Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
And again:
Adam, man's benefactor—he gave him all that he has ever receivedthat was worth having—death.
The Riverdale home was in reality little more than a hospital that spring. Jean had scarcely recovered her physical strength when she was attacked by measles, and Clara also fell a victim to the infection. Fortunately Mrs. Clemens's health had somewhat improved.
It was during this period that Clemens formulated his eclectic therapeutic doctrine. Writing to Twichell April 4, 1903, he said:
Livy does make a little progress these past 3 or 4 days, progresswhich is visible to even the untrained eye. The physicians aredoing good work for her, but my notion is, that no art of healing isthe best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments around:surgery cases to the surgeon; lupus to the actinic-ray specialist;nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to theallopath & the homeopath; & (in my own particular case) rheumatism,gout, & bronchial attack to the osteopathist.
He had plenty of time to think and to read during those weeks of confinement, and to rage, and to write when he felt the need of that expression, though he appears to have completed not much for print beyond his reply to Mrs. Eddy, already mentioned, and his burlesque, “Instructions in Art,” with pictures by himself, published in the Metropolitan for April and May.
Howells called his attention to some military outrages in the Philippines, citing a case where a certain lieutenant had tortured one of his men, a mild offender, to death out of pure deviltry, and had been tried but not punished for his fiendish crime.—[The torture to death of Private Edward C. Richter, an American soldier, by orders of a commissioned officer of the United States army on the night of February 7, 1902. Private Richter was bound and gagged and the gag held in his mouth by means of a club while ice-water was slowly poured into his face, a dipper full at a time, for two hours and a half, until life became extinct.]
Clemens undertook to give expression to his feelings on this subject, but he boiled so when he touched pen to paper to write of it that it was simply impossible for him to say anything within the bounds of print. Then his only relief was to rise and walk the floor, and curse out his fury at the race that had produced such a specimen.
Mrs. Clemens, who perhaps got some drift or the echo of these tempests, now and then sent him a little admonitory, affectionate note.
Among the books that Clemens read, or tried to read, during his confinement were certain of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. He had never been able to admire Scott, and determined now to try to understand this author's popularity and his standing with the critics; but after wading through the first volume of one novel, and beginning another one, he concluded to apply to one who could speak as having authority. He wrote to Brander Matthews:
DEAR BRANDER,—I haven't been out of my bed for 4 weeks, but-well, Ihave been reading a good deal, & it occurs to me to ask you to sitdown, some time or other when you have 8 or 9 months to spare, & jotme down a certain few literary particulars for my help & elevation.Your time need not be thrown away, for at your further leisure youcan make Columbian lectures out of the results & do your students agood turn.1. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in good English—English which is neither slovenly nor involved?2. Are there passages whose English is not poor & thin &commonplace, but is of a quality above that?3. Are there passages which burn with real fire—not punk, fox-fire, make-believe?4. Has he heroes & heroines who are not cads and cadesses?5. Has he personages whose acts & talk correspond with theircharacters as described by him?6. Has he heroes & heroines whom the reader admires—admires andknows why?7. Has he funny characters that are funny, and humorous passagesthat are humorous?8. Does he ever chain the reader's interest & make him reluctant tolay the book down?9. Are there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases fromadmiring the placid flood & flow of his own dilution, ceases frombeing artificial, & is for a time, long or short, recognizablysincere & in earnest?10. Did he know how to write English, & didn't do it because hedidn't want to?11. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think ofanother one, or did he run so much to wrong words because he didn'tknow the right one when he saw it?12. Can you read him and keep your respect for him? Of course aperson could in his day—an era of sentimentality & sloppyromantics—but land! can a body do it to-day?Brander, I lie here dying; slowly dying, under the blight of SirWalter. I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, & as far asChapter XIX of Guy Mannering, & I can no longer hold my head up ortake my nourishment. Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, soshoddy; & such wax figures & skeletons & specters. Interest? Why,it is impossible to feel an interest in these bloodless shams, thesemilk-&-water humbugs. And oh, the poverty of invention! Notpoverty in inventing situations, but poverty in furnishing reasonsfor them. Sir Walter usually gives himself away when he arrangesfor a situation—elaborates & elaborates & elaborates till, if youlive to get to it, you don't believe in it when it happens.I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I, can't stand any more Mannering—I do not know just what to do, but I will reflect, & not quit thisgreat study rashly....My, I wish I could see you & Leigh Hunt!Sincerely yours,S. L. CLEMENS.
