t. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens
went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to
preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little
Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs.
Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in Munich, and somewhat
later Susy also joined them, for Madame Marchesi, the great master of
voice-culture, had told her that she must acquire physique to carry that
voice of hers before she would undertake to teach her.

In spite of his disturbed state of mind Clemens must have completed some
literary work during this period, for we find first mention, in a letter
to Hall, of his immortal defense of Harriet Shelley, a piece of
writing all the more marvelous when we consider the conditions of
its performance. Characteristically, in the same letter, he suddenly
develops a plan for a new enterprise--this time for a magazine which
Arthur Stedman or his father will edit, and the Webster company will
publish as soon as their present burdens are unloaded. But we hear no
more of this project.

But by August he was half beside himself with anxiety. On the 6th he
wrote Hall:

Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you
have been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can
do that--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or
wantonly. I have been overwrought & unsettled in mind by
apprehensions, & that is a thing that is not helpable when one is in
a strange land & sees his resources melt down to a two months'
supply & can't see any sure daylight beyond. The bloody machine
offers but a doubtful outlook--& will still offer nothing much
better for a long time to come; for when the "three weeks" are up,
there will be three months' tinkering to follow, I guess. That is
unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest
one on prophets when it is in an incomplete state that has ever seen
the light.

And three days later:

Great Scott, but it's a long year--for you & me! I never knew the
almanac to drag so. At least not since I was finishing that other
machine.

I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
telegram saying the machine's finished--but when "next week
certainly" suddenly swelled into