Funeral (Mark Twain)
From Mark Twain in the German Language Press
After his death on 21 April 1910, Samuel Clemens’ body was transported by railway from his home in Redding, Ct., to New York City. On 23 April, a funeral procession and a memorial service at Brick Church took place; the service was conducted by Henry Van Dyke and Joseph Hopkins Twichell (see Rassmussen et. al. 2:663).
The public crowded the church for a last opportunity to see the famous Mark Twain and the viewing, according to the New York Times, took one and a half hours as approximately 3,000 people passed through the church (see “Last Glimpse Here of Mark Twain,” The New York Times, 24 April 1910).
Clemens’ body was dressed in a white suit - the style he had preferred to wear during the last years of his life (see Paine Biography 3:1579). The funeral service followed on 24 April, conducted at the Langdon family home in Elmira by Samuel Elijah Eastman, in the same place where Clemens and Olivia Langdon had gotten married in 1870. It was a simple service for which only family and close friends were present. Clemens was buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery, next to his wife and three of his four children.
