SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 48 (of 78)
Birth of Clara (1874)
Chapter 48
Birth of Clara (1874)
On June 8, 1874, our middle daughter, Clara, was born in Elmira, New York—as her mother and her big sister Susy had been. We were back to having two children again. Clara was a playmate, a companion, for Susy, who greeted this newest member of the family by offering her favorite doll to her sister.
We called Clara “Bay” almost from the beginning, due to Susy calling her that (in an attempt at pronouncing the word “baby”).
EDITOR’S NOTES: 1874 was one of the happiest years of Twain’s life; on the last day of February, in a letter to Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, Scotland, he wrote the following (“the child” is Susy; Clara had not yet been born):
Indeed I am thankful for the wife and the child—and if there is one individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and uniformly happy than I am I defy the world to produce him and prove him. In my opinion, he doesn’t exist.
“The footstool” is an allusion to several Bible passages, where the earth is referred to as God’s footstool.
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In a letter that he wrote to Joe and Harmony Twichell in Hartford, announcing Clara’s arrival, Twain reported the following (“The Modoc” was his nickname for Susy):
The baby is here and is the great American Giantess, weighing 7 ¾ pounds. We had to wait a good long time for her but she was full compensation when she did come.
The Modoc was delighted with it and gave it her doll at once. There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby.
Twain considered Clara to be “a giantess” because his first two children, Langdon and Susy, had weighed only four and-a-half and five pounds at birth, respectively.
Clara Langdon Clemens was named for Clara Spaulding, a childhood schoolmate and friend of Livy’s who the Clemens children called “Aunt Clara.” As had been the case with Susy before her, had Clara been born male, she would have been given the name Henry.
Similar to what Twain wrote about Jean on the event of her death, only belatedly did Twain comprehend Clara’s finer points. In a 1906 letter to Mrs. Henry Rogers, when Clara was twenty-six, he wrote of her:
She is getting to be a mighty competent singer. You must know Clara better. She is one of the very finest and completest and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before, but I have always been busy with other matters.
Clara lived until 1962. As had her paternal grandmother, Twain’s middle daughter thus lived into her late 80s, easily amassing more years of life (88) than the rest of her siblings combined (the three of whom lived a total of 55 years, an average of a little over 18 years each). Clara’s daughter and Twain’s only grandchild, Nina Gabrilowitsch, died just four years after her mother, in 1966, at the age of 56.
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A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It, a sketch about a former slave being reunited with her long-lost son, was published in 1874.
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The Story Of The Bad Little Boy as well as The Story Of The Good Little Boy were published in 1875. In both tales, the protagonists end up with the opposite result for their deeds than readers of the day were accustomed to –– the bad boy thriving and the good one being left in the dust.
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.