August 19 Wednesday – In Guildford, England, Sam wrote two notes to Andrew Chatto, the first before receiving news of Susy’s death, the second afterward. First,
The five books have come, & the reviews, & the bank-book and cheque-book & I am cumulatively obliged to you. The Chronicle notice is very very fine. If I ever lecture again — but I hope I shan’t — I shall be glad to be interviewed for the Chronicle… [MTP]. Note: London Chronicle. The reviews were of JA.
Charles Langdon sent a cablegram (not extant), which reached Sam with the news of Susy’s death [MFMT 172]. In his Aug. 28 to Livy (added to Aug. 26), Sam quoted the message:
Susy could not stand brain congestion and meningitis and was peacefully released today.
Ten years later Sam would write: It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live [MTA 34].
And the second note to Chatto:
P.S. These wholly unexpected tidings reached me just after I had written you. This was the prodigy of our flock, in intellectuality, in the gift of speech, & in music — not instrumental but vocal. Will you please had the enclosed half-sheet to any newspaper you please.
Sam asked that Chatto copy the notice and then hand it on — he originally wrote the Chronicle but crossed it out for “any newspaper.” Sam wrote he wanted his many English friends to know of his disaster. The news notice item he included:
Susan Olivia Clemens, aged 24, eldest daughter of S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain), died on Tuesday of this week in the home she was reared in, in the city of Hartford, Connecticut. The illness was brief, the disease brain fever. News of the illness, with the intimation that it was not serious, was received by cable on Friday last, & Mrs. Clemens & her second daughter sailed from Southampton the next day, hoping & expecting to be able to bring the patient to England for some month’s stay. They are still at sea [MTP].
Sam also wrote his anguish to Livy, still at sea: I have spent the day along — thinking; sometimes bitter thoughts, sometimes only sad ones. Reproaching myself for laying the foundation of all our troubles & this final disaster in opposing Pamela when she did not want Annie to marry that Webster adventurer. Reproaching myself for a million things whereby I have brought misfortune & sorrow to this family [LLMT 320-1].
Sam thought Livy would sail Sept. 2 but would know for sure soon. He wanted her to see “that doctor in New York & take his treatment.” Sam wished he could be at the dock in New York, when Charles Langdon’s tears would “reveal all without speaking.”
A second letter which was headed P.S. of the same date:
Oh, my heart-broken darling — no, not heart-broken yet, for you still do not know — but what tidings are in store for you! What a bitter world, what a shameful world it is. Yesterday we were playing billiards, here, & laughing & chatting; & you & Clara at sea were planning to take this or that or the other Hartford train according to possibilities, & conjecturing & forecasting as to how soon you could get our poor little Susy out of Hartford & on board a ship; & at the very same hour that we four were doing these things Sue & Charley were saying in whispers, “She is passing away” — & presently, “All is over.” O my God! My darling I will not say to you the things that are in my heart & on my tongue — they are better left unsaid. …
Be comforted, my darling — we shall have our release in time. Be comforted, remembering how much hardship, grief, pain, she is spared; & that her heart can never be broken, now, for the loss of a child. …
I seem to see her in her coffin — I do not know in which room. In the library, I hope; for there she & Ben & I mostly played when we were children together & happy. I wish there were five of the coffins, side by side; out of my heart I wish it. You & Jean & Charley & Sue & all of you will be in that room together next Sunday, with our released & happy Susy, (& no unrelated person but Katy) — & I not there in the body — but in the spirit, yes. How lovely is death; & how niggardly it is doled out.
She died in our own house — not in another’s; died where every little thing was familiar & beloved; died where she had spent all her life till my crimes made her a pauper & an exile. How good it is, that she got home again [LLMT 321-2].
Sam also sent a cablegram to Henry Watterson, evidently following a prior letter not extant:
BURN LETTER. BLOT IT FROM YOUR MEMORY. SUSIE IS DEAD [MTP].