Stormfield was solemn and empty without Mark Twain; but he wrote by every steamer, at first with his own hand, and during the last week by the hand of one of his enlisted secretaries—some member of the Allen family usually Helen. His letters were full of brightness and pleasantry—always concerned more or less with business matters, though he was no longer disturbed by them, for Bermuda was too peaceful and too far away, and, besides, he had faith in the Mark Twain Company's ability to look after his affairs. I cannot do better, I believe, than to offer some portions of these letters here.
He reached Bermuda on the 7th of January, 1910, and on the 12th he wrote:
Again I am living the ideal life. There is nothing to mar it butthe bloody-minded bandit Arthur,—[A small playmate of Helen's ofwhom Clemens pretended to be fiercely jealous. Once he wrote amemorandum to Helen: “Let Arthur read this book. There is a page init that is poisoned.”]—who still fetches and carries Helen.Presently he will be found drowned. Claude comes to Bay House twicea day to see if I need any service. He is invaluable. There was amilitary lecture last night at the Officers' Mess Prospect; as thelecturer honored me with a special urgent invitation, and said hewanted to lecture to me particularly, I naturally took Helen and hermother into the private carriage and went.As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the Governor came tome& was very cordial. I “met up” with that charming Colonel Chapman[we had known him on the previous visit] and other officers of theregiment & had a good time.
A few days later he wrote:
Thanks for your letter & for its contenting news of the situation inthat foreign & far-off & vaguely remembered country where you &Loomis & Lark and other beloved friends are.I had a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous & wantsme well & watchfully taken care of. My, my, she ought to see Helen& her parents & Claude administer that trust. Also she says, “Ihope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon.”I am writing her & I know you will respond to your part of herprayer. She is pretty desolate now after Jean's emancipation—theonly kindness that God ever did that poor, unoffending child in allher hard life.Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter.
The “gorgeous letter” mentioned was an appreciation of his recent Bazar article, “The Turning-Point in My Life,” and here follows:
January 18, 1910.DEAR CLEMENS,—While your wonderful words are warm in my mind yet Iwant to tell you what you know already: that you never wroteanything greater, finer, than that turning-point paper of yours.I shall feel it honor enough if they put on my tombstone “He wasborn in the same century and general section of Middle Westerncountry with Dr. S. L. Clemens, Oxon., and had his degree threeyears before him through a mistake of the University.”I hope you are worse. You will never be riper for a purelyintellectual life, and it is a pity to have you lagging along with aworn-out material body on top of your soul.Yours ever,W. D. HOWELLS.
On the margin of this letter Clemens had written:
I reckon this spontaneous outburst from the first critic of the dayis good to keep, ain't it, Paine?
January 24th he wrote again of his contentment:
Life continues here the same as usual. There isn't a fault in it—good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day & every daywithout a break. I know familiarly several very satisfactory people& meet them frequently: Mr. Hamilton, the Sloanes, Mr. & Mrs. Fells,Miss Waterman, & so on. I shouldn't know how to go about betteringmy situation.
On February 5th he wrote that the climate and condition of his health might require him to stay in Bermuda pretty continuously, but that he wished Stormfield kept open so that he might come to it at any time. And he added:
Yesterday Mr. Allen took us on an excursion in Mr. Hamilton's bigmotor-boat. Present: Mrs. Allen, Mr. & Mrs. & Miss Sloane, Helen,Mildred Howells, Claude, & me. Several hours' swift skimming overravishing blue seas, a brilliant sun; also a couple of hours ofpicnicking & lazying under the cedars in a secluded place.The Orotava is arriving with 260 passengers—I shall get letters byher, no doubt.P. S.—Please send me the Standard Unabridged that is on the table inmy bedroom. I have no dictionary here.
There is no mention in any of these letters of his trouble; but he washaving occasional spasms of pain, though in that soft climate theywould seem to have come with less frequency, and there was so little todisturb him, and much that contributed to his peace. Among the callersat the Bay House to see him was Woodrow Wilson, and the two put in somepleasant hours at miniature golf, “putting” on the Allen lawn. Of coursea catastrophe would come along now and then—such things could notalways be guarded against. In a letter toward the end of February hewrote: It is 2.30 in the morning & I am writing because I can't sleep.I can't sleep because a professional pianist is coming to-morrowafternoon to play for me. My God! I wouldn't allow Paderewski orGabrilowitsch to do that. I would rather have a leg amputated.I knew he was coming, but I never dreamed it was to play for me.When I heard the horrible news 4 hours ago, be d—-d if I didn'tcome near screaming. I meant to slip out and be absent, but now Ican't. Don't pray for me. The thing is just as d—-d bad as it canbe already.
