Finding The Lost Diary of Mark Twain’s Granddaughter, Nina Gabrilowitsch
EDITOR’S NOTE: At the Clemens Conference in Hannibal, Missouri in July 2019, Alan Rankin gave a talk entitled “Nina: The Lost Diary of Nina Gabrilowitsch.” What follows is a modified and expanded version of that talk, including illustrations. The 1924 diary and Nina’s life are the subjects of his current work in progress, also called Nina: The Lost Diary.
I’ve been studying the life of Nina Gabrilowitsch for more than 25 years, since June of 1992. I was not a Mark Twain scholar when I started. In fact, I don’t really consider myself one now. In 1992, my knowledge of Twain was probably equal to that of the average American: I knew something about his work, something about his personality, a little bit about his personal life, but nothing at all about his family. But…I knew Nina. Through her own words.
Mademoiselle and I (her real name is Fraülein Sophie Pruischütz) went to church from ten till 11 o’clock. I like the Catholic churches because the altars are so fancy and beautiful, and the Protestant churches are so plain. I kneeled till I about wore my knees out. It was very cold. I finished reading The Three Musketeers,and have started The Hound of the Baskervillesby A. Conan Doyle. It is very exciting.
Mlle and I took the Cass Avenue bus for Palmer Park. We passed our new house. We reckoned that it takes 15 min to go home in the bus from my school. We walked through the forests and looked at the swans in the park. My feet got icy cold, and I was glad to get back into our warm parlor. Miss Shover telephoned again, to say that we are not to come to the new house till Thursday. That is the third time she has telephoned about the house.
Nina Gabrilowitsch’s Diary
January 1, 1924
How did I happen to read those words in 1992? My lifelong friend Rudy Bowling inherited a box of books after his grandmother passed away in the late 1980s. One of those books was a hand-written diary, kept in 1924 by a 13-year-old girl named Nina Gabrilowitsch.
Rudy had no idea who that was. But he allowed his roommate, a history buff named Jerry Smith, to read the diary anyway. After seeing Jerry’s reaction, he decided to read it himself. A little while later they told me about it, and I borrowed the diary and read it also.
We all had the same reaction, quickly becoming fascinated with the life that the diary revealed. Nina’s writing drew us into her world: her happy life at home and school; her adventures traveling in Europe with her family over the summer; her troubles with math class; her first crush. It was a window into the life of a young woman from a different era.
I decided to see if I could find out who she was.
Remember, this was 1992, before the internet. The odds of finding some random girl who had lived in Detroit 70 years before seemed pretty remote. But, according to the diary, her father was at least locally famous, as the director of the symphony orchestra, and her mother was a singer. So it seemed possible I might find something.
Well, I found something. It was an entry from Webster’s Biographical Dictionary on her father, Ossip Gabrilowitsch:
We knew it was the same man, because Nina mentioned her father’s unusual first name in the February 22nd entry of the diary. If I had been a Mark Twain scholar, that line at the end, just before “Director,” probably would have jumped out at me. But it didn’t. Frankly, I was just amazed that I had found any reference to Nina at all. I photocopied the page, put the book back on the shelf, and went on about my day.
It was only later that night, just prior to calling Rudy, that I glanced at the entry again. And realized “S.L. Clemens” was probably that S.L. Clemens. This was our first inkling of who Nina really was.
But here’s what’s important to remember: By the time I saw that name, we had already been reading her diary for four months. It would be impossible for us to regard her as a footnote in the biography of a world-famous author. In the mystery which had begun unfolding for us from the moment we first passed around the diary, Nina was the protagonist and nobody, not even Mark Twain, was going to upstage her.
It is a beautiful morning; the sun is just streaming into my sitting room and making very cheerful and bright. The snow is very deep and glistens and sparkles in the sun…. In the afternoon we went to the concert. It was lovely, Mr. Abbas and Madame Ostrowska played the violincello and the harp together. We walked home. It was twilight, the houses were lighted up, the snow was bright and crisp and the full moon shone golden in the sky.
Nina Gabrilowitsch’s Diary
January 20, 1924
Once we figured out who she was, we only had more questions, starting with how the diary had ended up with Rudy’s grandfather, whose name was Al Matthews. Matthews had been a well-known attorney in Los Angeles in the 1950s and ’60s. His other celebrity clients included the Barrymore family of actors, and Barbara Graham, whose trial was the basis for the classic film I Want to Live!
Matthews was friends with Nina Gabrilowitsch, as well as her personal attorney. At the end of her life, he inherited her personal effects, including the diary.
The story was just beginning for me. I’ve spent the intervening 25 years working on a book about Nina. It became a sort of a part-time obsession. I collected all the information I could find related to Nina and the diary. For example, I identified all the classical musicians who visited the Detroit house in 1924. Most of these figures are obscure now, but were well-known to music aficionados a century ago.
