July 16 Saturday – In N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Ellen O’Neil in Hartford.
Dear Ellen: / Of all the tributes of homage & affection for our lost one that have come from her friends in many lands, that which came from you & John has moved me most & touched me deepest. Those white roses spoke a message of love as pure & fragrant as themselves; & the like of that love was in Mrs. Clemens’s heart for you two to her last day. She held you in as high honor as she held any of her other friends, & she never spoke your names but with affection.
I hope all good fortune may attend you; & with this wish I send the love of those of us who are left— ship-wrecked & desolate [MTP]. Note: John and Ellen O’Neil, longtime Clemens’ servants, had remained with the Hartford house as gardeners until it was sold.
Sam also wrote to Margaret Sherry, past nurse for Livy.
Your lovely flowers touched me deeply: they spoke of your affection and it was an affection that was returned to the last hour of the life of her who has gone from us.
She loved you dearly. I shall always love you, I shall always be grateful to you. I would God you had been there to soothe her to her last sleep with your tender ministrations.
She is gone—we are shipwrecked and desolate—but she is at peace, poor child, and I would not wake her if I could [MTP: Cyril Clemens, Mark Twain: The Letter Writer, 1932 p. 103].Note: Sherry had returned home to America from Florence Dec. 7, 1903.
Sam also wrote to the U.S. Treasury Secretary thanking him for his “courtesy & kindess” in assisting him on his return through customs in New York [MTP]. Note: Leslie M. Shaw (1848- 1932), had been a two-term governor in Iowa before succeeding Lyman J. Gage as Treasury Secretary in 1902. He served until 1907.
Sam’s notebook: “Clara & Teresa went to the summer-home—Lee, Mass., in the Berkshire Hills” [NB 47 TS 16]. Note: Teresa Bini was the Italian maid who returned with the family from Florence.
Adele Chapin wrote a letter of condolence to Sam [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Mrs. Robert Chapin”
Clara and Jean Clemens and Miss Lyon arrived at Richard Watson Gilder’s “Four Brooks Farm” in the Berkshires near Lee, Mass. Sam would arrive on Monday, July 18. The family would remain in a cottage next door to Gilder until fall. Gilder wrote: “Mark, in our cottage next door, is most grim and unhappy, but full of life and abounding in scorn of a mismanaged universe” [MTHHR 573]. Note: the cabin’s location was in Tyringham, Mass. (as in the article below. See insert.
Tyringham is near Lee but did not have a post office at that time. The New York Times of July 17, p.7, “Society at Lenox” reported the remaining Clemens family’s withdrawal to Gilder’s retreat, but mistakenly had them arriving together on this date:
LENOX, Mass. July 16.—Mark Twain, accompanied by his daughters, the Misses Clara and Jane [sic Jean] Clemens, arrived at Tyringham this evening.
Richard Watson Gilder, who is at his country place, has so far recovered from a recent attack of appendicitis that he was able to receive Mr. Clemens at Four-Brook Farm to-night. Note: See July 18 for Sam’s arrival, correctly reported by The Berkshire Gleaner as two days later than his daughters. In a separate squib, the Gleaner reported the arrival of the Clemenses 20 trunks.