Clemens's love for music did not include the piano, except for very gentle melodies, and he probably did not anticipate these from a professional player. He did not report the sequel of the matter; but it is likely that his imagination had discounted its tortures. Sometimes his letters were pure nonsense. Once he sent a sheet, on one side of which was written:
BAY HOUSE,March s, 1910.Received of S. L. C.Two Dollars and Forty Centsin return for my promise to believe everything he sayshereafter.HELEN S. ALLEN.
and on the reverse:
FOR SALEThe proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to partwith it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewheresso as to let it reciprocate, and will take any reasonable amount forit above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think itwill not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is akind 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 sendme another letter which is not paged at the top I will write youwith my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & withoutembarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such acriminal, to wit, - - - -; you will have to put into words thosedashes because propriety will not allow me to do it myself in mysecretary's hearing. You are forgiven, but don't let it occuragain.
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 gosooner if the pain in my breast does not mend its ways prettyconsiderable. I don't want to die here, for this is an unkind placefor a person in that condition. I should have to lie in theundertaker's cellar until the ship would remove me & it is dark downthere & unpleasant.The Colliers will meet me on the pier, & I may stay with them a weekor two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain. Idon't want to die there. I am growing more and more particularabout 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 dayswith that breast pain, which turns out to be an affection of theheart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is tothe effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last;therefore, if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition Imay 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.
I sent no word to Bermuda that I was coming, and when on the second morning I arrived at Hamilton, I stepped quickly ashore from the tender and hurried to Bay House. The doors were all open, as they usually are in that summer island, and no one was visible. I was familiar with the place, and, without knocking, I went through to the room occupied by Mark Twain. As I entered I saw that he was alone, sitting in a large chair, clad in the familiar dressing-gown.
Bay House stands upon the water, and the morning light, reflected in at the window, had an unusual quality. He was not yet shaven, and he seemed unnaturally pale and gray; certainly he was much thinner. I was too startled, for the moment, to say anything. When he turned and saw me he seemed a little dazed.
“Why,” he said, holding out his hand, “you didn't tell us you were coming.”
“No,” I said, “it is rather sudden. I didn't quite like the sound of your last letters.”
“But those were not serious,” he protested. “You shouldn't have come on my account.”
I said then that I had come on my own account; that I had felt the need of recreation, and had decided to run down and come home with him.
“That's—very—good,” he said, in his slow, gentle fashion. “Now I'm glad to see you.”
His breakfast came in and he ate with an appetite.
When he had been shaved and freshly propped tip in his pillows it seemed to me, after all, that I must have been mistaken in thinking him so changed. Certainly he was thinner, but his color was fine, his eyes were bright; he had no appearance of a man whose life was believed to be in danger. He told me then of the fierce attacks he had gone through, how the pains had torn at him, and how it had been necessary for him to have hypodermic injections, which he amusingly termed “hypnotic injunctions” and “subcutaneous applications,” and he had his humor out of it, as of course he must have, even though Death should stand there in person.
From Mr. and Mrs. Allen and from the physician I learned how slender had been his chances and how uncertain were the days ahead. Mr. Allen had already engaged passage on the Oceana for the 12th, and the one purpose now was to get him physically in condition for the trip.
How devoted those kind friends had been to him! They had devised every imaginable thing for his comfort. Mr. Allen had rigged an electric bell which connected with his own room, so that he could be aroused instantly at any hour of the night. Clemens had refused to have a nurse, for it was only during the period of his extreme suffering that he needed any one, and he did not wish to have a nurse always around. When the pains were gone he was as bright and cheerful, and, seemingly, as well as ever.
