Our own comet

Mark Twain died on this day in 1910, at the age of 74. Both his birth and death years coincided with the rare appearance of Halley’s Comet. Twain said he would have been disappointed if he didn’t go out with the comet. “The Almighty has said,” he wrote, “‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” 

The New York Times ran a 6,000-word obituary of Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). It described in detail his every action on his deathbed.   

“For two hours he lay in bed enjoying the feeling of this return of strength. Then he made a movement and asked in a faint voice for the copy of Carlyle's "French Revolution," which he has always had near him for the last year, and which he has read and re-read and brooded over…A smile faintly illuminated his face when he realized that he was trying to read without his glasses…With his glasses on he read a little and then slowly put the book down with a sigh. Soon he appeared to become drowsy and settled on his pillow. Gradually he sank and settled into a lethargy…At 3 o'clock he went into complete unconsciousness.”

The Times reported that Twain’s friends believed he had died of a broken heart. (Angina pectoris was the official cause.) Albert Bigelow Paine, Twain’s biographer-to-be and literary executor, said that he had been “weary of life.” When a friend of his had died several months before, Twain had remarked, “How fortunate he is. No good fortune of that kind ever comes to me."

The man who gave the country so much laughter had experienced more than his share of sorrow. 

Twain lost a son in infancy, two daughters early on, his wife, and, finally, his closest daughter, Jean. Twain’s account of the death of Jean, in his autobiography, is one of the most heart-rending things in literature, and the event was the beginning of the end of him. 

One of his last acts was to write a check for $6,000 for the library in Redding, CT, which would be a memorial to Jean.

“Mark Twain's death has meant to Americans everywhere and in all walks of life what the death of no other American could have meant,” the Times effused. The obituary included reactions to the news of his death (not exaggerated this time) from all quarters, including this from fellow humorist George Ade: "I read every line Twain wrote, for he was a kind of literary god to me…We owe much of our cheerfulness, simplicity, and hope to him.” And this from Booth Tarkington: "He seemed to me the greatest prose writer we had, and beyond that a great man. His death is a National loss, but we have the consolation that he and his genius belonged to and was of us." 

Twain was fascinated by death his whole life, it seemed.

"Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is," he wrote near the end of his own life, "knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into our world."

A better note to end on would be this piece of advice Twain offered:

"Let us so live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry."