June 5 Sunday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto near Florence, Olivia Louise (Livy) Clemens died of heart failure at “a little past 9” in the evening. She was 58 years old [June 6 to Aldrich, Howells]. Paine gives a detailed account of the hours before Livy’s death (other reminiscences vary slightly in detail):

It was on Sunday, the 5th of June, that the end came. Clemens and Jean had driven out to make some calls, and had stopped at a villa, which promised to fulfil most of the requirements. They came home full of enthusiasm concerning it, and Clemens, in his mind, had decided on the purchase. In the corridor Clara said:  “She is better to-day than she has been for three months.”

Then quickly, under her breath, “Unberufen,” which the others, too, added hastily—superstitiously. Mrs. Clemens was, in fact, bright and cheerful, and anxious to hear all about the new property which was to become their home. She urged him to sit by her during the dinner-hour and tell her the details; but once, when the sense of her frailties came upon her, she said they must not mind if she could not go very soon, but be content where they were. He remained from half past seven until eight—a forbidden privilege, but permitted because she was so animated, feeling so well. Their talk was as it had been in the old days, and once during it he reproached himself, as he had so often done, and asked forgiveness for the tears he had brought into her life. When he was summoned to go at last he chided himself for remaining so long; but she said there was no harm, and kissed him, saying: “You will come back,” and he answered, “Yes, to say good night,” meaning at half past nine, as was the permitted custom. He stood a moment at the door throwing kisses to her, and she returning them, her face bright with smiles.

He was so hopeful and happy that it amounted to exaltation. He went to his room at first, then he was moved to do a thing which he had seldom done since Susy died. He went to the piano up-stairs and sang the old jubilee songs that Susy had liked to hear him sing. Jean came in presently, listening. She had not done this before, that he could remember. He sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “My Lord He Calls Me.” He noticed Jean then and stopped, but she asked him to go on.

Mrs. Clemens, in her room, heard the distant music, and said to her attendant: “He is singing a good-night carol to me.”

The music ceased presently, and then a moment later she asked to be lifted up. Almost in that instant life slipped away without a sound.

Clemens, coming to say good night, saw a little group about her bed, Clara and Jean standing as if dazed. He went and bent over and looked into her face, surprised that she did not greet him. He did not suspect what had happened until he heard one of the daughters ask: “Katie, is it true? Oh, Katie, is it true?”

He realized then that she was gone.

Sam’s notebook: At a quarter past 9 this evening she that was the life of my life passed to the relief & the peace of death, after 22 months of unjust & unearned suffering. I first saw her near 37 years ago, & now I have looked upon her face for the last time. Oh, so unexpected [MTB 1216-18; NB 47 TS 11].

Clara Clemens recalled the death of her mother:

This was on a warm day, the fifth of June, when the very flowers seemed filled with the exaltation of life that early sumemer invokes! Mother appeared better than she had been for months and was eager to hear every detail concerning the home Father had now fully determined to acquire. We gathered around her bed, allowing the new topic of interest to fill out thoughts. Then Jean and I left Father and Mother alone. It was now early in the evening, and as we looked down on the lights of Florence twinkling peacefully under the starry sky we felt deep joy arise in our hearts. Joy because Mother was better and we were going to have a home of our own once more. Later we heard Father in the next room singing “Go Chain the Lion Down.” He too was happy. Suddenly the agitated voice of Katie rose above all other sounds: “Miss Clara! Miss Clara!” I ran, but reached Mother’s room too late. It was impossible to rivive her strength after this terrible heart-attack. The Bestower of Peace entered and set my precious Mother free. Her wish to die before her husband had been granted and she passed unconsciously from the earthly to the unknown state. Father stood helpless as a little child while the beloved soul glided away. He softly stroked an unresponding hand and called her name. No answer but the silence of the dead [MFMT 252-3].

Katy Leary remembered:

The night she died, there was some great doings going on at the church and I went out to them. It’s what they call the Fourty Hours’ Adoration. A grand procession with boys carrying lighted candles and the priests going around to the different churches and then marching back to their own. I went round in that procession to all the different churches. I’d walked for miles that day, and I was dead beat, but when I got back to the house I went right up to the nurse and said, “How is Mrs. Clemens?” She said: “She is not so well, she’s having a bad spell. I am going to give her some oxygen.” I hurried to her room on the ground floor, to get it ready, and when she saw me she whispered: “Oh! I’ve been awfully sick all the afternoon, Katy.”

“Well,” I says, “you’ll be all right now.” And I held her up, held her in my arms, and I was fanning her and then—then she fell right over on my shoulder. She died right then in my arms. She drew a little short breath, you know, just once, and was gone! She died so peacefully and a smile was on her face. I looked at her—and I knew that was the end. I knew she’d gone. I couldn’t hear her breathe any more. I lay her back on the pillow and ran out to get the family. They had all been right around her only a few minutes before, and had left because the nurse thought it best for her to be alone.

Miss Clara was in the parlor and Mr. Clemens was in the dining-room, waiting. Oh! I don’t know how I told them. I guess I didn’t have to—they knew. They really felt that she was dying all that day. Clara told me afterward that she felt her mother was going to die that very day. She did not rouse up like she did some days.

They came into the room and oh, God! it was pitiful. Mr. Clemens ran right up to the bed and took her in his arms like he always did and held her for the longest time, and then he laid her back and he said, “How beautiful she is—how young and sweet—and look, she’s smiling!”

It was a pitiful thing to see her there dead, and him looking at her. Oh, he cried all that time, and Clara and Jean, they put their arms around their father’s neck and they cried, the three of them as thought their hearts would break. And then Clara and Jean, they took their father by the hand, one on each side, and led him away. Then the doctor came and we got her ready. I kept my promise, and put on her the dress she wanted, the beautiful lavender silk dress and the stockings and the little slippers that matched. … Mrs. Clemens looked so lovely lying there, so calm and fair after all her suffering. We laid her in the parlor [Lawton 227-9].

Isabel Lyon recorded the event in three cryptic lines: “June 5—Mrs. Clemens died at nine in the evening. / Clara is prostrate— / Life is Too desolated—” [MTOW 40]. Note: Lyon remembered at the first anniversary of Livy’s death:

“…after a sweet chat with Santissima [Clara], Mrs. Clemens’s light went out—Now I can see Mr. Clemens’s face when I flew to the room & told him to go to Mrs. Clemens’s room—‘Is it an alarm?’ he said—but I didn’t know—they only told me to run & get him” [40]. Note: Jean took pictures of her dead mother; one may be seen in the source, and also in AMT 1: photos following p. 204.

Lystra writes:

“Later that night Katy found Clara curled up in a little heap under the casket. Sam stayed awake but paced like a sleepwalker between his bedroom and his wife’s room all night. Jean had her first grand mal seizure in thirteen months soon after” [41].

Hill points out discrepancies between Sam’s and the other accounts and summarizes newspaper accounts:

What makes these accounts important is that Clemens’ own version differs, not substantially but emotionally, from the other two [Lyon’s, Katy’s]. By his own report to Howells, “Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens’s room to say the usual good-night—& she was dead! tho’ no one knew it.” Indeed, he claimed it was he who held her in his arms and discovered that she had died.

The variations would be unimportant except that the survivors all participated in peculiarly ritualistic and macabre behavior during the first few days after Olivia’s death. According to the newspaper accounts preserved in the Mark Twain Papers, Clemens spent the night kneeling beside Olivia’s coffin. And before the sheets on the deathbed were cold—if Katy Leary’s grisly account is correct—Clara climbed into the bed in her mother’s place. Then Clara went to her room and lay “motionless and wordless” for at least four days, not emerging until June 19. Jean “had an attack—the first in 13 months,” and never again was to be free from seizures for so long a period. But in these first days, while Clara’s grief expressed itself in a silent isolation, Jean became “the executive head and manager” of the family [84-5].

On hearing of Livy’s passing George Gregory Smith wrote a verse to Sam:

“Is it true Oh Christ in Heaven

That the wisest suffer most

That the strongest wander furthest

And most hopelessly are lost

That the test of rank in nature

Is capacity for pain

And the sadness of the singer

Is the sweetness of the strain”

[MTP].