On the afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way. He had been rereading Macaulay, he said, and spoke at considerable length of the hypocrisy and intrigue of the English court under James II. He spoke, too, of the Redding Library. I had sold for him that portion of the land where Jean's farm-house had stood, and it was in his mind to use the money for some sort of a memorial to Jean. I had written, suggesting that perhaps he would like to put up a small library building, as the Adams lot faced the corner where Jean had passed every day when she rode to the station for the mail. He had been thinking this over, he said, and wished the idea carried out. He asked me to write at once to his lawyer, Mr. Lark, and have a paper prepared appointing trustees for a memorial library fund.
The pain did not trouble him that afternoon, nor during several succeeding days. He was gay and quite himself, and he often went out on the lawn; but we did not drive out again. For the most part, he sat propped up in his bed, reading or smoking, or talking in the old way; and as I looked at him he seemed so full of vigor and the joy of life that I could not convince myself that he would not outlive us all. I found that he had been really very much alive during those three months—too much for his own good, sometimes—for he had not been careful of his hours or his diet, and had suffered in consequence.
He had not been writing, though he had scribbled some playful valentines and he had amused himself one day by preparing a chapter of advice—for me it appeared—which, after reading it aloud to the Allens and receiving their approval, he declared he intended to have printed for my benefit. As it would seem to have been the last bit of continued writing he ever did, and because it is characteristic and amusing, a few paragraphs may be admitted. The “advice” is concerning deportment on reaching the Gate which St. Peter is supposed to guard—
Upon arrival do not speak to St. Peter until spoken to. It is notyour place to begin.Do not begin any remark with “Say.”When applying for a ticket avoid trying to make conversation. Ifyou must talk let the weather alone. St. Peter cares not a damn forthe weather. And don't ask him what time the 4.30 train goes; therearen't any trains in heaven, except through trains, and the lessinformation you get about them the better for you.You can ask him for his autograph—there is no harm in that—but becareful and don't remark that it is one of the penalties ofgreatness. He has heard that before.Don't try to kodak him. Hell is full of people who have made thatmistake.Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merityou would stay out and the dog would go in.You will be wanting to slip down at night and smuggle water to thosepoor little chaps (the infant damned), but don't you try it. Youwould be caught, and nobody in heaven would respect you after that.Explain to Helen why I don't come. If you can.
There were several pages of this counsel. One paragraph was written in shorthand. I meant to ask him to translate it; but there were many other things to think of, and I did not remember.
I spent most of each day with him, merely sitting by the bed and reading while he himself read or dozed. His nights were wakeful—he found it easier to sleep by day—and he liked to think that some one was there. He became interested in Hardy's Jude, and spoke of it with high approval, urging me to read it. He dwelt a good deal on the morals of it, or rather on the lack of them. He followed the tale to the end, finishing it the afternoon before we sailed. It was his last continuous reading. I noticed, when he slept, that his breathing was difficult, and I could see from day to day that he did not improve; but each evening he would be gay and lively, and he liked the entire family to gather around, while he became really hilarious over the various happenings of the day. It was only a few days before we sailed that the very severe attacks returned. The night of the 8th was a hard one. The doctors were summoned, and it was only after repeated injections of morphine that the pain had been eased. When I returned in the early morning he was sitting in his chair trying to sing, after his old morning habit. He took my hand and said:
“Well, I had a picturesque night. Every pain I had was on exhibition.”
He looked out the window at the sunlight on the bay and green dotted islands. “'Sparkling and bright in the liquid light,'” he quoted. “That's Hoffman. Anything left of Hoffman?”
“No,” I said.
“I must watch for the Bermudian and see if she salutes,” he said, presently. “The captain knows I am here sick, and he blows two short whistles just as they come up behind that little island. Those are for me.”
He said he could breathe easier if he could lean forward, and I placed a card-table in front of him. His breakfast came in, and a little later he became quite gay. He drifted to Macaulay again, and spoke of King James's plot to assassinate William II., and how the clergy had brought themselves to see that there was no difference between killing a king in battle and by assassination. He had taken his seat by the window to watch for the Bermudian. She came down the bay presently, her bright red stacks towering vividly above the green island. It was a brilliant morning, the sky and the water a marvelous blue. He watched her anxiously and without speaking. Suddenly there were two white puffs of steam, and two short, hoarse notes went up from her.