But a few days later he experienced a revelation. It came when he perseveringly attacked still a third work of Scott—Quentin Durward. Hastily he wrote to Matthews again:
I'm still in bed, but the days have lost their dullness since I broke into Sir Walter & lost my temper. I finished Guy Mannering that curious, curious book, with its mob of squalid shadows gibbering around a single flesh-&-blood being—Dinmont; a book crazily put together out of the very refuse of the romance artist's stage properties—finished it & took up Quentin Durward & finished that.
It was like leaving the dead to mingle with the living; it was like withdrawing from the infant class in the college of journalism to sit under the lectures in English literature in Columbia University.
I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward?—[This letter, enveloped, addressed, and stamped, was evidently mislaid. It was found and mailed seven years later, June, 1910 message from the dead.]
Among other books which he read that winter and spring was Helen Keller's 'The Story of My Life', then recently published. That he finished it in a mood of sweet gentleness we gather from a long, lovely letter which he wrote her—a letter in which he said:
I am charmed with your book—enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world—you and your other half together—Miss Sullivan, I mean—for it took the pair of you to make a complete & perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character, & the fine literary competencies of her pen—they are all there.
When reading and writing failed as diversion, Mark Twain often turned to mathematics. With no special talent for accuracy in the matter of figures, he had a curious fondness for calculations, scientific and financial, and he used to cover pages, ciphering at one thing and another, arriving pretty inevitably at the wrong results. When the problem was financial, and had to do with his own fortunes, his figures were as likely as not to leave him in a state of panic. The expenditures were naturally heavy that spring; and one night, when he had nothing better to do, he figured the relative proportion to his income. The result showed that they were headed straight for financial ruin. He put in the rest of the night fearfully rolling and tossing, and reconstructing his figures that grew always worse, and next morning summoned Jean and Clara and petrified them with the announcement that the cost of living was one hundred and twenty-five per cent. more than the money-supply.
Writing to MacAlister three days later he said:
It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning, a gray and agedwreck, I found that in some unaccountable way (unaccountable to abusiness man, but not to me) I had multiplied the totals by two. ByGod, I dropped seventy-five years on the floor where I stood!Do you know it affected me as one is affected when one wakes out ofa hideous dream & finds it was only a dream. It was a great comfort& satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting ofthe board again. Certainly there is a blistering & awful realityabout a well-arranged unreality. It is quite within thepossibilities that two or three nights like that of mine would drivea man to suicide. He would refuse to examine the figures, theywould revolt him so, & he would go to his death unaware that therewas nothing serious about them. I cannot get that night out of myhead, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly: In any other year ofthese thirty-three the relief would have been simple: go where youcan, cut your cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when yourwife can't be moved, even from one room to the next.The doctor & a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, & intheir belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new,substantially. They ordered her to Italy for next winter—whichseems to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake thevoyage. So Clara is writing to a Florence friend to take a lookaround among the villas for us in the regions near that city.
Mark Twain had been at home well on toward three years; but his popularity showed no signs of diminishing. So far from having waned, it had surged to a higher point than ever before. His crusade against public and private abuses had stirred readers, and had set them to thinking; the news of illness in his household; a report that he was contemplating another residence abroad—these things moved deeply the public heart, and a tide of letters flowed in, letters of every sort—of sympathy, of love, or hearty endorsement, whatever his attitude of reform.
When a writer in a New York newspaper said, “Let us go outside the realm of practical politics next time in choosing our candidates for the Presidency,” and asked, “Who is our ablest and most conspicuous private citizen?” another editorial writer, Joseph Hollister, replied that Mark Twain was “the greatest man of his day in private life, and entitled to the fullest measure of recognition.”
But Clemens was without political ambitions. He knew the way of such things too well. When Hollister sent him the editorial he replied only with a word of thanks, and did not, even in jest, encourage that tiny seed of a Presidential boom. One would like to publish many of the beautiful letters received during this period, for they are beautiful, most of them, however illiterate in form, however discouraging in length—beautiful in that they overflow with the writers' sincerity and gratitude.
So many of them came from children, usually without the hope of a reply, some signed only with initials, that the writers might not be open to the suspicion of being seekers for his autograph. Almost more than any other reward, Mark Twain valued this love of the children.
