Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday, June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months. Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that she was gone.
To W. D. Howells, in New York.
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, June 6, '94. [1904] DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her. They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did not notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are today!
But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call her back if I could.
Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy.
I send my love-and hers-to you all. S. L. C.
In a letter to Twichell he wrote: "How sweet she was in death; how young, how beautiful, how like her dear, girlish self cf thirty years ago; not a gray hair showing."
The family was now without plans for the future until they remembered the summer home of R. W. Gilder, at Tyringham, Massachusetts, and the possibility of finding lodgment for themselves in that secluded corner of New England. Clemens wrote without delay, as follows:
To R. W. Gilder, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, June 7, '04. DEAR GILDER FAMILY,--I have been worrying and worrying to know what to do: at last I went to the girls with an idea: to ask the Gilders to get us shelter near their summer home. It was the first time they have not shaken their heads. So to-morrow I will cable to you and shall hope to be in time.
An, hour ago the best heart that ever beat for me and mine went silent out of this house, and I am as one who wanders and has lost his way. She who is gone was our head, she was our hands. We are now trying to make plans--we: we who have never made a plan before, nor ever needed to. If she could speak to us she would make it all simple and easy with a word, and our perplexities would vanish away. If she had known she was near to death she would have told us where to go and what to do: but she was not suspecting, neither were we. (She had been chatting cheerfully a moment before, and in an instant she was gone from us and we did not know it. We were not alarmed, we did not know anything had happened. It was a blessed death--she passed away without knowing it.) She was all our riches and she is gone: she was our breath, she was our life and now we are nothing.
We send you our love--and with it the love of you that was in her heart when she died. S. L. CLEMENS.
Howells wrote his words of sympathy, adding: "The character which now remains a memory was one of the most perfect ever formed on the earth," and again, after having received Clemens's letter: "I cannot speak of your wife's having kept that letter of mine where she did. You know how it must humiliate a man in his unworthiness to have anything of his so consecrated.