam. Crawford had not shown in Florence, this letter suggests a lost letter from Clemens. Howells then sympathized with his old friend’s struggles:
Your letter made my heart ache; and it still makes me dumb; but you know how I must feel for each of you; I don’t know which I feel for most, but, I think, Jean and you, for Clara’s presence with the suffering had its own help in it. What a great good girl she is; one alone like her is enough to “justify the ways of God to man,” which we have to stumble along in so unevenly except for the light that a sublime creature like her sheds on them. As for Mrs. Clemens herself, there’s truly nothing to say. I understand the sort of thing you are going [through] [MTHL 2: 783-4].