May 25 Wednesday – Before leaving Venice, Sam wrote to Mrs. Katherine C. Bronson.

Dear Mrs. Bronson:

You are wonderfully good — too good for here below. I thank you ever so much for those books, — which I shall treasure for your sake as well as their own — & I was hoping to see you & say all this with my mouth, & add the good-byes of Mrs. Clemens & me; & I took my daughters along, too, to exhibit them to you; but you were out philandering around & we missed you [MTP].

Also before leaving Venice, Susy Clemens wrote to Louise Brownell, though the letter wasn’t postmarked until May 29, by which time the family had continued on to Lake Como.

We have been in this strangest of strange places since Saturday…[Cotton 101147].

The Clemens party left Venice and endured three days of relentlessly slow rail travel to the western shore of Lake Como and another health resort, Cadenabbia, Italy, another favorite haunt of the British. For this reason an Anglican Church, the very first one on Italian soil, was built and consecrated in 1891.