June 3, 1896 Wednesday

June 3 Wednesday – In Bloemfontein, S. Africa Sam wrote on Free State Hotel stationery to Livy:

Well, sweetheart, I have been 3 hours packing & shaving — 7.30 to 10.30; & now I haven’t anything left to do but do up two suits of clothes & some soiled linen & cigars & things in the shawl-strap, & I’ll be ready for the train. I never open the large valise. It is nicely & compactly packed, & I leave it just as you left it. If I should take anything out, I couldn’t get it back again.

Sam related the sad tale of Poultney Bigelow’s daughter’s marriage to a promising young man in the foreign office in Germany. The man had been drinking himself to death and lost his post and was now in an obscure government professorship in Bonn.

Separately, foreign marriages and whisky are bad; mixed, they are fatal.

Good-bye dear heart, you will be sailing, 3 days hence, & we’ll be together again all the sooner for it, thank goodness. Saml [MTP].

Sam presented a letter of introduction from Bigelow to Maritnus Theunis Steyn, president of the Orange Free State. The two men enjoyed an hour-long talk in the capitol. Afterward, at 2:30 p.m., Sam and Smythe left Bloemfontein on the train for Queenstown, some 160 miles northeast of Port Elizabeth, where Livy and Clara would disembark on the Athenian [Philippon 20].

Livy wrote to Susan Crane. “We sail for Port Elizabeth tomorrow…your letter of May 8th reached me last night. X x x. We expected Mr. Clemens and Mr. Smythe this morning” [MTP].