Vol 3 Section 1076
July 15 Friday – At the Wolcott Hotel, 31st Street and Fifth Ave. N.Y. He wrote his thanks to Edward Eugene Loomis, vice president of the Delaware & Lackawanna R.R., husband to Julie Langdon Loomis:
Dear Edward—(If I may have that privilege with Jean), I do not know how to thank you enough for the peace & comfort & the inestimable privacy of that car—a benefaction beyond price to us in these days when exposure to the curious & the stranger in the nakedness of our sorrow is so hard to bear. We are deeply grateful: if there were stronger words I would find them & use them. And it would not be possible for any one to be more grateful than I am for that long procession of watchful kindnesses on your part which began at Quarantine & made our complex & difficult way simple & care-free for us from that moment until the parting on the dock an hour ago. I wish I could say it as strongly as I feel it. You who can do things, cannot know the full measure of such helps to those who are born incapable.
Our best love to you & Julie & aūf boldiges Wiedersehen.
There have necessarily been many expenses, but Charley will tell me what they are [MTP].
Hill gives this the day that Isabel Lyon arrived in Lee, Mass. [96].
Charles J. Langdon sent Sam a copy of Twichell’s funeral service. At the top of the first page, Sam wrote a paragraph, similar to that of his NB entry of July 14:
“Said over the coffin of Livy Clemens in the house of her childhood, by the same voice which in the same room & in the same spot had joined us in marriage 34 years before. / SLC” [MTP].
Wayne MacVeagh in Byrn Mawr, Pa. Wrote a letter of condolence to Sam [MTP].
Henry Loomis Nelson, now a professor at Williams College, Willamstown, Mass. wrote a letter of condolence to Sam [MTP].
Mary S. Smith (Mrs. George Gregory Smith) wrote from Florence asking Miss Lyon to send a few lines and let them know how he and the girls were doing—she couldn’t help but be anxious [MTP].
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.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.