April 22 Sunday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton, advising that he would not be able to stay with him Apr. 25 and attend the Salvini banquet on Apr. 27 due to Livy’s condition.

“We have a professional nurse, but I am the main nurse, & most not leave the deck until I can be better spared than at present. Mrs. Clemens is gathering strength, & is steadily improving—sits up some, now—but needs & requires constant looking after. It is the slowest improvement I ever saw” [MTP].

From Lilly Warner’s pen:

Daisy [her daughter, Margaret] is as well as a kitten—and as happy—now out walking with her “Clicky Clemens” [Clara]

Livy is better and better—and the Gerhardt baby, over in Paris, a month old, is named Olivia for her [Salsbury 164].

In Venice, Italy, Howells wrote to Sam about the Mallory brothers of Madison Square Theatre and the negotiations under way for their play, Colonel Sellers as a Scientist. Howells was sickened by the “rags and dirt” of Venice and guessed he hadn’t begun to “see the misery of it when I lived here.” He told of a woman who carried two books around, the Bible and Roughing It [MTHL 1: 430].