Clara Clemens was married that autumn to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Russian
pianist, and presently sailed for Europe, where they would make their
home. Jean Clemens was now head of the house, and what with her various
duties and poor health, her burden was too heavy. She had a passion for
animal life of every kind, and in some farm-buildings at one corner of
the estate had set up quite an establishment of chickens and domestic
animals. She was fond of giving these her personal attention, and this,
with her house direction and secretarial work, gave her little time for
rest. I tried to relieve her of a share of the secretarial work, but she
was ambitious and faithful. Still, her condition did not seem critical.
I stayed at Stormfield, now, most of the time--nights as well as days
--for the dull weather had come and Mark Twain found the house rather
lonely. In November he had an impulse to go to Bermuda, and we spent a
month in the warm light of that summer island, returning a week before
the Christmas holidays. And just then came Mark Twain's last great
tragedy--the death of his daughter Jean.
The holidays had added heavily to Jean's labors. Out of her generous
heart she had planned gifts for everybody--had hurried to and from the
city for her purchases, and in the loggia set up a beautiful Christmas
tree. Meantime she had contracted a heavy cold. Her trouble was
epilepsy, and all this was bad for her. On the morning of December 24,
she died, suddenly, from the shock of a cold bath.
Below, in the loggia, drenched with tinsel, stood the tree, and heaped
about it the packages of gifts which that day she had meant to open and
put in place. Nobody had been overlooked.
Jean was taken to Elmira for burial. Her father, unable to make the
winter journey, remained behind. Her cousin, Jervis Langdon, came for
her.
It was six in the evening when she went away. A soft, heavy snow was
falling, and the gloom of the short day was closing in. There was not
the least noise, the whole world was muffled. The lanterns shone out the
open door, and at an upper window, the light gleaming on his white hair,
her father watched her going away from him for the last time. Later he
wrote:
"From my window I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the
road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not
come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were
babies together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to
her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side
once more, in the company of Susy and Langdon."