September 26 Saturday – The activities of the day are best described in the letter Sam wrote to Livy at nightfall, at the Hotel Bertrand in La Voult, France:

Land, Livy darling, but I am tired! I got up at 7.30 in Valence & drove ½ hour to the foot of a mountain, climbed it on foot (very steep,) & spent an hour or more in wandering among the acres of ruins of a seldom-visited castle nine or ten hundred years old, perched on that lofty pinnacle & overlooking a vast landscape of plain & river. Returned to the city & spent a long time examining two most curious & ornate dwellings of the Middle Ages; then, at 1.15 set sail, but the Mistral (the storm-wind of the Midi — the Midi is “the south”) struck us & kept us back; at 4 we had made but 18 kilometres & I was tuckered out & sleepy; so we landed at this village, & ever since I have been prowling through its maze of steep & narrow alleys — mere stone stairways 6 feet wide which turn & turn & never arrive at any place…we also prowled through the huge ancient castle that rises out of & above the village & dominates it; & so at last I am in my room & shan’t wait for pitch-dark to come, but shall get immediately to bed & to sleep [LLMT 260-1].

In Ouchy, Livy wrote a letter to Sam and began a second letter which she finished the next day, Sept. 27. The first letter:

Youth Darling: A good letter from you this bright beautiful morning. I am rejoiced that you find Joseph such a comfort and I thought you would find it so. He likes to be a leader and you liketo be led so that is entirely satisfactory. Then he is really devoted to youand that makes it easy for him. I am glad he does not allow you to neglect being rubbed. I believe it will be of great value to you. You do not tell me how your arm is. How is it? I think I should not have enjoyed that long walk so it is better that I am here rather than there. Susy learned to row last night, not that she tried to learn but that she did learn. She thought she whould be awkward the first time and I thought that she probably would be but she was not. She got hold of it almost immediately and did extremely well. We received a dispatch yesterday that Charley had arrived safely at South Hampton. He telegraphs that he is much improved by the voyage.

Your would-be courier is evidently in a constant state of drunkenness. Whether there is anything else the matter with him I do not know but I doubt it. He talked to Clara the other day thinking she was a lady that he knew in California….

…Jean is busy reading “Annie of Geierstein,” she says it is much more interesting that Scott’s books. Now we are going for our morning row, so I must say goodbye for this time

In her second letter this evening, Livy expressed depression, wishing she could see Sam. The children were dancing and she felt it was difficult to get them to rest with something going on every night in the hotel. She wrote of a visit in the morning from Miss Handon while she was with Dr. Normand Smith, “who had brought his children to see our children for two or three hours…” [The Twainian Jan-Feb 1977 p.2]. Note: Livy added to this letter the next day.

J. Carroll Beckwith’s portrait of Sam (made at Onteora in the Catskills during the Clemenses stay there in the summer of 1890) ran in Harper’s Weekly, XXXV p.734 as a woodcut frontspiece, the article covering Beckwith’s life and paintings [Tenney 19].