April 22 Tuesday – In the morning Clara Clemens left for Paris with a chaperone on the German liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. It had been arranged for her to take some singing lessons there, and also to meet Ossip Gabrilowitsch . Though fraught with foreboding about leaving her mother, her future husband had assured her in a letter of Apr. 6 that such “single haunting ideas” were childish and that nothing would happen. Clara would reach Paris about May 1 [My Husband Gabrilowitsch 24-25; NY Times, Apr. 23, p.8, “Summer Tide To Europe”].

Note: A. Hoffman claims Clara “fled to Europe to join Ossip Gabrilowitsch without telling her parents where she was going, why, or when she would return” [443]. Note: this seems to be contradicted by this entry in Livy’s diary, which at the least gives destination and time of return, and by Sam’s letter to Rogers of Apr. 14, 1902.

Livy’s diary: “Clara sailed without us for Europe to be gone three months!!” [MTP: DV161].

Hill observes: “Almost without warning so far as extant documents show, she departed for Paris, where Ossip was, on Apr. 22. She was accompanied by a chaperone, her voice teacher, Mrs. Frieda Ashforth, who, according to Clara, ‘was not entirely left out of the fun Gabrilowitsch and I had together.’ It is possible to speculate about her parents’ attitude toward such liberated behavior (though they canceled their plan to spend the summer of 1902 in Venice, where they would presumably chaperone their daughter). Significantly, however, between Clara’s departure and her reappearance in New York on August 12, there are no extant letters between parents and daughter, no notebook entries referring to Clara or to Gabrilowitsch, no reports to old friends like Howells or Twichell on ‘singing lessons,’ no indications whatever that there was a Clemens daughter named Clara. The only exception is Mrs. Clemens’ report to Mrs. Whitmore that Clara and Mrs. Ashforth were in Europe studying languages: ‘We shall all be very thankful,’ Olivia said, ‘when it is over and she says she will never do it again’” [44-5]. (Editorial emphasis.)