DEAR JOE,--Yours has this moment arrived--just as I was finishing a note
to poor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in
England was to Stanley's. Lord, how my friends and acquaintances fall
about me now, in my gray-headed days! Vereschagin, Mommsen, Dvorak,
Lenbach, Jokai--all so recently, and now Stanley. I had known Stanley
37 years. Goodness, who is it I haven't known! As a rule the necrologies
find me personally interested--when they treat of old stagers. Generally
when a man dies who is worth cabling, it happens that I have run across
him somewhere, some time or other.
Oh, say! Down by the Laurentian Library there's a marble image that
has been sitting on its pedestal some 450 Years, if my dates are
right--Cosimo I. I've seen the back of it many a time, but not the
front; but yesterday I twisted my head around after we had driven by,
and the profane exclamation burst from my mouth before I could think:
“there's Chauncey Depew!”
I mean to get a photo of it--and use it if it confirms yesterday's
conviction. That's a very nice word from the Catholic Magazine and I am
glad you sent it. I mean to show it to my priest--we are very fond of
him. He is a stealing man, and is also learnedly scientific. He invented
the thing which records the seismatic disturbances, for the peoples of
the earth. And he's an astronomer and has an observatory of his own.
Ah, many's the cry I have, over reflecting that maybe we could have had
Young Harmony for Livy, and didn't have wit enough to think of it.
Speaking of Livy reminds me that your inquiry arrives at a good time
(unberufen) It has been weeks (I don't know how many!) since we could
have said a hopeful word, but this morning Katy came the minute the
day-nurse came on watch and said words of a strange and long-forgotten
sound: “Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens is really and truly better!--anybody
can see it; she sees it herself; and last night at 9 o'clock she said
it.”
There--it is heart-warming, it is splendid, it is sublime; let us
enjoy it, let us make the most of it today--and bet not a farthing on
tomorrow. The tomorrows have nothing for us. Too many times they have
breathed the word of promise to our ear and broken it to our hope. We
take no tomorrow's word any more.
You've done a wonder, Joe: you've written a letter that can be sent in
to Livy--that doesn't often happen, when either a friend or a stranger
writes. You did whirl in a P. S. that wouldn't do, but you wrote it on
a margin of a page in such a way that I was able to clip off the margin
clear across both pages, and now Livy won't perceive that the sheet
isn't the same size it used to was. It was about Aldrich's son, and
I came near forgetting to remove it. It should have been written on a
loose strip and enclosed. That son died on the 5th of March and Aldrich
wrote me on the night before that his minutes were numbered. On the 18th
Livy asked after that patient, and I was prepared, and able to give her
a grateful surprise by telling her “the Aldriches are no longer uneasy
about him.”
I do wish I could have been present and heard Charley Clark. When he
can't light up a dark place nobody can.
With lots of love to you all.
MARK.
Mrs. Clemens had her bad days and her good days-days when there
seemed no ray of light, and others that seemed almost to promise
recovery. The foregoing letter to Twichell, and the one which
follows, to Richard Watson Gilder, reflect the hope and fear that
daily and hourly alternated at Villa Quarto
*****
To Richard Watson Gilder, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
May 12, '04.
DEAR GILDER,--A friend of ours (the Baroness de Nolda) was here this
afternoon and wanted a note of introduction to the Century, for she has
something to sell to you in case you'll want to make her an offer after
seeing a sample of the goods. I said “With pleasure: get the goods
ready, send the same to me, I will have Jean type-write them, then I
will mail them to the Century and tonight I will write the note to Mr.
Gilder and start it along. Also write me a letter embodying what
you have been saying to me about the goods and your proposed plan of
arranging and explaining them, and I will forward that to Gilder too.”
As to the Baroness. She is a German; 30 years old; was married at 17;
is very pretty-indeed I might say very pretty; has a lot of sons (5)
running up from seven to 12 years old. Her husband is a Russian. They
live half the time in Russia and the other half in Florence, and supply
population alternately to the one country and then to the other. Of
course it is a family that speaks languages. This occurs at their
table--I know it by experience: It is Babel come again. The other day,
when no guests were present to keep order, the tribes were all talking
at once, and 6 languages were being traded in; at last the littlest boy
lost his temper and screamed out at the top of his voice, with angry
sobs: “Mais, vraiment, io non capisco gar nichts.”
The Baroness is a little afraid of her English, therefore she will write
her remarks in French--I said there's a plenty of translators in New
York. Examine her samples and drop her a line.
For two entire days, now, we have not been anxious about Mrs. Clemens
(unberufen). After 20 months of bed-ridden solitude and bodily misery
she all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid shrunken shadow, and looks
bright and young and pretty. She remains what she always was, the most
wonderful creature of fortitude, patience, endurance and recuperative
power that ever was. But ah, dear, it won't last; this fiendish malady
will play new treacheries upon her, and I shall go back to my prayers
again--unutterable from any pulpit!
With love to you and yours,
S. L. C.
May 13 10 A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2 minutes
visits per day to the sick room. And found what I have learned to
expect--retrogression, and that pathetic something in the eye which
betrays the secret of a waning hope.
The year of the World's Fair had come, and an invitation from Gov.
Francis, of Missouri, came to Mark Twain in Florence, personally
inviting him to attend the great celebration and carry off first
prize. We may believe that Clemens felt little in the spirit of
humor, but to such an invitation he must send a cheerful, even if
disappointing, answer.
*****
To Gov. Francis, of Missouri:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE,
May 26, 1904.
DEAR GOVERNOR FRANCIS,--It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit
myself at the Great Fair and get a prize, but circumstances beyond my
control have interfered, and I must remain in Florence. Although I
have never taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in
Missouri half a century ago, and I ought to be able to repeat, now, if
I could have a chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling, every
week, and I could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn't
been so much corruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it
several times by trading medals and giving boot. I am willing to give
boot now, if--however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri,
and perhaps it is better so. Nothing ever stops the way it was in this
changeable world. Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be
represented there anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli. You will
find it excellent. Good judges here say it is better than the original.
They say it has all the merits of the original and keeps still, besides.
It sounds like flattery, but it is just true.
I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most
prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen.
Very well, you have indeed earned it: and with it the gratitude of the
State and the nation.
Sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN
It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death
entered Villa Quarto--unexpectedly at last--for with the first June
days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday,
June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had
returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa
with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that
their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months.
Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly
and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that
she was gone.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York.
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
June 6, '94. [1904]
DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say
the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been
cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had
not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her.
They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to
her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her
face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did
not notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are
today!
But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call
her back if I could.
Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle
letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor
Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy.