Mark Twain

    I just finished Ron Chernow’s 1033 page book on Mark Twain.  Reading Chernow’s other books on “Grant” and “Hamilton” was a struggle but I was absorbed with “Twain” because of the many problems that he had with his daughters.  Twain mourned the lost childhoods of his daughters, Jean and Clara, and fondly remembered the days before their estrangement when he was the “magical paterfamilias.”  When they were young, Twain enjoyed reading to them and playing games.  He had “vague, dream-like glimpses of them as they used to be in their long vanquished years.”  The girls romped and played in their blue Calico dresses, with their spindle legs and their pageboy haircuts.

   When he turned seventy years old, Twain wrote: “Arriving at Pier 70, where you board your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course towards a sinking sun with a contented heart.”  It was an unusual thing to write as by that time Twain had lost his wife, Livy, and two of his children, Langdon and Susy.  He still had two daughters left.  Jean had epilepsy, was often confined to a sanatorium, and died in a bathtub right before Twain passed.  That left Clara who tried to launch a singing career but was resentful because she knew that people only attended her concerts because she was the daughter of Mark Twain.

   “In most lives there comes a mellowing, an autumnal calm that overtakes even the stormiest of personalities.”  As it became clear that Twain was dying, Clara decided that it was a good time to get married and move to Europe.  Twain was so upset at being abandoned that he refused to attend the rehearsal dinner.  When the wedding was over and the happy couple sailed for Europe, Twain left for Bermuda.  He often escaped to this island where he could achieve his “autumnal calm.”

   “The praise that we want comes from our children and it is the praise that we are the least likely to get.”  Twain, suffering from angina attacks and bronchitis, cuts his trip to Bermuda short so that he can go home to die peaceably.  Clara, now his only living relative, sails back from Europe so that she can be there for the final act.  While he was on his deathbed, Clara told Twain that she was pregnant.  He died and six weeks later, and his only grandchild, Nina, was born.  Nina committed suicide, died childless in 1966, at the age of fifty five, ending the Clemens line.