No letters written between 4 August and 10 September 1873 have been found. Several letters by Olivia, however, provide an outline of the Clemenses’ movements during that time. On Friday, 15 August, she wrote her mother from Edinburgh, “We go next Monday up into the Trossacs for two days leaving Nellie and Susie here, then we expect to go to Glasgow on Thursday sailing for Belfast, Ireland, on Saturday then we shall get back to London in about two weeks—” (10–15 Aug 73, CtHMTH). The trip to the Trossachs, a “richly-wooded and romantic valley” east of Loch Katrine (about twenty miles north of Glasgow), was evidently abandoned, since Olivia wrote to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, also on 15 August, “We are to be here until next week when we shall go to Glasgow for a day or two and then sail for Ireland where we shall be for about two weeks and then back to London—” (NPV; Baedeker 1901, 530). On 24 August Olivia wrote to Susan Crane: “We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere regret; we have had such a delightful stay here—we do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and his sister, thinking that we shall probably never see them again” ( MTL , 1:488). Her presentiment was correct: although the Clemenses corresponded affectionately with Brown, they never met him again.
After a brief stay in Glasgow, the Clemens party endured a rough ferry trip to Belfast on 28 August:
We had a very disagreeable trip from Glasgow to Belfast, we were all except Mr Clemens wretchedly sick, Susie and all. I think we suffered more in that one day than in the ten days crossing the Atlantic.
We reached Belfast about eight in the evening and before we had finished our supper a Mr Finlay son-in-law to the Mr Russel that we stoped with near Melrose called, he was a delightful man and did do everything he possibly could to make our stay in Belfast pleasant, his wife was absent from the city but we dined with him and through him were invited out to dinner twice beside to a most delightful house, an Irish gentlemans of great wealth and with a most charming home and delightful family—(OLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 31 Aug and 2 Sept 73, CtHMTH)
On 1 September the travelers proceeded to Dublin, where they stayed at the Shelbourne Hotel for several days (22 and 25 Sept 73 to Brownclick to open link; London Court Journal, 6 Sept 73, 1055). From there they evidently traveled by ferry directly across the Irish Sea to Liverpool, and then south less than twenty miles to Chester, described in Baedeker’s Great Britain as “perhaps the most quaint and mediæval-looking town in England” for a brief visit (Baedeker 1901, 284, 339; MTB , 1:488). From Chester they traveled another thirty-five miles further south to Shrewsbury, where they were the guests of Reginald Cholmondeley (1826–96) at nearby Condover Hall, a “fine Elizabethan house with characteristic gardens” (Murray, 374; see the next page) and by 9 September had returned to London. In chapter 15 of Following the Equator Clemens published an account of Cholmondeley’s invitation (giving his name as “Bascom”):
In 1873 I arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by a name not familiar to me. . . . This note, of about six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer’s country-place in England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station. . . .
This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p. m. train from London, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days later—train specified. And there were these words: “Speak to Tom Hughes.”
I showed the note to the author of “Tom Brown at Rugby,” and he said:—
“Accept, and be thankful.”
He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall Condover was a particularly fine example of the stately manorial mansion of Elizabeth’s days, and that it was a house worth going a long way to see—like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition, liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort coming and going. (SLC 1897, 158–59)
Surviving letters, however, tell a different story. Clemens had evidently met Cholmondeley during his 1872 visit to England, since on 11 April 1873, before the Clemenses left for England, Cholmondeley wrote a letter offering them passage to Liverpool on his yacht in the first week in May, and reminding them, “I expect you all at Condover the first week in August” (CU-MARK). Cholmondeley renewed the invitation in a letter of 2 August (CU-MARK), which Clemens answered (in a letter now lost) from Edinburgh. On 6 August Cholmondeley wrote again, confirming their plan to arrive “at the end of August or beginning of September,” and mentioning his intention to include Tom Hughes and his wife in the party (CU-MARK). Cholmondeley, a childless widower, was an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an amateur naturalist. Many years later, after he had died impecunious, his niece described him as “sweet-tempered, genial, and of majestic appearance, but totally unaccustomed to small households and restricted means” (Cholmondeley, 23; Burke 1900, 292).