A department in the St. Nicholas Magazine offered a prize for a caricature drawing of some well-known man. There were one or two of certain prominent politicians and capitalists, and there was literally a wheelbarrow load of Mark Twain. When he was informed of this he wrote: “No tribute could have pleased me more than that—the friendship of the children.”
Tributes came to him in many forms. In his native State it was proposed to form a Mark Twain Association, with headquarters at Hannibal, with the immediate purpose of having a week set apart at the St. Louis World's Fair, to be called the Mark Twain week, with a special Mark Twain day, on which a national literary convention would be held. But when his consent was asked, and his co-operation invited, he wrote characteristically:
It is indeed a high compliment which you offer me, in naming an association after me and in proposing the setting apart of a Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis Fair, but such compliments are not proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only. I value the impulse which moves you to tender me these honors. I value it as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in a sort of terror of the honors themselves. So long as we remain alive we are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships.
I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for I might at some time or other do something which would cause its members to regret having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead I shall follow the custom of those people, and be guilty of no conduct that can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a doubtful quantity, like the rest of our race.
The committee, still hoping for his consent, again appealed to him. But again he wrote:
While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me I must still forbear to accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis, and at the village stations all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come without solicitation; but I am a Missourian, and so I shrink from distinctions which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, for I then become a party to my own exalting. I am humanly fond of honors that happen, but chary of those that come by canvass and intention.
Somewhat later he suggested a different feature for the fair; one that was not practical, perhaps, but which certainly would have aroused interest—that is to say, an old-fashioned six-day steamboat-race from New Orleans to St. Louis, with the old-fashioned accessories, such as torch-baskets, forecastle crowds of negro singers, with a negro on the safety-valve. In his letter to President Francis he said:
As to particulars, I think that the race should be a genuine reproduction of the old-time race, not just an imitation of it, and that it should cover the whole course. I think the boats should begin the trip at New Orleans, and side by side (not an interval between), and end it at North St. Louis, a mile or two above the Big Mound.
In a subsequent letter to Governor Francis he wrote:
It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the great Fair & get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered....
I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most prodigious Fair the planet has ever seen. Very well, you have indeed earned it, and with it the gratitude of the State and the nation.
Newspaper men used every inducement to get interviews from him. They invited him to name a price for any time he could give them, long or short. One reporter offered him five hundred dollars for a two-hour talk. Another proposed to pay him one hundred dollars a week for a quarter of a day each week, allowing him to discuss any subject he pleased. One wrote asking him two questions: the first, “Your favorite method of escaping from Indians”; the second, “Your favorite method of escaping capture by the Indians when they were in pursuit of you.” They inquired as to his favorite copy-book maxim; as to what he considered most important to a young man's success; his definition of a gentleman. They wished to know his plan for the settlement of labor troubles. But they did not awaken his interest, or his cupidity. To one applicant he wrote:
No, there are temptations against which we are fire-proof. Your proposition is one which comes to me with considerable frequency, but it never tempts me. The price isn't the objection; you offer plenty. It is the nature of the work that is the objection—a kind of work which I could not do well enough to satisfy me. To multiply the price by twenty would not enable me to do the work to my satisfaction, & by consequence would make no impression upon me.
Once he allowed himself to be interviewed for the Herald, when from Mr. Rogers's yacht he had watched Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock go down to defeat; but this was a subject which appealed to him—a kind of hotweather subject—and he could be as light-minded about it as he chose.
The Clemenses were preparing to take up residence in Florence, Italy. The Hartford house had been sold in May, ending forever the association with the city that had so long been a part of their lives. The Tarrytown place, which they had never occupied, they also agreed to sell, for it was the belief now that Mrs. Clemens's health would never greatly prosper there. Howells says, or at least implies, that they expected their removal to Florence to be final. He tells us, too, of one sunny afternoon when he and Clemens sat on the grass before the mansion at Riverdale, after Mrs. Clemens had somewhat improved, and how they “looked up toward a balcony where by and by that lovely presence made itself visible, as if it had stooped there from a cloud. A hand frailly waved a handkerchief; Clemens ran over the lawn toward it, calling tenderly.” It was a greeting to Howells the last he would ever receive from her.
Mrs. Clemens was able to make a trip to Elmira by the end of June, and on the 1st of July Mr. Rogers brought Clemens and his wife down the river on his yacht to the Lackawanna pier, and they reached Quarry Farm that evening. She improved in the quietude and restfulness of that beloved place. Three weeks later Clemens wrote to Twichell:
Livy is coming along: eats well, sleeps some, is mostly very gay, not very often depressed; spends all day on the porch, sleeps there a part of the night; makes excursions in carriage & in wheel-chair; &, in the matter of superintending everything & everybody, has resumed business at the old stand.
