June 30 Thursday – The Clemens party was en route in the Prince Oscar from Naples to New York.
Sam’s notebook: “ Clara keeps her bed, & cannot bear to see any stranger. / The weather is beautiful, the sea is smooth & luminously blue” [NB 47 TS 13].
And, under the printed month-end notes heading right after this entry, he wrote: “In my life there have been 68 Junes—but how vague & colorless 67 of them are, contrasted with the deep blackness of this one!” [ibid.].
Sebastiano V. Cecchi wrote to Sam.
I confirm mine of yesterday and have received your two letters of the same date.
I have telegraphed today, care of H.H. Rogers, this: “Claim documents casket offices of Hamburger-American Line New York” which I confirm.
This upon the notice received from their office at Genoa, intimating that those documents had been sent direct to New York. They didn’t say so, but it is easy to see that they had forgotten to hand those documents to the Capt. of the Prince Oscar, as they had been directed to do [MTP]. Note: Cecchi enclosed a statement of Sam’s account at the Haskard Bank.
Eleanor V. Hutton (Mrs. Laurence Hutton) wrote to Sam that he’d been in her thoughts and she hoped to see him soon [MTP].
Francis B. Keene of the US Consular Service wrote to Sam, sending Livy’s death certificate, which was a duplicate of one presented to him at the time of the casket’s shipment. “It must have been given to the captain of the ship” [MTP]. Sam wrote on the bottom, 1. What became of the original? / 2. The captain never saw it—he told me so in Naples.”