April 21 Thursday — Sam began a note to daughter Clara which he evidently didn’t finish: “Dear / You didn’t tell me, but I have found out that you—well, I [rest illegible].”
At 7:30 a.m. Sam wrote a note to Albert B. Paine asking for his spectacles and for a glass pitcher. It was the last piece of writing he would ever do [MTP].
During the day, Albert B. Paine wrote for Sam to Dorothy Quick.
Dear Dorothy:
May I be permitted to send you thanks for your thoughtful expression, which I am sure Mr. Clemens would appreciate if he were well enough to receive the same. His health at this time is very poor, but we hope for speedy improvement.
Very sincerely yours,
[signed:] A.B. Paine
[ handwritten:|
My regards to your mother [MTP].
Jervis Langdon ll diary entry:
Thur. April 21, 1910, Redding, Returned to “Stormfield” on 8.50 train. Found Uncle Sam to be brighter. Saw him for a minute & he knew me & feebly spoke my name. Julie & Edward [Loomis] arrived about 2 P.M., & Dr. Quintard a little later, Uncle Sam sank into unconsciousness & doctors agreed he was weaker than 24 hours ago would likely not live through the night. Julie & Edward left the house about six. At six-twenty five—or thereabouts—Dr. Quintard noted sudden sinking, called Clara & Ossip & the grand old fellow peacefully breathed his last at 6.32. Phoned Edward at station. He & Julie continued to N.Y. Wired Father [Charles Langdon]. News given to Associated Press & newspaper men came out in the evening. Remained at Stormfield (Jerome & Wisbey 153).
At 6.22 p.m. Samuel Langhorne Clemens died. (some reports give 6:30; Jervis Langdon gives 6:32) Newspapers around the world announced the sad news. The New York Times, p. 1, Apr. 22 covered the passing:
MARK TWAIN IS DEAD AT 74
End Comes Peacefully at His New England Home After a Long Illness.
CONSCIOUS A LITTLE BEFORE
Carlyle’s “French Revolution” Lay Beside Him—“Give Me My Glasses” His Last Words.
SURVIVING CHILD WITH HIM
Tragic Death of His Daughter Jean Recently Did Much to Hurry His End.
Special to The New York, Times.
DANBURY, Conn., April 21—Samuel Langhorne Clemens, “Mark Twain,” died at 22 minutes after 6 tonight. Beside him on the bed lay a beloved book—it was Carlyle’s “French Revolution” —and near the book his glasses, pushed away with a weary sigh a few hours before. Too weak to speak clearly, “Give me my glasses,” he had written on a piece of paper. He had received them, put them down, and sunk into unconsciousness from which he glided almost imperceptibly into death. He was in his seventy-fifth year.
For some time his daughter Clara and her husband, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, and the humorists’ biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, had been by the bed waiting for the end which Drs. Quintard and Halsey had seen to be a matter of minutes. The patient felt absolutely no pain at the end and the moment of his death was scarcely noticeable,
Death came, however, while his favorite niece, Mrs. E. E. Loomis, and her husband, who is Vice President of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railway, and a nephew, Jervis Langdon, were on the way to the railroad station. They had left the house much encouraged by the fact that the sick man had recognized them, and took a train for New York ignorant of what happened later.
Hopes Aroused Yesterday
Although the end had been foreseen by the doctors and would not have been a shock at any time, the apparently strong rally of this morning had given basis for the hope that it would be postponed for several days. Mr. Clemens awoke at about 4 o’clock this morning after a few hours of the first natural sleep he had had for several days, and the nurses could see by the brightness of his eyes that his vitality had been considerably restored. He was able to raise his arms above his head and clasp them behind his neck with the first evidence of physical comfort he had given for a long time.
His strength seemed to increase enough to allow him to enjoy the sunrise, the first signs of which he could see out of the windows in the three sides of the room where he lay. The increasing sunlight seemed to bring ease to him, and by the time the family were about he was strong enough to sit up in bed and overjoyed them by recognizing all of them and speaking a few words to each. This was the first time that his mental powers had been fully his for nearly two days, with the exception of a few minutes early last evening, when he addressed a few sentences to his daughter.
Calls for His Book.
For two hours he lay in bed enjoying the feeling of this return of strength. Then he made a movement and asked in a faint voice for the copy of Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” which he has always had near him for the last year, and which he has read and re-read and brooded over.
The book was handed to him, and he lifted it up as if to read. Then a smile faintly illuminated his face when he realized that he was trying to read without his glasses. He tried to say, “Give me my glasses,” but his voice failed, and the nurses bending over him could not understand. He motioned for a sheet of paper and a pencil, and wrote what he could not say.
With his glasses on he read a little and then slowly put the book down with a sigh. Soon he appeared to become drowsy and settled on his pillow. Gradually he sank and settled into a lethargy. Dr. Halsey appreciated that he could have been roused, but considered it better for him to rest. At 3 o’clock he went into complete unconsciousness.
Later Dr. Quintard, who had arrived from New York, held a consultation with Dr. Halsey, and it was decided that death was near. The family was called and gathered about the bedside watching in a silence which was long unbroken. It was the end. At twenty-two minutes past 6, with the sunlight just turning red as it stole into the window, in perfect silence he breathed his last.
Died of a Broken Heart.
