It had been arranged that Katie Leary should bring Jean and Susy to
England. It was expected that they would arrive soon, not later than
the 12th, by which time the others would be established. The travelers
proceeded immediately to London and engaged for the summer a house in
Guildford, modest quarters, for they were still economizing, though
Mark Twain had reason to hope that with the money already earned and the
profits of the book he would write of his travels he could pay himself
free. Altogether, the trip had been prosperous. Now that it was behind
him, his health and spirits had improved. The outlook was brighter.
August 12th came, but it did not bring Katie and the children. A letter
came instead. Clemens long afterward wrote:
It explained that Susy was slightly ill-nothing of consequence. But
we were disquieted and began to cable for later news. This was
Friday. All day no answer--and the ship to leave Southampton next
day at noon. Clara and her mother began packing, to be ready in
case the news should be bad. Finally came a cablegram saying, “Wait
for cablegram in the morning.” This was not satisfactory--not
reassuring. I cabled again, asking that the answer be sent to
Southampton, for the day was now closing. I waited in the post-
office that night till the doors were closed, toward midnight, in
the hope that good news might still come, but there was no message.
We sat silent at home till one in the morning waiting--waiting for
we knew not what. Then we took the earlier morning train, and when
we reached Southampton the message was there. It said the recovery
would be long but certain. This was a great relief to me, but not
to my wife. She was frightened. She and Clara went aboard the
steamer at once and sailed for America, to nurse Susy. I remained
behind to search for another and larger house in Guildford.
That was the 15th of August, 1896. Three days later, when my wife
and Clara were about half-way across the ocean, I was standing in
our dining-room, thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram
was put into my hand. It said, “Susy was peacefully released
to-day.”
Some of those who in later years wondered at Mark Twain's occasional
attitude of pessimism and bitterness toward all creation, when his
natural instinct lay all the other way, may find here some reasons
in his logic of gloom. For years he and his had been fighting various
impending disasters. In the end he had torn his family apart and set
out on a weary pilgrimage to pay, for long financial unwisdom, a heavy
price--a penance in which all, without complaint, had joined. Now, just
when it seemed about ended, when they were ready to unite and be happy
once more, when he could hold up his head among his fellows--in this
moment of supreme triumph had come the message that Susy's lovely and
blameless life was ended. There are not many greater dramas in fiction
or in history than this. The wonder is not that Mark Twain so often
preached the doctrine of despair during his later life, but that he did
not exemplify it--that he did not become a misanthrope in fact.
Mark Twain's life had contained other tragedies, but no other that
equaled this one. This time none of the elements were lacking--not the
smallest detail. The dead girl had been his heart's pride; it was a year
since he had seen her face, and now by this word he knew that he would
never see it again. The blow had found him alone absolutely alone among
strangers--those others--half-way across the ocean, drawing nearer
and nearer to it, and he with no way to warn them, to prepare them, to
comfort them.
Clemens sought no comfort for himself. Just as nearly forty years before
he had writhed in self-accusation for the death of his younger brother,
and as later he held himself to blame for the death of his infant son,
so now he crucified himself as the slayer of Susy. To Mrs. Clemens he
poured himself out in a letter in which he charged himself categorically
as being wholly and solely responsible for the tragedy, detailing step
by step with fearful reality his mistakes and weaknesses which had led
to their downfall, the separation from Susy, and this final incredible
disaster. Only a human being, he said, could have done these things.
Susy Clemens had died in the old Hartford home. She had been well for
a time at Quarry Farm, well and happy, but during the summer of '96
she had become restless, nervous, and unlike herself in many ways. Her
health seemed to be gradually failing, and she renewed the old interest
in mental science, always with the approval of her parents. Clemens had
great faith in mind over matter, and Mrs. Clemens also believed that
Susy's high-strung nature was especially calculated to receive benefit
from a serene and confident mental attitude. From Bombay, in January,
she wrote Mrs. Crane:
I am very glad indeed that Susy has taken up Mental Science, and I do
hope it may do her as much good as she hopes. Last winter we were so
very anxious to have her get hold of it, and even felt at one time that
we must go to America on purpose to have her have the treatment, so it
all seems very fortunate that it should have come about as it has this
winter.
Just how much or how little Susy was helped by this treatment cannot be
known. Like Stevenson, she had “a soul of flame in a body of gauze,” a
body to be guarded through the spirit. She worked continuously at her
singing and undoubtedly overdid herself. Early in the year she went over
to Hartford to pay some good-by visit, remaining most of the time in the
home of Charles Dudley Warner, working hard at her singing. Her health
did not improve, and when Katie Leary went to Hartford to arrange for
their departure she was startled at the change in her.
“Miss Susy; you are sick,” she said. “You must have the doctor come.”
Susy refused at first, but she grew worse and the doctor was sent for.
He thought her case not very serious--the result, he said, of overwork.
He prescribed some soothing remedies, and advised that she be kept very
quiet, away from company, and that she be taken to her own home, which
was but a step away. It was then that the letter was written and the
first cable sent to England. Mrs. Crane was summoned from Elmira, also
Charles Langdon. Mr. Twichell was notified and came down from his summer
place in the Adirondacks.
Susy did not improve. She became rapidly worse, and a few days later
the doctor pronounced her ailment meningitis. This was on the 15th of
August--that hot, terrible August of 1896. Susy's fever increased and
she wandered through the burning rooms in delirium and pain; then her
sight left her, an effect of the disease. She lay down at last, and
once, when Katie Leary was near her, she put her hands on Katie's
face and said, “mama.” She did not speak after that, but sank into
unconsciousness, and on the evening of Tuesday, August 18th, the flame
went out forever.
To Twichell Clemens wrote of it:
Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying
eyes rested upon no thing that was strange to them, but only upon
things which they had known & loved always & which had made her
young years glad; & she had you & Sue & Katie & & John & Ellen.
This was happy fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.
If she had died in another house--well, I think I could not have
borne that. To us our house was not unsentient matter--it had a
heart & a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes &
deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived
in its grace & in the peace of its benediction. We never came home
from an absence that its face did not light up & speak out its
eloquent welcome--& we could not enter it unmoved. And could we
now? oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.
A tugboat with Dr. Rice, Mr. Twichell, and other friends of the family
went down the bay to meet the arriving vessel with Mrs. Clemens and
Clara on board. It was night when the ship arrived, and they did not
show themselves until morning; then at first to Clara. There had been
little need to formulate a message--their presence there was enough--and
when a moment later Clara returned to the stateroom her mother looked
into her face and she also knew. Susy already had been taken to Elmira,
and at half past ten that night Mrs. Clemens and Clara arrived there by
the through train--the same train and in the same coach which they had
taken one year and one month before on their journey westward around the
world.
And again Susy was there, not waving her welcome in the glare of the
lights as she had waved her farewell to us thirteen months before, but
lying white and fair in her coffin in the house where she was born.
They buried her with the Langdon relatives and the little brother, and
ordered a headstone with some lines which they had found in Australia:
Warm summer sun shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind blow softly here;
Green sod above lie light, lie light
Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.
--[These lines at first were generally attributed to Clemens himself.
When this was reported to him he ordered the name of the Australian
poet, Robert Richardson, cut beneath them. The word “southern” in the
original read “northern,” as in Australia, the warm wind is from the
north. Richardson died in England in 1901.]