They all spent most of their time outdoors at Dollis Hill under those
spreading trees.
Clemens to Twichell in midsummer wrote:
I am the only person who is ever in the house in the daytime, but I
am working & deep in the luxury of it. But there is one tremendous
defect. Livy is all so enchanted with the place & so in love with
it that she doesn't know how she is going to tear herself away from
it.
Much company came to them at Dollis Hill. Friends drove out from London,
and friends from America came often, among them--the Sages, Prof. Willard
Fiske, and Brander Matthews with his family. Such callers were served
with tea and refreshment on the lawn, and lingered, talking and talking,
while the sun got lower and the shadows lengthened, reluctant to leave
that idyllic spot.
"Dollis Hill comes nearer to being a paradise than any other home I ever
occupied," he wrote when the summer was about over.
But there was still a greater attraction than Dollis Hill. Toward the
end of summer they willingly left that paradise, for they had decided at
last to make that home-returning voyage which had invited them so long.
They were all eager enough to go--Clemens more eager than the rest,
though he felt a certain sadness, too, in leaving the tranquil spot which
in a brief summer they had so learned to love.
Writing to W. H. Helm, a London newspaper man who had spent pleasant
hours with him chatting in the shade, he said:
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