July 17 and 18 Friday – The Clemens family left Amsterdam in the afternoon and went to The Hague, “stopping off 2 or 3 hours at Harlaam & visiting farm house, dairy, & beautiful country seat.”

Livy wrote about the farm to her mother on July 20, mentioning young Fraulein Korthals:

“She was a wholesome hearty girl of fifteen. She rolled the children in the hay, talked German with them, English with us, Dutch with the dairy woman and also spoke French and a little Italian” [MTNJ 2: 330n73].

Sam also was enthralled by the country and did more art gazing:

Drove through Blumen-something [Bloemendaal] & saw lovely country seats.

No wonder Wm III pined for Holland, the country is so green & lovely, & quiet & pastoral & homelike. Boats sailing through the prairies, & fat cows & quaint windmills everywhere

At the Hague visited Museum & saw Rembrandt’s School of Anatomy & [Paul] Potter’s The Young bull (flies visible under the hairs.) This is absolute nature—in some other pictures too close a copy of nature is called a fault.

Drove out to a country palace were Motley used to visit long at a time with the royal family.

Good portrait of him there. Also some frescos which can’t be told from stone, high–reliefs, across the room. Drove there through the noblest woods I ever saw. [MTNJ 2: 331].