During three peaceful months she spent most of her days reclining on the wide veranda, surrounded by those dearest to her, and looking out on the dreamlike landscape—the long, grassy slope, the drowsy city, and the distant hills—getting strength for the far journey by sea. Clemens did some writing, occupying the old octagonal study—shut in now and overgrown with vines—where during the thirty years since it was built so many of his stories had been written. 'A Dog's Tale'—that pathetic anti-vivisection story—appears to have been the last manuscript ever completed in the spot consecrated by Huck and Tom, and by Tom Canty the Pauper and the little wandering Prince.
It was October 5th when they left Elmira. Two days earlier Clemens had written in his note-book:
Today I placed flowers on Susy's grave—for the last time probably—& read words:“Good-night, dear heart, good-night.”
They did not return to Riverdale, but went to the Hotel Grosvenor for the intervening weeks. They had engaged passage for Italy on the Princess Irene, which would sail on the 24th. It was during the period of their waiting that Clemens concluded his final Harper contract. On that day, in his note-book, he wrote:
THE PROPHECY
In 1895 Cheiro the palmist examined my hand & said that in my 68th year (1903) I would become suddenly rich. I was a bankrupt & $94,000 in debt at the time through the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. Two years later—in London—Cheiro repeated this long-distance prediction, & added that the riches would come from a quite unexpected source. I am superstitious. I kept the prediction in mind & often thought of it. When at last it came true, October 22, 1903, there was but a month & 9 days to spare.
The contract signed that day concentrates all my books in Harper's hands & now at last they are valuable; in fact they are a fortune. They guarantee me $25,000 a year for 5 years, and they will yield twice as much as that.—[In earlier note-books and letters Clemens more than once refers to this prophecy and wonders if it is to be realized. The Harper contract, which brought all of his books into the hands of one publisher (negotiated for him by Mr. Rogers), proved, in fact, a fortune. The books yielded always more than the guarantee; sometimes twice that amount, as he had foreseen.]
During the conclusion of this contract Clemens made frequent visits to Fairhaven on the Kanawha. Joe Goodman came from the Pacific to pay him a good-by visit during this period. Goodman had translated the Mayan inscriptions, and his work had received official recognition and publication by the British Museum. It was a fine achievement for a man in later life and Clemens admired it immensely. Goodman and Clemens enjoyed each other in the old way at quiet resorts where they could talk over the old tales. Another visitor of that summer was the son of an old friend, a Hannibal printer named Daulton. Young Daulton came with manuscripts seeking a hearing of the magazine editors, so Clemens wrote a letter which would insure that favor: INTRODUCING MR. GEO. DAULTON:
TO GILDER, ALDEN, HARVEY, McCLURE, WALKER, PAGE, BOK, COLLIER, and such other members of the sacred guild as privilege me to call them friends-these:
Although I have no personal knowledge of the bearer of this, I have what is better: He comes recommended to me by his own father—a thing not likely to happen in any of your families, I reckon. I ask you, as a favor to me, to waive prejudice & superstition for this once & examine his work with an eye to its literary merit, instead of to the chastity of its spelling. I wish to God you cared less for that particular.
I set (or sat) type alongside of his father, in Hannibal, more than 50 years ago, when none but the pure in heart were in that business. A true man he was; and if I can be of any service to his son—and to you at the same time, let me hope—I am here heartily to try.
Yours by the sanctions of time & deserving,
Sincerely,S. L. CLEMENS.
Among the kindly words which came to Mark Twain before leaving America was this one which Rudyard Kipling had written to his publisher, Frank Doubleday:
I love to think of the great and godlike Clemens. He is the biggestman you have on your side of the water by a damn sight, and don'tyou forget it. Cervantes was a relation of his.
It curiously happened that Clemens at the same moment was writing to Doubleday about Kipling:
I have been reading “The Bell Buoy” and “The Old Man” over and overagain-my custom with Kipling's work—and saving up the rest forother leisurely and luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeplyimpressive fellow-being. In these many recent trips up and down theSound in the Kanawha he has talked to me nightly sometimes in hispathetic and melancholy way, sometimes with his strenuous and urgentnote, and I got his meaning—now I have his words! No one butKipling could do this strong and vivid thing. Some day I hope tohear the poem chanted or sung-with the bell-buoy breaking in out ofthe distance.P. S.—Your letter has arrived. It makes me proud and glad—whatKipling says. I hope Fate will fetch him to Florence while we arethere. I would rather see him than any other man.
