Clara Clemens, Mark Twain’s daughter, spent summers at Quarry Farm
It was a cheerful morning in December of 1908, in Danbury, Connecticut.
Clara Clemens, the daughter of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), was out for a sleigh ride with her future husband, Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch.
While they were riding “the horse took fright at a newspaper whipped about by the wind and bolted. Mr. Grabilowitsch, who was driving, lost control of the horse and held helplessly to the reins. At the top of a hill the sleigh overturned, and Miss Clemens was thrown out.
“At the summit of the hill is a sheer drop of 50 feet. When the sleigh turned over the Russian leaped to the ground and caught the horse by the head, stopping it as it was about to plunge over the bank dragging Miss Clemens, whose dress had caught in the runner, over to her death.”
Clara Clemens was uninjured but in shock, while Gabrilowitsch sprained his ankle. (Elmira Star-Gazette, Dec. 21, 1908)
Clara and Ossip had met in Vienna in 1898 while they were both studying piano under Theodor Leschetizky. Apparently they had some attraction to each other which continued after Clara returned to the United States.
When he arrived in this country for the first time in 1900, Clara wrote in her biography of him, “My Husband, Gabrilowitsch,” “We had each done a little flirting on the side during the year and a half of separation, and so like airplanes we rolled along the ground before soaring into rosy skies again.”
As things warmed up between them messages were exchanged. One of the messengers was Katy Leary, the faithful Irish maid of the Clemens family. Clara discovered that Katy spoke of Ossip as Count Gabrilowitsch. When she asked Katy her reason, Katie replied, “Well isn’t he of great account?”
In late 1902 they became engaged. Ossip wrote to Clara “Chills of joy course through my being with a mighty power — the power of infinite ecstasy … I am thinking constantly of my fantastic happiness. We are engaged — Engaged!”
The engagement did not last. Apparently these two strong personalities were in love but the challenge of marriage was formidable. It would be in September of 1909, while both were performing at the home of her father in a benefit for the Redding (Connecticut)
Library, that Ossip asked her once more to marry him, and she accepted.
According to Clara, when she told her father he said, “What! Again? Well, anyway, any girl could be proud to marry him. He is a man — a real man.” Katy Leary praised the Lord and asked when? The date was set for 10 days hence on Oct. 6, 1909.
The Rev. Doctor Joseph Twitchell, who had married Clara’s parents, would perform the service. Prior to the ceremony Clara spoke with him, “There is one great favor I have to ask you — just one — my very last. Please exclude the word ‘Obey’ from my marriage vows. With a laughing kiss he agreed to this intrigue against my future husband.”
Clara was given away by her father and she was attended by her younger sister Jean. (Sadly, Jean would die on Dec. 24, a little over two months after the wedding.) Her cousin Jervis Langdon was the Best Man.
The Star Gazette reported the following about the wedding: “Mr. Clemens prepared the following characteristic interview ‘to avoid any delay in the ceremony’ as he expressed it. Speaking of the bride and groom Mr. Clemens said, ‘Clara and Gabrilowitsch were pupils together under Leschetizky in Vienna ten years ago. We have known him intimately ever since. It’s not new — the engagement. It was made and dissolved twice six years ago. Recovering from a perilous surgical operation, two or three months passed by him here in this
house ended a week or ten days ago in a renewal. The wedding had to be sudden for Gabrilowitsch’s European season is ready to begin.” (Star-Gazette, Oct. 7, 1909)
In 1910, Ossip and Clara would welcome their only child, Nina. It would also be the year of her father’s passing. Clara wrote in “My Husband, Gabrilowitsch,” “While Father’s soul was preparing its escape into the beyond, another spark of life was on its way to earthly birth. Mark Twain’s grandchild, whom he would never see. When the final hour had struck, the curtains drawn, the gates of separation locked — we veered to the expectancy of new life and thanked God for a fresh source of love.”
Ossip and Clara would be married until his death in 1936. At the time of his passing he had been conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra since 1918.
His obituary noted that, “Orchestras responded to his skilled baton in Munich, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Manchester, Philadelphia and Detroit. At the piano he won critical acclaim in all great cities of the world … although Gabrilowitsch achieved his highest triumph as pianist and director of orchestras, he was celebrated also as a composer, lecturer, linguist and connoisseur of the seven art” (Star-Gazette, Sept. 14,1936).
On Dec. 13, 1937, the Star-Gazette reported that, “seven men worked hours in the bitter cold Sunday afternoon to erect the five and one-half ton monument of Mark Twain and Ossip Grabilowitsch (sculpted by Ernfred Anderson) in the Langdon plot at Woodlawn Cemetery … the shaft is exactly 12 feet high or two fathoms — the measurement called Mark Twain on the Mississippi ….” Clara commissioned the monument and the stone for her husband’s grave at the foot of Mark Twain’s grave as he had wished it to be.
In 1940, Clara sought counsel from a medium about her love life. He told her that a fresh husband was in transit. According to Thomas Larson in the San Diego Reader of May 8, 2003, she soon “met and started dating a dashing Russian émigré musician, who claimed to have conducted many of the world’s greatest orchestras and to be well acquainted with several U.S. presidents. (Nearly all his claims were lies.) In 1944 she married Jacques Samossoud. He was 50, and she was 70 … Clara was in love and Jacques was in clover.”
When Clara died in 1962 at age 88, Samossoud had blown through assets that had at one time been valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars by gambling and betting on horses. According to Irene Langdon, the late widow of Mark Twain’s great-nephew Jervis Langdon, in Clara’s declining years Samossoud refused permission for Langdon family members to visit her. Clara’s daughter, Nina, accused him of manipulating Clara.
Clara is buried next to Ossip at the foot of her mother’s grave. When Samossoud died on June 14, 1966, he was buried in an unmarked grave next to Clara. Nina Clemens Grabilowitcsh, the last direct descendant of Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon Clemens, died at age 55 on Jan. 19, 1966, and is buried in the Langdon plot at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Clara Clemens was born at Quarry Farm on June 8, 1874. She spent many summers at the farm for the next 20 years. When her parents traveled around the world in the 1890’s to pay off Mark Twain’s debts, Clara was the only daughter to travel with them.
Although she met Ossip Grabilowitsch while studying piano, her mother noted in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1898, that “Clara has left the piano and is taking singing lessons.” Eventually she would perform in Elmira.
The Gazette and Free Press reported on June 11, 1907, “A large audience of music lovers attended the recital in Park Church last evening and greatly enjoyed the program … of Miss Clara Clemens, contralto. ... Her voice is full and sweet, splendidly cultivated and perfectly controlled. It is plain to see that a splendid career on the concert stage awaits this charming young woman.”
— Jim Hare writes a monthly Chemung County history column.