December 7 Sunday – Thomas B. Reed, Ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives, died in Washington. In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam telegraphed condolence to Susan P. Reed (Mrs. Thomas B. Reed).
“There is none who knew him but is stricken with you & mourns with you. He could have achieved the age of the patriarchs if his friends could have been privileged to spare from their lives to lengthen his. I beg to lay the homage of my deepest & sincerest sympathy at your feet” [MTP].
The NY Times, p.1, Dec. 7, reported Reed’s death and closed the article with the words of Sam:
…
The bulletin announcing the death of Mr. Reed was communicated to Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain) at his home at Riverdale-on-Hudson, early this morning. Mr. Clemens had known the dead statesman for many years, and was his close friend and admirer. Mr. Reed was one of the guests at a dinner given a week ago in honor of the sixty-seventh birthday of the author.
Mr. Clemens was much affected by the news. “We had all hoped and thought that Mr. Reed would recover,” he said. “The country has not bred a nobler man. His death is an incalculable loss to the nation” [Note: Sam’s short piece of remembrance on Reed would run in Harper’s Weekly on Dec. 20, 1902.]
Sam also wrote condolences to Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Three of us in the family know of the bereavement which has come to you & Mrs. Aldrich, & we wish to offer our deep sympathy. It cannot help, but it is all that any can give. Mrs. Clemens lives in a world where no sorrows come from without—a blessed ignorance which sometimes seems compensation for her captivity. It seemed so this morning, when that man whom she loved & I loved passed to his rest, & she was spared the shock & I bore it alone. It is unrealizable. At this hour eight days ago I was writing Tom Reed a blithe letter— two days earlier I had flung friendly bricks at him in a speech, in return for a volley of the like from him—he was full of life & just his old self: & now he is an unreality, the remains of a dream [MTP]. Note: Aldrich’s son Charles, diagnosed in 1901 with tuberculosis, would die in 1904. Thomas would follow him in death in 1907.
Thomas Nast (1840-1902), editorial cartoonist and friend of Sam’s, died in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he was serving as American consul to Ecuador. It was Albert Bigelow Paine’s biography of Nast that impressed Clemens and led him to offer Paine the position as his biographer.
an unidentified person wrote thanks to Sam from Somerville, Mass., for his article on Christian Science in the North American Review [MTP].