Saturday, October 24, 1903. Sailed in the Princess Irene for Genoaat 11. Flowers & fruit from Mrs. Rogers & Mrs. Coe. We have withus Katie Leary (in our domestic service 23 years) & Miss MargaretSherry (trained nurse).
Two days later he wrote:
Heavy storm all night. Only 3 stewardesses. Ours served 60 mealsin rooms this morning.
On the 27th:
Livy is enduring the voyage marvelously well. As well as Clara &Jean, I think, & far better than the trained nurse.She has been out on deck an hour.November 2. Due at Gibraltar 10 days from New York. 3 days toNaples, then 2 day to Genoa.At supper the band played “Cavalleria Rusticana,” which is foreverassociated in my mind with Susy. I love it better than any other,but it breaks my heart.
It was the “Intermezzo” he referred to, which had been Susy's favorite music, and whenever he heard it he remembered always one particular opera-night long ago, and Susy's face rose before him.
They were in Naples on the 5th; thence to Genoa, and to Florence, where presently they were installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, a fine old Italian palace built by Cosimo more than four centuries ago. In later times it has been occupied and altered by royal families of Wurtemberg and Russia. Now it was the property of the Countess Massiglia, from whom Clemens had leased it.
They had hoped to secure the Villa Papiniano, under Fiesole, near Professor Fiske, but negotiations for it had fallen through. The Villa Quarto, as it is usually called, was a more pretentious place and as beautifully located, standing as it does in an ancient garden looking out over Florence toward Vallombrosa and the Chianti hills. Yet now in the retrospect, it seems hardly to have been the retreat for an invalid. Its garden was supernaturally beautiful, all that one expects that a garden of Italy should be—such a garden as Maxfield Parrish might dream; but its beauty was that which comes of antiquity—the accumulation of dead years. Its funereal cypresses, its crumbling walls and arches, its clinging ivy and moldering marbles, and a clock that long ago forgot the hours, gave it a mortuary look. In a way it suggested Arnold Bocklin's “Todteninsel,” and it might well have served as the allegorical setting for a gateway to the bourne of silence.
The house itself, one of the most picturesque of the old Florentine suburban palaces, was historically interesting, rather than cheerful. The rooms, in number more than sixty, though richly furnished, were vast and barnlike, and there were numbers of them wholly unused and never entered. There was a dearth of the modern improvements which Americans have learned to regard as a necessity, and the plumbing, such as it was, was not always in order. The place was approached by narrow streets, along which the more uninviting aspects of Italy were not infrequent. Youth and health and romance might easily have reveled in the place; but it seems now not to have been the best choice for that frail invalid, to whom cheer and brightness and freshness and the lovelier things of hope meant always so much.—[Villa Quarto has recently been purchased by Signor P. de Ritter Lahony, and thoroughly restored and refreshed and beautified without the sacrifice of any of its romantic features.]—Neither was the climate of Florence all that they had hoped for. Their former sunny winter had misled them. Tradition to the contrary, Italy—or at least Tuscany—is not one perpetual dream of sunlight. It is apt to be damp and cloudy; it is likely to be cold. Writing to MacAlister, Clemens said:
Florentine sunshine? Bless you, there isn't any. We have heavy fogs every morning & rain all day. This house is not merely large, it is vast—therefore I think it must always lack the home feeling.
His dissatisfaction in it began thus early, and it grew as one thing after another went wrong. With it all, however, Mrs. Clemens seemed to gain a little, and was glad to see company—a reasonable amount of company—to brighten her surroundings.
Clemens began to work and wrote a story or two, and those lively articles about the Italian language.