“Those are for me,” he said, his face full of contentment. “Captain Fraser does not forget me.”
There followed another bad night. My room was only a little distance away, and Claude came for me. I do not think any of us thought he would survive it; but he slept at last, or at least dozed. In the morning he said:
“That breast pain stands watch all night and the short breath all day. I am losing enough sleep to supply a worn-out army. I want a jugful of that hypnotic injunction every night and every morning.”
We began to fear now that he would not be able to sail on the 12th; but by great good-fortune he had wonderfully improved by the 12th, so much so that I began to believe, if once he could be in Stormfield, where the air was more vigorous, he might easily survive the summer. The humid atmosphere of the season increased the difficulty of his breathing.
That evening he was unusually merry. Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Helen and myself went in to wish him good night. He was loath to let us leave, but was reminded that he would sail in the morning, and that the doctor had insisted that he must be quiet and lie still in bed and rest. He was never one to be very obedient. A little later Mrs. Allen and I, in the sitting-room, heard some one walking softly outside on the veranda. We went out there, and he was marching up and down in his dressing-gown as unconcerned as if he were not an invalid at all. He hadn't felt sleepy, he said, and thought a little exercise would do him good. Perhaps it did, for he slept soundly that night—a great blessing.
Mr. Allen had chartered a special tug to come to Bay House landing in the morning and take him to the ship. He was carried in a little hand-chair to the tug, and all the way out he seemed light-spirited, anything but an invalid: The sailors carried him again in the chair to his state-room, and he bade those dear Bermuda friends good-by, and we sailed away.
As long as I remember anything I shall remember the forty-eight hours of that homeward voyage. It was a brief two days as time is measured; but as time is lived it has taken its place among those unmeasured periods by the side of which even years do not count.
At first he seemed quite his natural self, and asked for a catalogue of the ship's library, and selected some memoirs of the Countess of Cardigan for his reading. He asked also for the second volume of Carlyle's French Revolution, which he had with him. But we ran immediately into the more humid, more oppressive air of the Gulf Stream, and his breathing became at first difficult, then next to impossible. There were two large port-holes, which I opened; but presently he suggested that it would be better outside. It was only a step to the main-deck, and no passengers were there. I had a steamer-chair brought, and with Claude supported him to it and bundled him with rugs; but it had grown damp and chilly, and his breathing did not improve. It seemed to me that the end might come at any moment, and this thought was in his mind, too, for once in the effort for breath he managed to say:
“I am going—I shall be gone in a moment.”
Breath came; but I realized then that even his cabin was better than this. I steadied him back to his berth and shut out most of that deadly dampness. He asked for the “hypnotic 'injunction” (for his humor never left him), and though it was not yet the hour prescribed I could not deny it. It was impossible for him to lie down, even to recline, without great distress. The opiate made him drowsy, and he longed for the relief of sleep; but when it seemed about to possess him the struggle for air would bring him upright.
During the more comfortable moments he spoke quite in the old way, and time and again made an effort to read, and reached for his pipe or a cigar which lay in the little berth hammock at his side. I held the match, and he would take a puff or two with satisfaction. Then the peace of it would bring drowsiness, and while I supported him there would come a few moments, perhaps, of precious sleep. Only a few moments, for the devil of suffocation was always lying in wait to bring him back for fresh tortures. Over and over again this was repeated, varied by him being steadied on his feet or sitting on the couch opposite the berth. In spite of his suffering, two dominant characteristics remained—the sense of humor, and tender consideration for another.
Once when the ship rolled and his hat fell from the hook, and made the circuit of the cabin floor, he said:
“The ship is passing the hat.”
Again he said:
“I am sorry for you, Paine, but I can't help it—I can't hurry this dying business. Can't you give me enough of the hypnotic injunction to put an end to me?”
He thought if I could arrange the pillows so he could sit straight up it would not be necessary to support him, and then I could sit on the couch and read while he tried to doze. He wanted me to read Jude, he said, so we could talk about it. I got all the pillows I could and built them up around him, and sat down with the book, and this seemed to give him contentment. He would doze off a little and then come up with a start, his piercing, agate eyes searching me out to see if I was still there. Over and over—twenty times in an hour—this was repeated. When I could deny him no longer I administered the opiate, but it never completely possessed him or gave him entire relief.