The people of Redding, Bethel, and Danbury listened when they were told that the doctors said Mark Twain was dying of angina pectoris. But they say among themselves that he died of a broken heart. And this is the verdict not of popular sentiment alone. Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer to be and literary executor, who has been constantly with him, said that for the past year at least Mr. Clemens had been weary of life. When Richard Watson Gilder died, he said: “How fortunate he is. No good fortune of that kind ever comes to me.”
The man who has stood to the public for the greatest humorist this country has produced has in private life suffered overwhelming sorrows. The loss of an only son in infancy, a daughter in her teens and one in middle life, and finally of a wife who was a constant and sympathetic companion, has preyed upon his mind. The recent loss of his daughter Jean, who was closest to him in later years when her sister was abroad studying, was the final blow. On the heels of this came the first symptoms of the disease which was surely to be fatal, and one of whose accompaniments is mental depression. Mr. Paine says that all heart went out of him and his work when his daughter Jean died. He has practically written nothing since he summoned his energies to write a last chapter memorial of her for his autobiography.
He told his biographer that the past Winter in Bermuda was gay but not happy. Bermuda is always gay in Winter and Mark Twain was a central figure in the gayety. He was staying at the home of William H. Allen, the American Consul. Even in Bermuda, however, Mr. Clemens found himself unable to write and finally relied on Mr. Allen’s fifteen year-old daughter Helen to write the few letters he cared to send.
His health failed rapidly, and finally Mr. Allen wrote to Albert Bigelow Paine that his friend was in a most serious condition. Mr. Paine immediately cabled to Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, his surviving daughter, who was in Europe, and started himself on April 2 for Bermuda, embarking with the humorist for he return to New York immediately after his arrival. On the trip over Mark Twain became very much worse and finally realized his condition.
“It’s a losing game,” he said to his companion. “I'll never get home alive.”
Mr. Clemens did manage to summon his strength, however, and in spite of being so weak that he had to be carried down the gangplank he survived the journey to his beautiful place at Redding. The first symptom of angina pectoris came last June when he went to Baltimore to address a young ladies’ school. In his room at the hotel he was suddenly taken with a terrible gripping at the heart. It soon passed away, however, and he was able to make an address with no inconvenience. The pains, however, soon returned with more frequency and steadily grew worse until they became a constant torture.
One of the last acts of Mark Twain was to write out a check for $6,000 for the library in which the literary coterie settled near Redding have been interested for a year, fairs, musicales, and sociables having been held in order to raise the necessary amount. The library is to be a memorial to Jean Clemens, and will be built on a site about half a mile from Stormfield at Selleck Cross Roads.
It is certain to be recalled that Mark Twain was for more than fifty years an inveterate smoker, and the first conjecture of the layman would be that he had weakened his heart by overindulgence in tobacco, Dr. Halsey said tonight that he was unable to say that the angina pectoris from which mark Twain died was in any way a sequel of nicotine poisoning. Some constitutions, he said, seem immune for the effects of tobacco, and his was one of them. Yet it is true that since his illness began the doctors had cut down Mark Twain’s daily allowance of twenty cigars and countless pipes to four cigars a day.
No deprivation was a greater sorrow to him. He tried to smoke on the steamer while returning from Bermuda, and only gave it up because he was too feeble to draw on his pipe. Even on his death bed when had passed the point of speech, and it was no longer certain that his ideas were lucid, he would make the motion of waiving a cigar, and smiling, expel empty air from under the mustache still stained with smoke.
Where Mark Twain chose to spend his declining years was the first outpost of Methodism in New England, and it was among the hills of Redding that Gen. Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame mustered his sparse ranks. Putnam Park now incloses the memory of his camp,
Mark Twain first heard of it at the dinner given him on his seventieth birthday, when a fellow-guest who lived there mentioned hits beauties and added that there was a vacant house adjoining his own. “I think you may buy that old house for me,” said Mark Twain. Sherwood Place was the name of that old house, and where it stood Mark Twain reared the white walls of the Italian villa he first named Innocence at Home, but a first experience of what a New England Winter storm can be in its whitest fury quickly caused him to christen it anew Stormfield.
Where Mark Twain Died.
The house had been thus described by Albert Bigelow Paine: “Set on a fair hillside with such a green slope below, such a view outspread across the valley as made one catch his breath a little when he first turned to look at it. A trout stream flows through one of the meadows. There are apple trees and gray stone walls. The entrance to it is a winding, leafy lane.”
Through this lane the “Innocent at Home” loved to wander in his white flannels for homely gossip with the neighbors, They remember him best as one who above all things loved a good listener, for Mark was a mighty talker, stored with fairy tales for the maids he adored, and racier, ruder speech for more stalwart masculine ears. It is a legend that he was vastly proud of his famous mop of white hair, and used to spend the pains of a Court lady in getting it to just the proper stage of artistic disarray.
The burial will be in the family plot at Elmira, N. Y., where lie already his wife, his two daughters, Susan and Jean, and his infant son, Langhorne [sic Langdon] No date has yet been set, as the family is still undecided whether or not there shall be a public funeral first in New York City.
It is probable that Stormfield will be kept as a Summer place by Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, who is very fond both of the house and the country, although her husband’s musical engagements make it necessary that she spend a part of each year abroad.
Mr. Paine said tonight that Mark Twain had put his affairs in perfect order and that he died well off, though by no means a rich man. He leaves a considerable number of manuscripts, in all stages of incompleteness and of all characters, many of them begun years ago and put aside as unsatisfactory.
Mrs. Gabrilowitsch will aid Mr. Paine in the final decision as to what use shall be made of these.