October 7 Friday – According to Susy’s letter to Louise Brownell, written about one week after the move to the Villa Viviani, or ca. Oct. 1 (but postmarked Oct. 14), this was the day Grace King and sister Nan King arrived.
Clara expects to go to Berlin on Thursday of next week and Grace King and her sister come on Friday to spend a month with us. We are looking forward to this visit [Cotton 101171].
Since May, Livy had written at least monthly to Grace King (May 20, ca. June 1, July 1, Aug.. 30, Sept. 5.) In one of her letters she invited Grace and her sister Nan, who were in London about to travel in Europe, to stay with the Clemens family during the month of October. After a trip to Paris the sisters traveled to Switzerland and followed much the same path to Florence as the Clemens party had, through Milan and Bologna. Robert Bush writes of their arrival in Florence, an arrival that Susy’s above letter establishes as this day:
“Mr. Clemens was punctually waiting at the station for them, ready to take them to Villa Viviani, the house he had leased on the road to Settignano. Warmly welcomed by Olivia and her daughters Susy and Jean, the King sisters settled down for a month’s stay….
“The Clemenses and the Kings took their tea in the shade of olive trees, from which they viewed the warm October countryside. On one such occasion Mark Twain smoked his pipe and commented on the gold of the late sun: ‘It cannot be compared to the sun on the Mississippi River.’ For all the beauty of the view of Florence before them the remark prompted reminiscences of Captain Horace Bixby and their various trips on river steamers. On such an afternoon Mark Twain confessed to them his fear of hell. When someone discounted the possibility of hell, observing that ‘Nobody believes in hell any longer!’ he said, ‘I don’t believe in it, but I’m afraid of it. It makes me afraid to die.’ He recollected his Presbyterian mother’s teachings that were still with him and said, ‘When I wake up at night I think of hell, and I am sure about going there.’ His idolizing wife then asked, ‘Why, Youth, who then can be saved?’” [134-5]. Note: Bush puts their departure for Paris as “before mid-November” [136]. Given Grace’s Nov. 14 letter to Charles Warner from Paris, which Bush cites, it’s likely they left during the last week in October or the first week in November. An exact one-month visit would have ended on Nov. 7.
Bush also writes of “morning excursions into Florence,” including laying flowers at the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) in the English cemetery.
“Although they visited the usual museums, Grace King felt an antipathy for the city itself as Mark Twain did. The fascination that Florence held for artists in the past and for the English and American colony there was quite lost on her, but she responded with deep emotion to the surrounding landscape. She took great satisfaction in visiting various friends of the Clemenses whose villas were scattered about the countryside” [135-6]. Note: On Oct. 21 Sam wrote daughter Clara of the Kings’ leaving and how they would be missed. See entry.