20. The End of My Autobiography
TWAIN'S CONSTANT SMOKING finally caught up with him. In the summer of 1909 he began to experience more frequent chest pains.[1] His health was also not improved by the nerve-shattering betrayal of his closest confidants. Dr. Quintard advised less smoking and diminished exercise. Predictably, his patient followed only one-half of Quintard's counsel.
After finishing the Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript in September, however, Twain was lighthearted and full of plans. According to Paine, his face was “as full of bloom as at any time during the period I had known him.” Clemens's sense of humor was also full of bloom. “I have always pretended to be sick to escape visitors,” he admitted. “[N]ow, for the first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It makes me feel so honest.” Once, after being told that he had a caller in the living room, he replied, “Jean, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute and it would be most embarrassing.” He amused himself by playing billiards and discussing astronomy, to him a constant source of wonder. “He was always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space,” Paine remembered, “—the supreme drama of the universe.” He was also writing to entertain himself. He had all the fame and money he needed and, with his family back, he was content to let his mind play and his pen follow. He was unofficially retired even before the New York Times announced it to the world in late December.[2]
In October, he returned to an old theme with “Letters from the Earth,” a series of eleven letters composed by Satan, an immortal visitor on this planet, to friends in a remote part of the universe. Since he never intended publication, he felt free to let his imagination roam at will. He took pleasure
Though “Letters from the Earth” was not autobiography, one of Satan's meditations in Letter VIII seems highly suggestive. Commenting upon the biblical commandment against adultery, Satan is especially amused by the prohibition's injustice to women. “During 27 days in every month (in the absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night,” Satan confidently declaims. What is more, “she wants that candle—yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.”[4] Twain's high estimate of female sexuality—“that no woman ever sees the day that she can't overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her”—surely reflects, in some measure, Livy's passion, Isabel Lyon's determination, and Sam's experience.
Twain's opinion of male sexuality is, by contrast, fairly gloomy. “But the man is only briefly competent; and only then in the moderate measure applicable to the word in his sex's case. He is competent from the age of sixteen or seventeen thenceforward for thirty-five years. After 50 his performance is of poor quality, the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great value to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new. There is nothing the matter with her plant. Her candlestick is as firm as ever, whereas his candle is increasingly softened and weakened by the weather of age, as the years go by, until at last it can no longer stand, and is mournfully laid to rest in the hope of a blessed resurrection which is never to come.”[5] Twain's pessimism about man's candle and his mournful acceptance of masculine sexual limitations is a mocking assault on male sexual pretensions, perhaps including his own.
Through the voice of Satan, Twain enthusiastically approved of female lust. The law of God is that women are made to enjoy “unlimited adultery,”
Deciding to escape the winter chill, Clemens invited Paine to join him for a month in Bermuda, departing on November 18. They drove the length of the island, soaking up the colors of the sea—“turquoise, emerald, lapis-lazuli, and jade.” They also walked along the shore, appreciating the variegated water and the coral reefs—the quiet beauty of paradise. And he talked, pretty much nonstop. Clemens also celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday in Bermuda, happily ensconced by a fire at the home of his friends, the Aliens. He played hearts, read passages from Tom Sawyer at the request of his hosts' daughter Helen, smoked cigars, and talked. “Once, in the course of his talk,” Paine remembers, “he forgot a word and denounced his poor memory: Til forget the Lord's middle name some time,’ he declared, ‘right in the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get.’”[7]
Eventually, he decided to return to Stormfield to spend his first Christmas in three years with his youngest daughter. Jean met him, along with reporters, when he arrived back in New York on December 20. “I am through with work for this life and this world,” Twain announced, when asked if he would lecture for the cause of woman suffrage, which he supported. “The state of my health will not permit it. The fact is I am through with work. I have no new books in contemplation.”[8]
Back at Stormfield Jean was in a flurry of Christmas preparations. She was trimming a Christmas tree with silver foil and intended to light it up in the evenings with candles, following the custom she had observed in Germany. Busily shopping for everyone, she sent photographs of herself and gifts to friends. She was planning to give her father something special, a globe of the world, which he had always coveted.[9] Possessed by a deeply generous spirit, Sam's daughter could at last express her feelings materially.
“Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same,” her father wrote on December 24, 1909, “strolled hand in hand from the
“At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door. I said to myself, ‘Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail.’ Then Katy entered, stood quaking and gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
’“Miss Jean is dead!’
“Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart,” Twain wrote.[10]
Jean had a grand mal seizure and drowned in her bath on the morning of Christmas Eve, 1909. Her father sent a number of telegrams that day with the message: “I thank you most sincerely, but nothing can help me.”[11]
If there was no external source of comfort that could offer him relief, Mark Twain still had one place he could turn for solace. Writing was his bulwark, and it once again sustained him. The desolate author worked for two days on what would be his last piece for print, “The Death of Jean.” He had vowed, after his wife's death, that he would never watch another loved one lowered into the ground. Remaining at Stormfield while his daughter's body was sent to its final earthly destination, he attended the funeral and stood at Jean's graveside in Elmira only in his imagination, which was enough.[12]
“I have finished my story of Jean's death,” Twain told Paine and his wife on the evening of December 26. “It is the end of my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't judge it myself at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know what you think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published.” According to both Paine and Clara, he never attempted any further writing for publication. Paine did publish Twain's last essay in Harpers, scarcely more than a year later, in a slightly sanitized form. Paine's version appeared again in a volume of miscellaneous sketches in 1927 and has also been anthologized in two modern editions of Twain's autobiographical writings.[13]
For its intimacy, power, and significance as his last work, Twain's description of his daughter's death deserves to be read exactly as it left his pen. It is reprinted here for the first time in its original form. Reading this essay is the best way to take the measure of the man at the end of his life, to see clearly that he was scarcely the bitter and uncaring figure that he has sometimes been portrayed.[14]
CLOSING WORDS OF MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.,
Jean is dead!
And so this Autobiography closes here. I had a reason for projecting it, three years ago: that reason perishes with her.
The reason that moved me was a desire to save my copyrights from extinction, so that Jean & Clara would always have a good livelihood from my books after my death. I meant that whenever a book of mine should approach its 42-year limit, it should at once be newly issued, with about 10,000 words of Autobiography added to its contents. This would be copyrightable for a term of 28 years & would practically keep the whole book alive during that term. I meant to write 500,000 words of Autobiography, & I did it.
That tedious long labor was wasted. Last March Congress added 14 years to the 42-year term, & so my oldest book has now about 15 years to live. I have no use for that addition (I am 74 years old), poor Jean has no use for it now, Clara is happily and prosperously married & has no use for it.
Man proposes, Circumstances dispose.
Has anyone ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings connected with a dear one—happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding the sudden & unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening every day, & were always so unimportant &
Last night Jean all flushed with splendid health, & I the same, from the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from the dinner table & sat down in the library & chatted & planned, & discussed, cheerily & happily (& how unsuspectingly!) until 9,—which is late for us—then went up stairs, Jean's friendly German dog following. At my door Jean said, “I can't kiss you good-night, father; I have a cold, & you could catch it.” I bent & kissed her hand. She was moved—I saw it in her eyes—& she impulsively kissed my hand in return. Then with the usual gay “Sleep well, dear!” from both, we parted.
At half past 7 this morning I woke, & heard voices outside my door. I said to myself, “Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail.” Then Katy entered, stood quaking & gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
“Miss Jean is dead!”
Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart.
In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor & covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, & as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she had been seized with a convulsion & could not get out of the tub.
There was no help near, & she was drowned. The doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones, failed to bring her back to life.
It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet & how tranquil! It is a noble face, & full of dignity; & that was a good heart that lies there so still.
In England, thirteen years ago, my wife & I were stabbed to the heart with a cablegram which said “Susy was mercifully released today.” I had to send a like shock to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the peremptory addition, “You must not come home.” Clara & her husband sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it? Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshipper of Clara.
Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day before yesterday, letters & telegrams began to arrive from friends & strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed & said I must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers, & as she had been nursing her husband day & night for four months & was worn out & feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the Associated Press denying the “charge” that I was “dying,” & saying “I would not do such a thing at my time of life.”
Jean was a little troubled, & did not like to see me treat the matter so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this evening's paper?—The one so blithe, the other so tragic.
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable mother!—five & a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe; & now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—the best friend I ever had, & the nearest perfect, as man & gentleman, I have yet met among my race; within the past four weeks Gilder has passed away, & Laffan—old, old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-bye at this door last night—& it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, & I sit here—writing, busying myself to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.
Seventy-four years old, twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age to-day?
I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again; that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, & bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next evening. We played cards, & she tried to teach me a new game called “Mark Twain.” We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, & she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, & then her little French friend would arrive from New York — the surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed with rugs & furnished with chairs & sofas; & the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched with silver films in a most wonderful way; & on a table was a prodigal profession of bright things which she was going to hang upon it to-day. What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have happened in the last four days. “Little.” Yes — then. But not now. Nothing she said or thought or did, is little, now. And all the lavish humor! — what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, & the thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago — & now she lies yonder. Lies yonder, & cares for nothing any more. Strange —marvelous — incredible! I have had this experience before; but it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
“Miss Jean is dead!”
That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without formalities.
And so—
I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for servants & friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
Jean was so full of life & energy that she was constantly in danger of overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half past 7, & off to the station for the mail. She examined the letters & I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the others to the stenographer & myself. She dispatched her share & then mounted her horse again & went around superintending her farm & her poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, & went early to bed.
Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands.
No—she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter ended in a compromise. I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the bills & let Paine fill out the checks—she would continue to attend to that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, & let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change had been made.
However, Jean was pleased & that was sufficient for me. She was proud of being my secretary, & I was never able to persuade her to give up any part of her share in that unlovely work. I paid her this compliment of saying she was the only honest & honorable secretary I had ever had, except Paine. It is true that Jean had furnished me no
Oh, that unfortunate conversation! Unwittingly I was adding to her fatigues, & she was already so tired. Before night she suspended her Christmas labors, & drew up a detailed statement for November, & placed it in my hands. I said, “Oh, Jean, why did you do it? didn't you know I was only chaffing?”
But she was full of the matter, & eager to show me that her administration had been care-taking & economical. The figures confirmed her words. In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February & get blessedly out of the clash & turmoil again for another month. She was urgent that I should do it, & said that if I would put off the trip until March she would take Katy & go with me. We struck hands upon that, & said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by tomorrow's ship & secure a furnished house & servants. I meant to write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
For she lies yonder, & before her is another journey than that.
Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the skyline of the hills.
I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer & dearer to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many miles from us. How eloquently glad & grateful she was to cross her father's threshold again!
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word would do it I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, & my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts—that gift which makes all other gifts mean & poor—death. I have never wanted any released friend of mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when Susy passed away; & later my wife; & later Mr. Rogers. When Clara met me at the station in New York & told me Mr. Rogers had died suddenly
Why did I build this house two years ago? To shelter this vast emptiness? How foolish I was. But I shall stay in it. The spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have entered it once since, when it was tenantless & silent & forlorn, but to me it was a holy place & beautiful. It seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all about me, & would speak to me & welcome me if they could: Livy, & Susy, & George, & Henry Robinson, & Charles Dudley Warner. How good & kind they were, & how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the children back & hear them romp again with George—that peerless black ex-slave & children's idol who came one day—a flitting stranger—to wash windows, & stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara & Jean would never enter again the New York hotels which their mother had frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely & tragic death—but I will not think of that, now.
Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping, & was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was her very own child—she wore herself out present-hunting in New York these latter days. Paine has just found in her desk a long list of names—fifty, he thinks—people to whom she sent presents last night. Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank notes, for the servants. Also two books of signed checks which I gave her when I went to Bermuda. She had used half of them.
