Susan was raised on her father's thoroughbred farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky and in the strict Victorian homes of her grandmothers.
At the same time, she felt constricted and obligated to live up to a name that carried high expectations in her native Bluegrass region of Kentucky.
On May 5, 1927, at age 29, Susan Clay shocked her family and local society by eloping with a divorced, much older Russian émigré named Vassili (William) Sawitzky (1879 – February 2, 1947).
She wrote articles on Ralph Earl, Abraham Delanoy, and Reuben Moulthrop that were published by the New York Historical Society.
Her earliest published poems and stories appeared in Town & Country, the New York Times, and in local Kentucky publications during the early 1920s.