April 22 Friday — William Dean Howells wrote to Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch after learning the sad news:
I found Mr. Paine’s telegram when I came in late last night; and suddenly your father was set apart from all other men in a strange majesty. Death had touched his familiar image into historic grandeur.
You have lost a father. Shall I dare tell you of the desolation of an old man who has lost a friend, and finds himself alone in the great world which has now wholly perished around?
We all join in sending you our helpless love [MFMT 291].
Jervis Langdon II diary entry:
Fri. April 22, 1910. Redding. Funeral arrangements were practically completed last night. Edward in N.Y. consulted with Maj. Leigh & Mr. Duneka of Harpers. Clara in the end prefers a stop-off in N.Y. & service there, Open to the public except for some special cards sent out. Spent the day largely with Clara and Ossip. Clara is wonderfully calm and dear. Dr. Quintard spent last night here. Uncle Sam placed in mahogany coffin, which Edward picked out, in the evening & he lay all night in state in the beautiful library [Jerome & Wisbey 153].
The New York Times, p8, ran an editorial titled, “Mark Twain.”
MARK TWAIN.
That SAMUEL L, CLEMENS was the greatest American humorist of his age nobody will deny. Posterity will be left to decide his relative position in letters among the humorists of English literature. It is certain that his contemporary fame abroad was equal to his fame at home. All Europe recognized his genius, the English people appreciated him at his own work, and the University of Oxford honored him with a degree, His writings commanded a higher price in the market than those of any other contemporary whose career was solely devoted to literature. His “public” was of enormous extent. From “The Jumping Frog” to the “Diary of Adam” everything that came from his pen was eagerly read and heartily enjoyed by multitudes.
Much that he wrote has already been forgotten, inevitably, and in spite of definitive editions and the admirably practical management of his business in the later years of his career. But nearly all that JONATHAN SWIFT, FIELDING, STERNE, and SMOLLETT wrote has been forgotten, though their fame, resting on a few books, still lives. ARTEMUS WARD, MARK TWAIN'S greatest predecessor as a National jester, is now little more than a name. NASBY belonged exclusively to the Reconstruction period. For any American humorous writer it would be fit to compare with MARK TWAIN we must go back to WASHINGTON IRVING. But the author of Knickerbocker’s ironical history and the Sleepy Hollow legend did not surpass, in those denotements of the humorous genius, the author of “The Adventures of a Cub Pilot on the Mississippi” and “Huckleberry Finn.” Indeed, it is hard to say that IRVING ever surpassed CLEMENS. Without belittling the first great American prose writer we are compelled to doubt if posterity will name him in the same breath with the humorist who has just passed away.
The “Innocents Abroad” and “A Tramp Abroad” are likely to be remembered among the great travel books of all time. Full of the audacity, the wild exaggeration and violent contrasts which distinguish the National humor, they are equally remarkable as the veracious record of fresh impressions on a fertile and responsive mind, Mr. CLEMENS’S more serious works, such as “The Prince and the Pauper,” an incursion into the field of historical romance; “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,” and “Joan of Arc,” have been read by multitudes with great delight. He has been quoted in common conversation oftener, perhaps, than any of his fellow-countrymen, including BENJAMIN FRANKLIN and LINCOLN. He has been honored by misquotation, too, and the humorous sayings of the ancients have been attributed to him, though he never borrowed. His wit was his own, and so was his extravagance, and his powers of observation never failed him.
We have called him the greatest American humorist. We may leave it an open question whether he was not also the greatest American writer of fiction. The creator of Mulberry Sellers and Pudd’nhead Wilson, the inventor of that Southwestern feud in “Huckleberry Finn,” which, with all its wildly imaginative details, is still infused with rare pathos, has certainly an undying vitality. An emotional and quite unconventional sort of man, CLEMENS was, whose early life was a hard struggle for existence. He obtained his education where he could get it. Presumably his faults were as large as his merits. Intellectually he was of Herculean proportions. His death will be mourned, everywhere, and smiles will break through the tears as remembrance of the man’s rich gift to his era comes to the mourners’ minds. However his work may be judged by impartial and unprejudiced generations his fame is imperishable.
The Times also ran a short piece, p. 2, of the reaction in England to Twain’s death:
ENGLAND FEELS HIS LOSS.
Only Tolstoi’s Death Could Be More Regretted, Says London Paper.
LONDON, April 22.—The British public followed the reports of Mark Twain’s last illness with deepest sympathy, and the news of his death will be felt as a national loss. All of the London newspapers publish extended sketches of his career, with portraits and reminiscences, especially recalling his last visit to England in 1907, when Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, presiding at the Pilgrims’ dinner, paid an eloquent tribute to Mark Twain as a man Englishmen delighted to honor.
The news of his death arrived too late for editorial comment in the papers. The Morning Post obituary says that he enjoyed a popularity in Great Britain rarely exceeded by any American man of letters. The Daily Mail says that it is no exaggeration to say that Mark Twain was the greatest humorist the modern world had known.
“With the exception of Tolstoi,” says The Morning Leader, “probably there is no writer whose death would rouse more universal emotions of respect and regret. Mark Twain’s death leaves a blank in the purely human literature.
The Times ran another short piece of an old schoolmate of Sam’s who claimed to be the original Huck Finn: :
“HUCKLEBERRY FINN” TALKS.
Original of Character Calls Mark Twain Greatest American Literary Figure.
Special to The New York Times.
PARIS, Mo., April 21.—“The old days are passing. The men who made them are gone, and even the long sweep of the majestic yellow river seems to have dwindled and lessened. The noise of its traffic, the music of its many deep throated voices are practically no more. The man who caught them and froze them into human words for the delight of the world is dead.”
So spoke B. C. M. Farthing, friend and schoolmate of Mark Twain, and the original “Huckleberry Finn,” when told tonight of the death of his boyhood friend and companion,
“I can’t talk to you about it,” he said, ‘‘for all that I might say would be construed either as boasting intimacy with the greatest literary figure the Nation has ever produced or as an effect to gain cheap notoriety, I desire neither,
“I can see the gray-haired man who died at Redding today as he stood at the window of the old Hannibal Courier office fifty years ago, his sleeves rolled up, leaning on his case, bargaining with me and his younger brother, Henry, for a mite of a boat that lay down at the river’s edge. I can see the shock of hair and the quizzical gray eyes, and the kindness, yet, with all the shrewdness, that shone from therm. The racial love of adventure was in him, and the spirit of the river fanned it into flame.”