AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) to Albert Bigelow Paine, his Biographer
Hamilton [Bermuda]: 21 January 1910. Letter. A fine four-page handwritten letter on bifolium mourning stationery SIGNED "S. L. C." to his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, mentioning the death of his daughter Jean less than a month earlier. In full: "Thanks for your letter, and for its contenting news of the situation in that foreign and far-off and vaguely-remembered country where you and Loomis [Edward E. Loomis, a nephew by marriage and primary executor and trustee of Twain’s final will] and Lark [Charles T. Lark, Twain's attorney] and other beloved friends are. I have a letter from Clara [his daughter] this morning. She is solicitous, and wants me well and watchfully taken care of. My, she ought to see Helen and her parents and Claude administer that trust! And she says: 'I hope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon.' I am writing her, and I know you will respond to your part of her prayer. She is pretty desolate now, after Jean's emancipation--the only kindness God ever did that poor unoffending child in all her hard life." He adds a postscript: "Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter. I want a copy of my article that he is speaking of." The "gorgeous letter" concerned Mart Twain's article "The Turning-point in My Life," which appeared in HARPER'S BAZAR, Volume XLIV, pages 118-119 (Feb., I910). It was subsequently collected in WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS (New York and London, 1917). Bibliographer Merle Johnson said the article may be called Mark Twain's final literary effort. In point of time it was followed by “The Death of Jean,” but that was not an article written for sale but rather a personal tribute from a father which was put on paper because such was Mark Twain's lifetime habit. Howells wrote to Twain about "The Turning-point in My Life" on 18 January 1910, a letter Twain likely had not yet received when he wrote this letter. Howells said of the article: “While your wonderful words are warm in my mind yet, I want to tell you what you know already: that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that turning-point paper of yours.” An epileptic, Jean was found dead at Twain's Stormfield estate on Christmas Eve morning. She was 29. Samuel Clemens died four months later on 21 April 1910. With the envelope addressed in Twain's hand. Near Fine. Item #022567
Price: $8,500.00