The Clemens household, sans Clara, moved to Dublin May 5. Sam may or may not have gone to Fairhaven with Rogers. He arrived in Dublin May 18 from Boston via Harrisville.
“The nearest railway station is distant something like an hour’s drive; it is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line. You can go to New York in six hours per branch line if you change every time you think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the trunk line next day; then you do not get lost.
Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka of Harper’s:
Last January, when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayer had said, three years before, that the New Hampshire highlands was a good place. He was right—it was a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in paint is good for an artist in morals & ink. [George de Forest] Brush is here, too; so is Col. T. W. Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Mr. Secretary [Ethan Allen] Hitchcock; so is [Ernest Flagg] Henderson; so is [Josephus N.] Larned; so is Sumner; so is Franklin MacVeigh [sic MacVeagh] ; so is Joseph L. Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying his house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science, statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals—these are all represented here, yet crime is substantially unknown. [editorial emphasis]
The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among the forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm smooth country roads which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in there, & comfortable. The forests are spider-webbed with these good roads, they go everywhere; but for the help of the guide-boards, the stranger would not arrive anywhere.
The village—Dublin—is bunched together in its own place, but a good telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I have spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on the Boston plan—promptness & courtesy.
The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, & have contenting outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Monadnock, a soaring double hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow—that is to say, it is close at hand.
From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley spreads away to the circling frame of the hills, ranges rises to view & flows, fold upon fold, wave upon wave, soft & blue & unworldly, to the horizon fifty miles away. In these October days Monadnock & the valley & its framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are sumptuously splashed & mottled & be-torched from sky-line to sky-line with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; & when they lie flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music.
August 10, Sam departed Dublin for Boston en route to Hartford and Norfolk, to visit Clara. He departed Norfolk on the 21st and returned to Dublin from Boston on the 22nd. It appears he returned to Norfolk on the 27th, Boston on the 28th and then returned to Dublin.
Sam departed for Boston October 21.