Her dog has been wandering about the grounds to-day, comrade-less & forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He has tall ears & looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in Germany, & knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. And so, when the burglar alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French & knows no German, tried to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. He remembered two or three of Jean's German commands (without knowing their meaning), & he shouted them to the eager dog. “Leg’ Dich!” (lie down!) The dog obeyed—to the butler's distress. “Sei ruhig!” (be still!) The dog stretched himself on the floor, & even stopped batting the floor with his tail. Then Jean came running, in her night clothes, & shouted “Los!” (Go! fly! rush!) & the dog sped away like the wind, tearing the silences to tatters with his bark. Jean wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was ever to receive from her bright head & her competent hand. The dog will not be neglected.
Paine has come in to say the reporters want photographs of Jean. He has found some proofs in her desk—excellent ones, & evidently not a fortnight old. This is curiously fortunate, for she has not been photographed before for more than a year.
There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or another. After she became secretary & had her income doubled she spent her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad & grateful to say.
She was a loyal friend to all animals, & she loved them all, birds, beasts & everything—even snakes—an inheritance from me. She knew all the birds: she was high up in that lore. She became a member of various humane societies when she was still a little girl—both here & abroad—& she remained an active member to the last. She founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, here & in Europe.
She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out of the wastebasket & answered the letters. She thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that kindly error.
She could write a good letter, & was swift with her pen. She had but an indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy facility. She never allowed her Italian, French & German to get rusty through neglect.
Her unearned & atrocious malady—epilepsy—damaged her disposition when its influence was upon her, & made her say & do ungentle things; but when the influence passed away her inborn sweetness returned, & then she was wholly lovable. Her disease, & its accompanying awful convulsions, wore out her gentle mother's strength with grief & watching & anxiety, & caused her death, poor Livy! Jean's—like her mother's—was a fine character; there is no finer.
The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far & wide, now, just as they did in Italy five years & a half ago, when this child's mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take away some of the pain. When Jean & I kissed hands & parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the telegraph would be bringing me words like these!
“From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of men & dearest of friends.”
For many & many a day to come, wherever I go in this house, remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the numbers of them?
She was an exile so long, so long! There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her fate in the house of a stranger, but in the loving shelter of her own home.
“Miss Jean is dead!” It is true. Jean is dead.
A month ago I was writing bubbling & hilarious articles for magazines yet to appear, & now I am writing—this.
Christmas Day. Noon. Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, & turned back the sheet & looked at the peaceful face, & kissed the cold brow, & remembered that heart-breaking night in Florence so long ago, in that cavernous & silent vast villa, when I crept down stairs so many times, & turned back a sheet & looked at a face just
About 3 in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon Jean's dog in the hall down stairs, & noted that he did not spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow & sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always followed me about, & when I went up stairs he went too—in a tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after petting him a little I went to the library—he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes—big, & kind, & eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, & is of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it: but I have liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, & because he never barks except when there is occasion—which is not oftener than twice a week.
In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of my books, & I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home from Bermuda & autograph them, then she would send them away. If I only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will keep them. Her hand has touched them—it is an accolade—they are noble now.
And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me—a thing I have often wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears. She will never know the pride I take in it, & the pleasure. To-day the mails are full of loving remembrances for her; full of those old, old kind words she loved so well, “Merry Christmas to Jean!” If she could only have lived one day longer!
At last she ran out of money & would not use mine. So she sent to one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could spare—and more, most likely.
Christmas Night. This afternoon they took her away from her room. As soon as I might, I went down to the library, & there she lay, in her coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it was the same face now, with the dignity of death & the peace of God upon it.
They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, & stood up on his hind legs & rested his forepaws upon the trestle, & took a long last look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come. He knows.
At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it—that Jean could not see it! She so loved the snow.
The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the door to bear away its pathetic burden, Payne playing Schubert's “Impromptu,” which was Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my request. Elsewhere in this Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo & the Largo came to be associated, in my heart, with Susy & Livy in their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse & the carriages wind along the road & gradually grow vague & spectral in the falling snow, & presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, & would not come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were babies together—he & 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 & Langdon.
December 26. The dog came to see me at 8 o'clock this morning. He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime—& Jean not here to see.
