July 6 Thursday – In London, England, Sam wrote to Edmund W. Gosse (1849-1928), English poet, essayist and art critic, about the Clemens family’s travel plans, and the difficulties of a visit anytime soon:

Indeed I should like that ever so much, but I don’t know how to manage it. As I understand it we sail straight from Tilbury to Godalmightyville (if that is the correct translation of Gottenburg [Göteborg]…without stopping on the way. Our destination is Sanna, Rosendale, Sweden, where we are to remain several months & devote ourselves daily to the “movement cure”—the whole four of us. It will not do for me to interrupt my cure, for I am training for the ministry or the bull-ring (according to results when I get through.) If I come out mentally reformed, the former; if physically only, the latter. But couldn’t I stop there on my way back to England in the autumn? … I can’t really find out what I can do until I get to Sanna & inquire into things a little…Very, very glad I met you! With kindest regards… [MTP: Waiting For Godot Books catalogs, 23 January 1995, Item 54]. Note: Gosse at this time was a lecturer of English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. See Gribben p.269; Sam had purchased Gosse’s biography of Thomas Gray in 1884.

Sam also wrote to Percy Spalding, asking that he send copies of JA and HF to Miss Adela Brooke for him and also to put this item into print: “Mark Twain & family sailed for Sweden yesterday in the steamer Thorsten”  [MTP]. Note: This may be Sam’s misinformation on the date; or he may have predated this note. The earliest date of a letter from Sanna, Sweden is possibly July 10.

Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Sam’s Aug. 3 reply .