To Twichell he reported progress:
I have a handsome success in one way here. I left New York under asort of half-promise to furnish to the Harper magazines 30,000 wordsthis year. Magazining is difficult work because every third pagerepresents two pages that you have put in the fire (you are nearlysure to start wrong twice), & so when you have finished an article &are willing to let it go to print it represents only 10 cents a wordinstead of 30.But this time I had the curious (& unprecedented) luck to startright in each case. I turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; &the reason I think I started right every time is, that not only haveI approved and accepted the several articles, but the court of lastresort (Livy) has done the same.On many of the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle ¬ necessarily necessary sort, since it will not see print until Iam dead. I shall continue this (an hour per day), but the rest ofthe year I expect to put in on a couple of long books (half-completed ones). No more magazine work hanging over my head.This secluded & silent solitude, this clean, soft air, & thisenchanting view of Florence, the great valley & snow-mountains thatframe it, are the right conditions for work. They are a persistentinspiration. To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrivesthere will be a new picture every hour till dark, & each of themdivine—or progressing from divine to diviner & divinest. On this(second) floor Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a windowten feet high wide open all the time & frames it in that. I go infrom time to time every day & trade sass for a look. The centraldetail is a distant & stately snow-hump that rises above & behindblack-forested hills, & its sloping vast buttresses, velvety & sun-polished, with purple shadows between, make the sort of picture weknew that time we walked in Switzerland in the days of our youth.
From this letter, which is of January 7, 1904, we gather that the weather had greatly improved, and with it Mrs. Clemens's health, notwithstanding she had an alarming attack in December. One of the stories he had finished was “The $30,000 Bequest.” The work mentioned, which would not see print until after his death, was a continuation of those autobiographical chapters which for years he had been setting down as the mood seized him.
He experimented with dictation, which he had tried long before with Redpath, and for a time now found it quite to his liking. He dictated some of his copyright memories, and some anecdotes and episodes; but his amanuensis wrote only longhand, which perhaps hampered him, for he tired of it by and by and the dictations were discontinued.
Among these notes there is one elaborate description of the Villa di Quarto, dictated at the end of the winter, by which time we are not surprised to find he had become much attached to the place. The Italian spring was in the air, and it was his habit to grow fond of his surroundings. Some atmospheric paragraphs of these impressions invite us here:
We are in the extreme south end of the house, if there is any suchthing as a south end to a house, whose orientation cannot bedetermined by me, because I am incompetent in all cases where anobject does not point directly north & south. This one slantsacross between, & is therefore a confusion. This little privateparlor is in one of the two corners of what I call the south end ofthe house. The sun rises in such a way that all the morning it ispouring its light through the 33 glass doors or windows which piercethe side of the house which looks upon the terrace & garden; therest of the day the light floods this south end of the house, as Icall it; at noon the sun is directly above Florence yonder in thedistance in the plain, directly across those architectural featureswhich have been so familiar to the world in pictures for somecenturies, the Duomo, the Campanile, the Tomb of the Medici, & thebeautiful tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in this position it beginsto reveal the secrets of the delicious blue mountains that circlearound into the west, for its light discovers, uncovers, & exposes awhite snowstorm of villas & cities that you cannot train yourself tohave confidence in, they appear & disappear so mysteriously, as ifthey might not be villas & cities at all, but the ghosts of perishedones of the remote & dim Etruscan times; & late in the afternoon thesun sets down behind those mountains somewhere, at no particulartime & at no particular place, so far as I can see.
Again at the end of March he wrote:
Now that we have lived in this house four and a half months myprejudices have fallen away one by one & the place has become veryhomelike to me. Under certain conditions I should like to go onliving in it indefinitely. I should wish the Countess to move outof Italy, out of Europe, out of the planet. I should want herbonded to retire to her place in the next world & inform me which ofthe two it was, so that I could arrange for my own hereafter.
Complications with their landlady had begun early, and in time, next to Mrs. Clemens's health, to which it bore such an intimate and vital relation, the indifference of the Countess Massiglia to their needs became the supreme and absorbing concern of life at the villa, and led to continued and almost continuous house-hunting.
Days when the weather permitted, Clemens drove over the hills looking for a villa which he could lease or buy—one with conveniences and just the right elevation and surroundings. There were plenty of villas; but some of them were badly situated as to altitude or view; some were falling to decay, and the search was rather a discouraging one. Still it was not abandoned, and the reports of these excursions furnished new interest and new hope always to the invalid at home.
“Even if we find it,” he wrote Howells, “I am afraid it will be months before we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope alive in her.”
She had her bad days and her good days, days when it was believed she had passed the turning-point and was traveling the way to recovery; but the good days were always a little less hopeful, the bad days a little more discouraging. On February 22d Clemens wrote in his note-book:
At midnight Livy's pulse went to 192 & there was a collapse. Great alarm. Subcutaneous injection of brandy saved her.