2:30p.m. It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is the library, in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where her mother & I stood, forty years ago, & were married; & where Susy's coffin stood thirteen year's ago; & where her mother's stood, five years & a half ago; and where mine will stand, after a little time.
Five o'clock. It is all over.
When Clara went away, two weeks ago, to live in Europe, it was hard, but I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said we would be a family. We said we would be close comrades and happy—just we two. That fair dream was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my mind when she received me at this door last Tuesday evening. We were together; we were a family/The dream had come true—oh, preciously true, contentedly true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now, Jean is in the grave!
In the grave—if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
Mark Twain
End of the Autobiography
The closing of Twain's autobiography, his private funeral service in words, displays the man in the raw: his uncommon dignity, his intensity of feeling, his sensitivity to the telling detail, his biting irony; and most of all, his honesty, even as he gazed at Jean's corpse. While he rejoiced
Clara had gone to live in Europe with her new husband little more than a month before the shocking news arrived. She was less sanguine than her father. “[T]here are many glimpses into the past that turn my heart sick & almost bury me in remorse,” she told her cousin Julia. Distressed that no one was near when Jean drowned, Clara was relieved to learn that Katy and another servant were in fact close by and neither heard the distinctive cry that Jean usually made during a seizure.[16] “So nothing could have been done to prevent it,” Clara concluded thankfully.
Twain also felt gratitude—he had Jean back for eight months, and he tasted deeply the joys of paternal love. “I don't know why you should love me, I have not deserved it;” he confessed to Clara, “& the love Jean manifested for me astonished me daily; I recognized its sincerity but could not divine the source of it, nor what had bred it & kept it alive-But I was deeply grateful to Jean for that unearned love,” he wrote mindfully, “& I am deeply grateful to you for yours. More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the Father: He is always longing for the love of His children & trying to get it on the cheapest & laziest terms He can invent.”[17]
His witty comparison to God the Father had a savage dimension that he accentuated in “Letters from the Earth,” which remained unpublished until 1962. “The best minds will tell you,” Satan observed, “that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty.” Twain follows this eloquent summary of good parenting with a striking contrast: “God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that.”[18]
“Letters from the Earth” is, for the most part, a blistering indictment of God the Father—as presented by orthodox Christianity. Twain excoriated “Our Father in Heaven” for his moral bankruptcy, Old Testament cruelty, hypocrisy, jealousy, lack of mercy and justice, as well as his mistreatment of Adam and Eve and their descendents. Some of the venom directed against God in “Letters from the Earth” clearly originates from Twain's frustration and anger at his own failings as a father, as he made explicit in saying to Clara: “More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the Father.”
Another parallel was also operating in “Letters from the Earth.” God cruelly mistreats his earthly children, Satan observed, yet those same children condone His crimes, “excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them.”[19] Jean had also excused her father, perhaps even refusing to regard his actions as “crimes at all.” He was amazed by Jean's generosity, he confessed to Clara, recognizing that he had not deserved her love.
