MISS CLEMENS WEDS MR. GABRILOWITSCH
Mark Twain, in Scarlet Cap and Gown, Sees His Daughter Married to Russian Pianist.
AVOIDS "CEREMONY DELAYS"
Humorist in Prepared Interview Says a Happy Marriage is One of the Tragically
Solemn Things of Life.
WEST REDDING, Conn., Oct. 6. - Miss Clara L. Clemens, daughter of Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) was married at noon today to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Russian pianist. The wedding took place in the drawing room at Stormfield, Mr. Clemens's country home, with the Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Twitchell of Hartford, a close friend of Mr. Clemens, as officiating clergyman. The bride was attended only by her sister, Miss Jean Clemens, but her cousins, Jervis Langdon of Elmira, N. Y., and Mrs. Julia Loomis, wife of Edward Loomis, Vice President of the Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad, were present.
Miss Ethel Newcomb of New York City played a wedding march as the bridal party entered the drawing room. This room was prettily decorated with evergreens. Autumn leaves, and roses, and the bride and bridegroom stood beneath a bower of white roses and smilax.
While the ceremony was being performed Mr. Clemens was attired in he scarlet cap and gown which he wore when the Degree of Doctor of Literature was conferred upon him by Oxford University. After the wedding he wore a white flannel suit.
Forty guests from New York City were present and attended a wedding breakfast which followed the marriage.
Mr. and Mrs. Gabrilowitsch left for New York this afternoon. After remaining that city about a week they will go to Berlin, where Mr. Gabrilowitsch has taken a house. Later Mr. Gabrilowitsch will make a tour of Germany in concerts.
Mark Twain's Interview.
Mr. Clemens prepared the following characteristic interview "to avoid any delays at the ceremony," as he expressed it. Speaking of the bride and bridegroom 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 the house ended a week or ten days ago in renewal. The wedding had to be sudden for Gabrilowitsch's European season is ready to begin. The pair will said a fortnight from now. The first engagements are in Germany. They have taken a house in Berlin."
"Can you say a word or two about the Redding Mark Twain Library?"
"The village did me the honor to name it so. It flourishes. The people came to it from a mile or so around. We are all engaged in propagating the building fund, in a social and inexpensive way, through picnics, afternoon teas, and other frolics in the neighborhood, with now and then a full strength concert in my house at ostentatious prices. We had one last week with a team composed of Gabrilowitsch, David Bispham, and his bride, with me as introducer and police.
"We had an audience of 525. When I have a male guest I charge him a dollar for his bed and turn the money into the fund and give him an autographed receipt, which he carries away and sells for $1.10."
Doesn't Work, But Takes Exercise.
"Are you at work now?"
"No, I don't work. I have a troublesome pain in my breast which won't allow it, and won't allow me to stir out of the house. But I play billiards for exercise. Albert Bigelow Paine, my biographer and business manager, plays with me. He comes over every day for two or three hours. He has a farm half a mile from here upon which he raises hopes."
"Do you like it here at Stormfield?"
"Yes, it is the most out of the world and peaceful and tranquil and in every way satisfactory home I have had experience of in my life."
"The marriage pleases you, Mr. Clemens?"
"Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or perhaps any other father. There are two or three tragically solemn things in this life, and a happy marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come. A funeral is a solemn office, but I go to them with a spiritual uplift, thankful that the dead friend has been set free. That which follows is to me tragic and awful - the burial. I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for she always had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch, but all the same it is a tragedy, since it is a happy marriage with its future before it, loaded to the plimsoil line with uncertainties."
Among the guests at the wedding were Richard Watson Gilder, Mrs. Gilder and three daughters, Mr. and Mrs. A. M. Wright of Boston, Mrs. E. F. Bauer and the Misses Flora and Marion Bauer of New York, Miss Lillian Burbank, Miss Marie Nichols, Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Sprague, Miss Foot, Miss Comstock, Miss Mary Lawton, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Gaillard, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hapgood, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Bigelow Paine, and Miss Ethel Newcomb, all of New York.
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