June 4 Friday - In Redding, Conn, Sam wrote a postcard (picturing Stormfield) to Dorothy Quick.
“Dorothy Dear, it is too bad, but I shall be in Baltimore from the 8th to the 12th, This is an engagement I made with Francesca several months ago—she graduates on the 10 th of June. “It is a nice photo—thank you, dear, with lots of love—S L C” [MTP; MTAq 259].
Sam gave this day as the day the Ashcrofts left Redding for New York and Europe:
We now arrive at June 4. Stanchfield’s official expert was getting toward the end of his examination of Miss Lyon’s check-stubs & vouchers, & was asking her some rather embarrassing questions. There were things which she could not explain satisfactorily—things which proved her a thief; proved it beyond question. The Ashcrofts were getting very nervous.
When they got married—as before remarked—they had sent out some bushels of copper-plate cards announcing that the aristocratically-hyphenated Mr. & Mrs. R. W. Lyon Ashcrofts would be “At Home” at Summerfield “Saturdays in June.” When Friday the 4th arrived the countryside flocked along the country roads & to the little railway station to see the fine city-[k?]inds that would come. But they didn’t see them. What they saw was the highly-hyphenated Ashcrofts slipping out & gliding away on the New York train! They never reappeared during that month.
They were scared. They were in flight, to save Miss Lyon from arrest. They believed they were she was in danger of spending her At Homes in the Danbury jail. They privately took passage in an obscure steamer for Holland, for a date half-way between the first & second At Homes (Tuesday, June 8.) Their intention was suspected [MTP: L-A MS XX]].
Robert Underwood Johnson for Century Magazine wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter he’d sent to the Post, referring to the June Century article, “Justice to Continental Authors” in which Johnson “tried to strike the high note of international good will.” Johnson noted he hadn’t “heard a word of grateful appreciation in print from a single American author. I can set the key, but I must not do all the singing” [MTP]. Note: “ans”