As I looked at him there, so reduced in his estate, I could not but remember all the labor of his years, and all the splendid honor which the world had paid to him. Something of this may have entered his mind, too, for once, when I offered him some of the milder remedies which we had brought, he said:
“After forty years of public effort I have become just a target for medicines.”
The program of change from berth to the floor, from floor to the couch, from the couch back to the berth among the pillows, was repeated again and again, he always thinking of the trouble he might be making, rarely uttering any complaint; but once he said:
“I never guessed that I was not going to outlive John Bigelow.” And again:
“This is such a mysterious disease. If we only had a bill of particulars we'd have something to swear at.”
Time and again he picked up Carlyle or the Cardigan Memoirs, and read, or seemed to read, a few lines; but then the drowsiness would come and the book would fall. Time and again he attempted to smoke, or in his drowse simulated the motion of placing a cigar to his lips and puffing in the old way.
Two dreams beset him in his momentary slumber—one of a play in which the title-role of the general manager was always unfilled. He spoke of this now and then when it had passed, and it seemed to amuse him. The other was a discomfort: a college assembly was attempting to confer upon him some degree which he did not want. Once, half roused, he looked at me searchingly and asked:
“Isn't there something I can resign and be out of all this? They keep trying to confer that degree upon me and I don't want it.” Then realizing, he said: “I am like a bird in a cage: always expecting to get out, and always beaten back by the wires.” And, somewhat later: “Oh, it is such a mystery, and it takes so long.”
Toward the evening of the first day, when it grew dark outside, he asked:
“How long have we been on this voyage?”
I answered that this was the end of the first day.
“How many more are there?” he asked.
“Only one, and two nights.”
“We'll never make it,” he said. “It's an eternity.”
“But we must on Clara's account,” I told him, and I estimated that Clara would be more than half-way across the ocean by now.
“It is a losing race,” he said; “no ship can outsail death.”
It has been written—I do not know with what proof—that certain great dissenters have recanted with the approach of death—have become weak, and afraid to ignore old traditions in the face of the great mystery. I wish to write here that Mark Twain, as he neared the end, showed never a single tremor of fear or even of reluctance. I have dwelt upon these hours when suffering was upon him, and death the imminent shadow, in order to show that at the end he was as he had always been, neither more nor less, and never less than brave.
Once, during a moment when he was comfortable and quite himself, he said, earnestly:
“When I seem to be dying I don't want to be stimulated back to life. I want to be made comfortable to go.”
There was not a vestige of hesitation; there was no grasping at straws, no suggestion of dread.
Somehow those two days and nights went by. Once, when he was partially relieved by the opiate, I slept, while Claude watched; and again, in the fading end of the last night, when we had passed at length into the cold, bracing northern air, and breath had come back to him, and with it sleep.
Relatives, physicians, and news-gatherers were at the dock to welcome him. He was awake, and the northern air had brightened him, though it was the chill, I suppose, that brought on the pains in his breast, which, fortunately, he had escaped during the voyage. It was not a prolonged attack, and it was, blessedly, the last one.
An invalid-carriage had been provided, and a compartment secured on the afternoon express to Redding—the same train that had taken him there two years before. Dr. Robert H. Halsey and Dr. Edward Quintard attended him, and he made the journey really in cheerful comfort, for he could breathe now, and in the relief came back old interests. Half reclining on the couch, he looked through the afternoon papers. It happened curiously that Charles Harvey Genung, who, something more than four years earlier, had been so largely responsible for my association with Mark Twain, was on the same train, in the same coach, bound for his country-place at New Hartford.
Lounsbury was waiting with the carriage, and on that still, sweet April evening we drove him to Stormfield much as we had driven him two years before. Now and then he mentioned the apparent backwardness of the season, for only a few of the trees were beginning to show their green. As we drove into the lane that led to the Stormfield entrance, he said:
“Can we see where you have built your billiard-room?”
The gable showed above the trees, and I pointed it out to him.
“It looks quite imposing,” he said.
I think it was the last outside interest he ever showed in anything. He had been carried from the ship and from the train, but when we drew up to Stormfield, where Mrs. Paine, with Katie Leary and others of the household, was waiting to greet him, he stepped from the carriage alone with something of his old lightness, and with all his old courtliness, and offered each one his hand. Then, in the canvas chair which we had brought, Claude and I carried him up-stairs to his room and delivered him to the physicians, and to the comforts and blessed air of home. This was Thursday evening, April 14, 1910.
There would be two days more before Ossip and Clara Gabrilowitsch could arrive. Clemens remained fairly bright and comfortable during this interval, though he clearly was not improving. The physicians denied him the morphine, now, as he no longer suffered acutely. But he craved it, and once, when I went in, he said, rather mournfully:
“They won't give me the subcutaneous any more.”
It was Sunday morning when Clara came. He was cheerful and able to talk quite freely. He did not dwell upon his condition, I think, but spoke rather of his plans for the summer. At all events, he did not then suggest that he counted the end so near; but a day later it became evident to all that his stay was very brief. His breathing was becoming heavier, though it seemed not to give him much discomfort. His articulation also became affected. I think the last continuous talking he did was to Dr. Halsey on the evening of April 17th—the day of Clara's arrival. A mild opiate had been administered, and he said he wished to talk himself to sleep. He recalled one of his old subjects, Dual Personality, and discussed various instances that flitted through his mind—Jekyll and Hyde phases in literature and fact. He became drowsier as he talked. He said at last:
“This is a peculiar kind of disease. It does not invite you to read; it does not invite you to be read to; it does not invite you to talk, nor to enjoy any of the usual sick-room methods of treatment. What kind of a disease is that? Some kinds of sicknesses have pleasant features about them. You can read and smoke and have only to lie still.”
And a little later he added:
“It is singular, very singular, the laws of mentality—vacuity. I put out my hand to reach a book or newspaper which I have been reading most glibly, and it isn't there, not a suggestion of it.”
He coughed violently, and afterward commented:
“If one gets to meddling with a cough it very soon gets the upper hand and is meddling with you. That is my opinion—of seventy-four years' growth.”
The news of his condition, everywhere published, brought great heaps of letters, but he could not see them. A few messages were reported to him. At intervals he read a little. Suetonius and Carlyle lay on the bed beside him, and he would pick them up as the spirit moved him and read a paragraph or a page. Sometimes, when I saw him thus-the high color still in his face, and the clear light in his eyes—I said: “It is not reality. He is not going to die.” On Tuesday, the 19th, he asked me to tell Clara to come and sing to him. It was a heavy requirement, but she somehow found strength to sing some of the Scotch airs which he loved, and he seemed soothed and comforted. When she came away he bade her good-by, saying that he might not see her again.
But he lingered through the next day and the next. His mind was wandering a little on Wednesday, and his speech became less and less articulate; but there were intervals when he was quite clear, quite vigorous, and he apparently suffered little. We did not know it, then, but the mysterious messenger of his birth-year, so long anticipated by him, appeared that night in the sky.—[The perihelion of Halley's Comet for 1835 was November 16th; for 1910 it was April 20th.]
On Thursday morning, the 21st, his mind was generally clear, and it was said by the nurses that he read a little from one of the volumes on his bed, from the Suetonius, or from one of the volumes of Carlyle. Early in the forenoon he sent word by Clara that he wished to see me, and when I came in he spoke of two unfinished manuscripts which he wished me to “throw away,” as he briefly expressed it, for he had not many words left now. I assured him that I would take care of them, and he pressed my hand. It was his last word to me.
Once or twice that morning he tried to write some request which he could not put into intelligible words.
And once he spoke to Gabrilowitsch, who, he said, could understand him better than the others. Most of the time he dozed.
Somewhat after midday, when Clara was by him, he roused up and took her hand, and seemed to speak with less effort.
“Good-by,” he said, and Dr. Quintard, who was standing near, thought he added: “If we meet”—but the words were very faint. He looked at her for a little while, without speaking, then he sank into a doze, and from it passed into a deeper slumber, and did not heed us any more.
Through that peaceful spring afternoon the life-wave ebbed lower and lower. It was about half past six, and the sun lay just on the horizon when Dr. Quintard noticed that the breathing, which had gradually become more subdued, broke a little. There was no suggestion of any struggle. The noble head turned a little to one side, there was a fluttering sigh, and the breath that had been unceasing through seventy-four tumultuous years had stopped forever.
