1 Barnum first urged the Clemenses on 23 March to pay a visit to his summer home, Waldemere, in Bridgeport, Connecticut: “You must not creep and crawl and sweat out of giving us at least a week’s visit with your wife when the weather is warmer.” He made the invitation more specific on 4 June (both letters in CU-MARK): Barnum had been elected to a one-year term as mayor on 5 April 1875. Waldemere, the second opulent mansion he built in Bridgeport, was completed in 1869, more than ten years after his first one was destroyed in a fire. Two of his daughters by his first wife, the former Charity Hallett, who had died in 1873 lived in cottages on the extensive grounds. Caroline Cordelia (b. 1833) was married to David W. Thompson, a bookkeeper; Pauline (1846–77) was married to Nathan Seeley. Barnum married his much younger second wife, the former Nancy Fish (1850–1927), in September 1874. David Clark, a owner of the Hartford Morning Post, was one of Clemens’s fellow directors the Hartford Accident Insurance Company (see pp. 171–72; Saxon, 35-36, 46, 150, 191, 201, 212, 214, 253, 263, 266, 330, 394 n. 31; Trumbull Geer: 1874, 292; 1875, 294).

2 The Clemenses planned to spend the summer in Newport, Rhode Island, to escape the heat. They did not depart, however, until 31 July.