In the time they had together, however, he attempted to make amends. For eight months he related to his daughter Jean in a new way—more attentive, open, and respectful than before her exile. Much to his surprise, he discovered that she was like her “incomparable” mother, he wrote to several friends after her death. “So fine, so admirable, so noble,” was how he described her to his friend Joe Twichell. “Jean had a fine mind, and most competent brain,” he insisted vehemently. “That shit said she was insane!” he railed bitterly at the memory of his secretary's betrayal. “She & her confederate told that to everybody around here.”[20]
But then Twain remembered something even more important about his daughter. “Jean's last act, Thursday night, was to defend her [Lyon] when I burst out upon her! It makes me proud to remember that-Oblessed Jean, and precious!” Without Jean he was, as Joe Twichell described him, “the lonesomest man in the world.”[21]
After Jean's death, Twain remained at Stormfield for ten days, but eagerly anticipated his return to Bermuda on January 5. On the night before he sailed, he saw his friend William Dean Howells for the last time. They reminisced but they also continued to speak of the vital subjects of the day. Howells recalled that their last meeting was “made memorable”
Paine did not escort Twain to Bermuda this time. Thus, with Clara in Europe, he was the only family intimate to read the Sunday New York Times in early February 1910. Perusing an article on Twain's Tom Sawyer, Paine discovered a letter, reprinted in the Times, that was signed by “I.V. Lyon,” followed by the abbreviation for “secretary.” The letter summarized Twain's response to charges that the plot of Tom Sawyer, Detective was plagiarized from a Danish story by Steen Blicher. Clemens was not familiar with Danish, his secretary reported, and had never read any translation or adaptation of Blicher's work. The problem was that the secretary's letter was dated Dec. 9, 1909, eight months after Twain had fired Lyon from her position.[23]
Paine was furious, sending this ditty to Clemens on the same day that the Times article appeared: “Who feeds on bromide and on Scotch/To keep her nerves at highest notch?/Who makes of business-books a botch?/ The Bitch!’ A week later, Paine was still fuming. “Is there no way to shut your people off?” he angrily wrote the publisher of the Times. “ ‘Was Tom Sawyer Danish or American’ is mere Sunday filling & does not matter,” he lectured, “but what does matter is the letter…. That date must have been deliberately changed, somewhere, if the letter is genuine.”[24]
Fortunately, Twain was cut off from the latest shenanigans of his former confidants. With his butler functioning as aide-de-camp, he was content to enjoy life on the island, summarizing his feelings in a letter to Paine as “good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day & every day without a break.” He stayed at the home of the Aliens and was surrounded by a bevy of admirers and friends, including Woodrow Wilson, who played miniature golf with him for several hours. But there was no substitute for the one he had lost. “I miss Jean so!” he wrote to Clara. “She was utterly sweet & dear those last days; & so wise, & so dignified, & so good.”[25]
Clemens made no mention of his illness in letters to Paine, but on March 25 he wrote that he had booked passage home because he did not want to die in Bermuda. “I am growing more and more particular about the place,” he told Paine, and he disliked the idea of his corpse lying in a dark, dank undertaker's cellar on the island while waiting to be shipped home. On April i letters arrived from both Clemens and his
He sailed for home on April 12 in serious distress. At first his breathing was difficult, then impossible. He could not lie down, or even recline, as he fought for air in the humid Gulf Stream. He changed positions over and over in an attempt to get comfortable; first sitting on the couch, then being helped to his feet by Paine, then lurching back to his berth. But he would relax only to be jerked to attention by the absence of air. The tortures of suffocation were so great, he did not think he would make it back to Redding. When Paine told him he must hold on for Clara, who was steaming across the Atlantic to join him, Sam responded: “It is a losing race; no ship can outsail death.”[27]
But he sailed his ship just fast enough to see Clara again. She arrived at Stormfield with her husband on April 17, only to find her father cheerful and talkative. Two days later he asked her to sing for him, which she found the strength to do. Soothed and comforted by her voice, “he bade her good-bye,” Paine recalled, “saying he might not see her again.” He called for Paine close to the end and asked him to throw away two unfinished manuscripts. “I assured him that I would take care of them,” Paine wrote, “and he pressed my hand. It was his last word to me.” On his final day of life, he took Clara's hand, looked steadfastly into her eyes and faintly murmured, “Good bye, dear.” Dr. Quintard thought he added, “If we meet—”[28]
Clemens died with dignity. “There was not a vestige of hesitation,” Paine insisted, “there was no grasping at straws, no suggestion of dread.” In the shadow of death, according to Paine's eyewitness account, Clemens was “never less than brave.”[29]
More than a dozen years preceding his death, a reporter had come to interview the Clemens family about a report that the author was seriously ill. Clemens, in good health, walked into the parlor unexpectedly, and the reporter showed him the orders he had received by cablegram: “If Mark Twain very ill, five hundred words. If dead, send one thousand.” Twain never skipped a beat. “You don't need as much as that. Just say the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”[30] On April 21, 1910, the exaggeration ended. Mark Twain was dead, and the world would need more than a thousand words to contain its loss.