He had entered into the estate envied so long. In his own words—the words of one of his latest memoranda:
“He had arrived at the dignity of death—the only earthly dignity that is not artificial—the only safe one. The others are traps that can beguile to humiliation.
“Death—the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure—the rich and the poor—the loved and the unloved.”
It is not often that a whole world mourns. Nations have often mourned a hero—and races—but perhaps never before had the entire world really united in tender sorrow for the death of any man.
In one of his aphorisms he wrote: “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” And it was thus that Mark Twain himself had lived.
No man had ever so reached the heart of the world, and one may not even attempt to explain just why. Let us only say that it was because he was so limitlessly human that every other human heart, in whatever sphere or circumstance, responded to his touch. From every remote corner of the globe the cables of condolence swept in; every printed sheet in Christendom was filled with lavish tribute; pulpits forgot his heresies and paid him honor. No king ever died that received so rich a homage as his. To quote or to individualize would be to cheapen this vast offering.
We took him to New York to the Brick Church, and Dr. Henry van Dyke spoke only a few simple words, and Joseph Twichell came from Hartford and delivered brokenly a prayer from a heart wrung with double grief, for Harmony, his wife, was nearing the journey's end, and a telegram that summoned him to her death-bed came before the services ended.
Mark Twain, dressed in the white he loved so well, lay there with the nobility of death upon him, while a multitude of those who loved him passed by and looked at his face for the last time. The flowers, of which so many had been sent, were banked around him; but on the casket itself lay a single laurel wreath which Dan Beard and his wife had woven from the laurel which grows on Stormfield hill. He was never more beautiful than as he lay there, and it was an impressive scene to see those thousands file by, regard him for a moment gravely, thoughtfully, and pass on. All sorts were there, rich and poor; some crossed themselves, some saluted, some paused a little to take a closer look; but no one offered even to pick a flower. Howells came, and in his book he says:
I looked a moment at the face I knew so well; and it was patientwith the patience I had so often seen in it: something of a puzzle,a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be from the depths ofa nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which theunwise took for the whole of him.
That night we went with him to Elmira, and next day—a somber day of rain—he lay in those stately parlors that had seen his wedding-day, and where Susy had lain, and Mrs. Clemens, and Jean, while Dr. Eastman spoke the words of peace which separate us from our mortal dead. Then in the quiet, steady rain of that Sunday afternoon we laid him beside those others, where he sleeps well, though some have wished that, like De Soto, he might have been laid to rest in the bed of that great river which must always be associated with his name.
There is such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as an experience, one cannot discuss it afterward with one's friends. I have thought it a great pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with Howells say, or with Twichell, the sensations and the particulars of the change, supposing there be a recognizable change, in that transition of which we have speculated so much, with such slender returns. No one ever debated the undiscovered country more than he. In his whimsical, semi-serious fashion he had considered all the possibilities of the future state—orthodox and otherwise—and had drawn picturesquely original conclusions. He had sent Captain Stormfield in a dream to report the aspects of the early Christian heaven. He had examined the scientific aspects of the more subtle philosophies. He had considered spiritualism, transmigration, the various esoteric doctrines, and in the end he had logically made up his mind that death concludes all, while with that less logical hunger which survives in every human heart he had never ceased to expect an existence beyond the grave. His disbelief and his pessimism were identical in their structure. They were of his mind; never of his heart.
Once a woman said to him:
“Mr. Clemens, you are not a pessimist, you only think you are.” And she might have added, with equal force and truth:
“You are not a disbeliever in immortality; you only think you are.”
Nothing could have conveyed more truly his attitude toward life and death. His belief in God, the Creator, was absolute; but it was a God far removed from the Creator of his early teaching. Every man builds his God according to his own capacities. Mark Twain's God was of colossal proportions—so vast, indeed, that the constellated stars were but molecules in His veins—a God as big as space itself.
Mark Twain had many moods, and he did not always approve of his own God; but when he altered his conception, it was likely to be in the direction of enlargement—a further removal from the human conception, and the problem of what we call our lives.
In 1906 he wrote:—[See also 1870, chap. lxxviii; 1899, chap. ccv; and various talks, 1906-07, etc.]