LETTERS OF 1904.TO VARIOUS PERSONS.LIFE IN VILLA QUARTO.DEATH OFMRS.CLEMENS.THE RETURN TO AMERICA
Mrs.Clemens stood the voyage to Italy very well and, in due time, the family were installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, the picturesque old Palace of Cosimo, a spacious, luxurious place, even if not entirely cheerful or always comfortable during the changeable Tuscan winter.
Congratulated in a letter from MacAlister in being in the midst of Florentine sunshine, he answered: "Florentine sunshine? Bless you, there isn't any.We have heavy fogs every morning, and rain all day.This house is not merely large, it is vast--therefore I think it must always lack the home feeling."Neither was their landlady, the American wife of an Italian count, all that could be desired.From a letter to Twichell, however, we learn that Mark Twain's work was progressing well.
To Rev.J.H.Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, Jan.7, '04.
DEAR JOE,--...I have had a handsome success, in one way, here.
I left New York under a sort of half promise to furnish to the Harper magazines 30,000 words this year.Magazining is difficult work because every third page represents 2 pages that you have put in the fire;(because you are nearly sure to start wrong twice) and so when you have finished an article and are willing to let it go to print it represents only 10 cents a word instead of 30.
But this time I had the curious (and unprecedented) luck to start right in each case.I turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; and the reason I think I started right every time is, that not only have Iapproved and accepted the several articles, but the court of last resort (Livy) has done the same.
On many of the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle and not necessarily necessary sort, since it will not see print until I am dead.
I shall continue this (an hour per day) but the rest of the year I expect to put in on a couple of long books (half-completed ones.) No more magazine-work hanging over my head.
This secluded and silent solitude this clean, soft air and this enchanting view of Florence, the great valley and the snow-mountains that frame it are the right conditions for work.They are a persistent inspiration.To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there will be a new picture every hour till dark, and each of them divine--or progressing from divine to diviner and divinest.On this (second) floor Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a window ten feet high wide open all the time and frames it in.I go in from time to time, every day and trade sass for a look.The central detail is a distant and stately snow-hump that rises above and behind blackforested hills, and its sloping vast buttresses, velvety and sun-polished with purple shadows between, make the sort of picture we knew that time we walked in Switzerland in the days of our youth.
I wish I could show your letter to Livy--but she must wait a week or so for it.I think I told you she had a prostrating week of tonsilitis a month ago; she has remained very feeble ever since, and confined to the bed of course, but we allow ourselves to believe she will regain the lost ground in another month.Her physician is Professor Grocco--she could not have a better.And she has a very good trained nurse.
Love to all of you from all of us.And to all of our dear Hartford friends.
MARK
P.S.3 days later.
Livy is as remarkable as ever.The day I wrote you--that night, I mean--she had a bitter attack of gout or rheumatism occupying the whole left arm from shoulder to fingers, accompanied by fever.The pains racked her 50 or 6o hours; they have departed, now--and already she is planning a trip to Egypt next fall, and a winter's sojourn there! This is life in her yet.
You will be surprised that I was willing to do so much magazine-writing--a thing I have always been chary about--but I had good reasons.Our expenses have been so prodigious for a year and a half, and are still so prodigious, that Livy was worrying altogether too much about them, and doing a very dangerous amount of lying awake on their account.It was necessary to stop that, and it is now stopped.
Yes, she is remarkable, Joe.Her rheumatic attack set me to cursing and swearing, without limit as to time or energy, but it merely concentrated her patience and her unconquerable fortitude.It is the difference between us.I can't count the different kinds of ailments which have assaulted her in this fiendish year and a half--and I forgive none of them--but here she comes up again as bright and fresh and enterprising as ever, and goes to planning about Egypt, with a hope and a confidence which are to me amazing.
Clara is calling for me--we have to go into town and pay calls.
MARK.