August 15 Friday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to Susan Crane.
Susy dear, Livy objected, this afternoon, & said it would be too hard a journey for you & that the hotels are too far away from us (3 miles); but this evening she is low-spirited & wants you; & frankly says the rest of us are not valuable comforters. The truth is, she won’t let us be. We try our best to keep hidden the doctor-secrets, but she is sharp, & penetrating, & hunts us through all our shifts & dodges, & worms everything out of us, & then the result makes her low-spirited. She wants you, & she is right. We mean well, but we make a poor job of it; & I suffer mortification & premature damnation by consequence of my share in it.
I have been over to neighbor Sewall’s (50 yards away) & that is where you will lodge. Lovely people they are—& plain. You will feed with us.
Sam added train times and directions [MTP].
Notes: at various times the Clemenses took two or three rooms in the neighbor Sewell’s home during the crisis with Livy. Sam had taken a room there, as was his habit, to get away to write. The Sewell family: Noah Millard Sewell (1850-1919) had two sons and a daughter: Dr. Millard Freeman Sewell (b.1878), Arthur Eugene Sewell (1882-1956), and Grace Sewell (1880-1935). After leaving York Harbor, Jean Clemens would write Millard and Grace several times from Oct.-Dec. 1902, sending photographs of Quarry Farm and Riverdale.
Sam’s notebook: “The Polecat Dog. / Bummer & Lazarus & Emperor Norton, the Sub-Pioneer Society—I the sole other member. / Chas. Warren Stoddard” [NB 45 TS 23].
Clara Spaulding Stanchfield wrote to Sam from Elmira on mourning paper. “I have just heard of Livy’s illness. If there is anything I can do for her or for you do call upon me, and let me help” [MTP].