The proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to part
with it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewheres
so as to let it reciprocate, and will take any reasonable amount for
it above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think it
will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is a
kind of proppity that don't give a cuss for cold storage nohow.
Clearly, however serious Mark Twain regarded his physical condition, he
did not allow it to make him gloomy. He wrote that matters were going
everywhere to his satisfaction; that Clara was happy; that his
household and business affairs no longer troubled him; that his personal
surroundings were of the pleasantest sort. Sometimes he wrote of what he
was reading, and once spoke particularly of Prof. William Lyon Phelps's
Literary Essays, which he said he had been unable to lay down until he
had finished the book.--[To Phelps himself he wrote: “I thank you ever
so much for the book, which I find charming--so charming, indeed, that
I read it through in a single night, & did not regret the lost night's
sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me; & even if I
don't I am proud & well contented, since you think I deserve it.”]
So his days seemed full of comfort. But in March I noticed that he
generally dictated his letters, and once when he sent some small
photographs I thought he looked thinner and older. Still he kept up his
merriment. In one letter he said:
While the matter is in my mind I will remark that if you ever send
me another letter which is not paged at the top I will write you
with my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & without
embarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such a
criminal, to wit, - - - -; you will have to put into words those
dashes because propriety will not allow me to do it myself in my
secretary's hearing. You are forgiven, but don't let it occur
again.
He had still made no mention of his illness; but on the 25th of March he
wrote something of his plans for coming home. He had engaged passage on
the Bermudian for April 23d, he said; and he added:
But don't tell anybody. I don't want it known. I may have to go
sooner if the pain in my breast does not mend its ways pretty
considerable. I don't want to die here, for this is an unkind place
for a person in that condition. I should have to lie in the
undertaker's cellar until the ship would remove me & it is dark down
there & unpleasant.
The Colliers will meet me on the pier, & I may stay with them a week
or two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain. I
don't want to die there. I am growing more and more particular
about the place.
But in the same letter he spoke of plans for the summer, suggesting
that we must look into the magic-lantern possibilities, so that library
entertainments could be given at Stormfield. I confess that this letter,
in spite of its light tone, made me uneasy, and I was tempted to sail
for Bermuda to bring him home. Three days later he wrote again:
I have been having a most uncomfortable time for the past four days
with that breast pain, which turns out to be an affection of the
heart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is to
the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last;
therefore, if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I
may sail for home a week or two earlier than has been proposed.
The same mail that brought this brought a letter from Mr. Allen, who
frankly stated that matters had become very serious indeed. Mr. Clemens
had had some dangerous attacks, and the physicians considered his
condition critical.
These letters arrived April 1st. I went to New York at once and sailed
next morning. Before sailing I consulted with Dr. Quintard, who provided
me with some opiates and instructed me in the use of the hypodermic
needle. He also joined me in a cablegram to the Gabrilowitsches, then in
Italy, advising them to sail without delay.