May 15 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Dr. William Wilberforce Baldwin.
I hope that you will come with your mind & conscience all prepared to commit a lofty & righteous deception—if need be—to save Mrs. Clemens’s life. Tell her you want to make a more thorough examination by the light, of the past few days’ regime, & then tell her there is nothing the matter with her heart that need alarm her.
I was born with an incurable disease, so was everybody—the same one that every machine has—& the knowledge of the fact frightens nobody, damages nobody; but the moment a name is given the disease, the whole thing is changed: fright ensues, & horrible depression, & the life that has learned its sentence is not worth the living. Medicine has its office, it does its share & does it well; but without hope back of it, its forces are crippled & only the physician’s verdict can create that hope when the facts refuse to create it. You can lift the patient up again to where she was before, & I was to see you when you come, & conspire with you to drive her fatal imaginings out of her head [Cyril Clemens 1932 Mark Twain the Letter Writer, p. 102].
“Sunday May 15 / No water in my closet this morning / SLC. / Water closed in Clara’s closet this morning / Preserve this” [MTP: DV245].