And to MacAlister toward the end of March:
We are having quite perfect weather now & are hoping that it will bring effects for Mrs. Clemens.
But a few days later he added that he was watching the driving rain through the windows, and that it was bad weather for the invalid. “But it will not last,” he said.
The invalid improved then, and there was a concert in Florence at which Clara Clemens sang. Clemens in his note-book says:
April 8. Clara's concert was a triumph. Livy woke up & sent forher to tell her all about it, near midnight.
But a day or two later she was worse again—then better. The hearts in that household were as pendulums, swinging always between hope and despair.
One familiar with the Clemens history might well have been filled with forebodings. Already in January a member of the family, Mollie Clemens, Orion's wife, died, news which was kept from Mrs. Clemens, as was the death of Aldrich's son, and that of Sir Henry M. Stanley, both of which occurred that spring.
Indeed, death harvested freely that year among the Clemens friendships. Clemens wrote Twichell:
Yours has just this moment arrived-just as I was finishing a note topoor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paidin England was to Stanley's. Lord! how my friends & acquaintancesfall about me now in my gray-headed days! Vereshchagin, Mommsen,Dvorak, Lenbach, & Jokai, all so recently, & now Stanley. I haveknown Stanley 37 years. Goodness, who is there I haven't known?
In one of his notes near the end of April Clemens writes that once more, as at Riverdale, he has been excluded from Mrs. Clemens's room except for the briefest moment at a time. But on May 12th, to R. W. Gilder, he reported:
For two days now we have not been anxious about Mrs. Clemens(unberufen). After 20 months of bedridden solitude & bodily miseryshe all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid, shrunken shadow, & looksbright & young & pretty. She remains what she always was, the mostwonderful creature of fortitude, patience, endurance, andrecuperative power that ever was. But ah, dear! it won't last;this fiendish malady will play new treacheries upon her, and I shallgo back to my prayers again—unutterable from any pulpit!May 13, A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2-minutevisits per day to the sick-room. And found what I have learned toexpect—retrogression.
There was a day when she was brought out on the terrace in a wheel-chair to see the wonder of the early Italian summer. She had been a prisoner so long that she was almost overcome with the delight of it all—the more so, perhaps, in the feeling that she might so soon be leaving it.
It was on Sunday, the 5th of June, that the end came. Clemens and Jean had driven out to make some calls, and had stopped at a villa, which promised to fulfil most of the requirements. They came home full of enthusiasm concerning it, and Clemens, in his mind, had decided on the purchase. In the corridor Clara said:
“She is better to-day than she has been for three months.”
Then quickly, under her breath, “Unberufen,” which the others, too, added hastily—superstitiously.
Mrs. Clemens was, in fact, bright and cheerful, and anxious to hear all about the new property which was to become their home. She urged him to sit by her during the dinner-hour and tell her the details; but once, when the sense of her frailties came upon her, she said they must not mind if she could not go very soon, but be content where they were. He remained from half past seven until eight—a forbidden privilege, but permitted because she was so animated, feeling so well. Their talk was as it had been in the old days, and once during it he reproached himself, as he had so often done, and asked forgiveness for the tears he had brought into her life. When he was summoned to go at last he chided himself for remaining so long; but she said there was no harm, and kissed him, saying: “You will come back,” and he answered, “Yes, to say good night,” meaning at half past nine, as was the permitted custom. He stood a moment at the door throwing kisses to her, and she returning them, her face bright with smiles.
He was so hopeful and happy that it amounted to exaltation. He went to his room at first, then he was moved to do a thing which he had seldom done since Susy died. He went to the piano up-stairs and sang the old jubilee songs that Susy had liked to hear him sing. Jean came in presently, listening. She had not done this before, that he could remember. He sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “My Lord He Calls Me.” He noticed Jean then and stopped, but she asked him to go on.
Mrs. Clemens, in her room, heard the distant music, and said to her attendant:
“He is singing a good-night carol to me.”
The music ceased presently, and then a moment later she asked to be lifted up. Almost in that instant life slipped away without a sound.
Clemens, coming to say good night, saw a little group about her bed, Clara and Jean standing as if dazed. He went and bent over and looked into her face, surprised that she did not greet him. He did not suspect what had happened until he heard one of the daughters ask:
“Katie, is it true? Oh, Katie, is it true?”
He realized then that she was gone.
In his note-book that night he wrote: