July 6 Saturday – Sam, Livy, and baby Susy with nursemaid Nellie left Orion and Mollie in charge of the Forest Street house and left to Fenwick Hall Hotel at Saybrook Point, Saybrook, Conn. It was a two-hour train ride from Hartford. Fenwick Hall was completed in 1871 and offered a variety of entertainment, including billiards and bowling. Sam imitated Charles Dickens characters at the nightly hotel socials [Powers, MT A Life 321]. Livy loved the place except for “too many Hartford people.”

From page 50 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891:

On July 6 Sam, Livy, Susy and a nursemaid left to spend the remainder of the summer at the ocean resort Fenwick Hall in New Saybrook, Connecticut, fifty miles and two hours by train south of Hartford on Long Island Sound, Whether by design or coincidence, Cincinnatus Taft registered at Fenwick Hall the same day. Though the Clemenses ostensibly went there for the sea air and a change of scenery, Sam savored these weeks as if he were on holiday. He played billiards and “took part in the tableaux vivants staged in the hotel’s parlor, entertaining the guests” the evening of July 29 “with an inimitable personation of Mrs, Jarley, the wax-works exhibitor in Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop.” According to the Hartford Courant, he became “a great favorite with the ladies, and really the lion of the house.” He also contemplated where he might travel—alone—to begin his next travel book, In late July he decided to “spend my winter either in the rural part of England or in Cuba & Florida—the latter most likely.’ Two weeks later he had determined to vacation in England because “I think a Book on Great Britain w[oul]d be ever so much more interesting than one on Cuba at present.” Livy's mother came to New Saybrook to stay with her daughter and Susy, and on August 21, the day after dining with John Hay and other friends at the Union League Club, Sam sailed from New York Harbor aboard the Cunard luxury liner Scotia for Liverpool. “I do miss him so much and yet I am contented to have him away,” Livy admitted to Mother Fairbanks. He was apparently unable to share her sorrow for their son, and the Atlantic crossing provided little solace.