February 7 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence Sam wrote to Prof. Pietro Grocco. Livy was getting worse and the good doctor was not always available. Jean Clemens copied the paragraph over in French [MTP].
We find that you were right in your original judgment that you would not be able to give the constant attention to Mrs. Clemens’s case which it would require from the physician who should take personal charge of it. In taking the indicated step, I beg to testify in what high honor we hold your great name & character, & how grateful we have been to you for the exception to your rule which you made in taking personal charge of her case. Mrs. Clemens grieves to lose you, whose face has been a so welcome one to her, but sometimes we cannot have you when we greatly need you, because you are obliged to be away from Florence so much on important consultations—once during a period of five days—a time of great uneasiness for us, but which necessarily could not be helped. Also I have been troubled by the resumption of digitalis & bromide—drugs which help other people but have always failed in Mrs. Clemens’s case—& also the resumption of electricity, which was tried during two years without good result, though under the best conditions which Paris could furnish.
With the profoundest respect I am / Sincerely Yours [MTP]. Note: reviewing Sam’s next letter to Sherry, it would seem this letter to Prof. Grocco was an oblique way of firing the doctor after discovering one of his prescriptions contained bromide. Of course it was also true that, as Sam confessed, the doctor was unable to attend to Livy as much as was desired.
Sam also wrote to Margaret Sherry, the trained nurse who had been sent home on Dec. 7, 1903.
We relieved those two physicians from duty to-day. It was necessary. Mrs. Clemens had made no progress in 4 weeks—a thing which substantially amounts to retrogression. Lately she had not been sleeping, & that was having a bad effect. She has not been out of her bed for 8 weeks. Dr. Starr’s remedies had been supplanted by inefficacious ones. Three days ago it was found out that one of the prescriptions contained bromide; Mrs. Clemens ceased from taking it, of course; we cabled Dr. Starr for the address of another physician if he could recommend one; he answered this morning recommending one, & we have called him for tomorrow & sent courteous congès to Prof. G. & Nesti. Mrs. Clemens’s food has been unappetising & unproductive of flesh; to-morrow Katy will begin to cook it herself.
We are all feeling better to-night, & there is a pervading cheerfulness which is genuine—I think we have been parading the counterfeit article exclusively for several weeks.
As we have an affection for you & Dr. Moffatt [sic Moffat] I thought I would tell you these things, knowing you would like to hear them‘, he also [MTP]. Notes: Dr. Henry Moffat, of Yonkers. Dr. M. Allen Starr, N.Y.C. family physician, recommended Dr. G.W. Kirch, an Austrian physician in Florence [Hill 81]. Hill writes:
Kirch, who believed that Mrs. Clemens needed only one or two visits a week, was ordered to attend her daily and to minister to Miss Lyon and Mrs. Lyon—even to make an inspection of the cesspools under the house in preparation for the condemnation proceedings against the villa. Clemens and he were to file lawsuits and countersuits over Kirch’s bill and to threaten litigation as late as 1906 [81].
F. Kaplan (who spells the doctor’s name as “Kirsch,”) writes: “At Twain’s insistence, he came to the house daily, helped in dealing with practical issues, and played long hours of billiards with his patient’s nervously bored husband” [608].