At The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, I found Nina’s surviving photo album from 1924, including many images of the people she mentions in the diary.
Once the Internet was established, online sources provided more images, such as this beautiful old postcard of the Veendam, the ocean liner Nina and her family take to Europe in June of 1924.
In the German national archives, I found photos of the zeppelin that Nina saw over Berlin in September – photos that were taken on the very day that she saw it!
And of course, in my research, I found out what happened to Nina after the diary.
Learning about her death was shattering enough. We felt like Nina was someone we knew. But learning about her life was worse!
As an adult, Nina struggled with mental illness, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Her’s was life that somehow seemed destitute in the midst of great wealth – like the Beales of Grey Gardens. Many of the obituaries in 1966 mentioned her last words, said to a friend before she left the bar earlier that night:
“When I die, I want artificial flowers, jitterbug music, and a bottle of vodka at my grave.”
Some of the obituaries implied that this was a verbal suicide note, although we don’t know, and will never know, if the overdose was accidental or deliberate.
As my research intersected with the world of Twain scholarship, we learned that most Twain scholars only knew Nina as a tragic figure: perpetually unhappy and unable to fulfill her potential, whatever it was. That was not how we saw her. We still saw her as a self-assured, cosmopolitan, happy young woman. That’s the Nina of the 1924 diary. And somehow, both views of her are right.
I woke up at around six o’clock New York time, and looking out of the window beheld a picturesque sight. Right beside us flowed the broad Hudson, just as quiet as it could be, except when a swiftly passing motor boat left a path of ripples behind it on the pinkish-blue water. Beyond were endless forests, where here and there were dotted small houses, and behind that the green curved hills.
We had our breakfast on the train and arrived in New York station at 10.24. I love the racket that goes on at any station: Conductors whistling, porters running, men calling, taxi doors banging, the noise of the engine and a dozen other things.
Soon after, we arrived at Fourteen East Sixtieth Street. Mlle went to see somebody in the custom house about her papers. Father went out with a man to lunch. After having lunch at the Clarion Restaurant, Mother and I went to the National Museum. We saw many many interesting pictures; some by Van Dyck, Hals, Rubens, Velázquez, Rembrandt and others. I agree with Mother, I like the old pictures much better than the modern ones. Mlle and I took a bus ride along Riverside Drive and although it was dreadfully hot we enjoyed ourselves very well.
Nina Gabrilowitsch’s Diary
June 16, 1924
Other than her birth and her death, Nina had only one real moment of national fame. It was at a train station – the one in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1935. Nina was invited to dedicate the Mark Twain Zephyr, a locomotive named after her famous grandfather, in the town where he grew up. She broke a champagne bottle on the nose of the engine. Her voice was broadcast on CBS radio coast-to-coast, and she posed for photos with local kids dressed like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher. Afterward, there was a fancy dinner party, where she was treated like a princess. Among the other notable guests was Harry Truman, then a senator from Missouri. Many photos were taken that day, all of which can be examined at the Hannibal Public Library’s great web page about the event. But this one is my favorite:
This picture seems like the “happy” Nina, the Nina from the 1924 diary. A Nina who it increasingly felt like only we knew. This previously unexamined, early part of Nina’s life is one reason I call my book The Lost Diary. The other reason? It seems the diary really was lost.
There are other diaries – 20 years worth of them – at a university archive in Provo, Utah, where scholars have studied them from time to time. Nobody’s really sure why the 1924 diary didn’t wind up there as well. But I have a supposition, based on what we do know.
I think Nina kept the 1924 diary separate from the other diaries, at the end of her life, and maybe for a long time before. That’s why it wound up with the “personal effects” that went to Al Matthews. I have to wonder if 1924 represented a sort of “golden year” in Nina’s life. Maybe it’s not coincidence that the 1924 diary contains no signs of mental illness, no family strife, and takes place at an age (she turned 14 that year) when most people are starting to assert their individualism and independence from family and community.
Maybe the diary was a way for an older, sadder Nina to remember who she was, or, at least, who she had been.
At 6 min to 10, the wonderful zeppelin that is to fly to America appeared. Crowds of people filled the streets, and many were stationed on the roofs of buildings, supplied with moving-picture cameras. The silver-gray zeppelin glided gracefully along, so gracefully that it seemed a mere phantom of the air. Four times we saw it, and each time the spectators cheered and waved their handkerchiefs.
NinA Gabrilowitsch’s Diary
September 26, 1924
In the afternoon Fraülein [Pruischütz] and I shopped, and at 7.15, left for Father’s second and last concert. At first I also sat in the Landeker box, but later, as more and more people came, I joined Fraülein and Uncle George, who sat below. Father’s playing was marvelous and so was his directing, but it must have been an awful strain, because his visage was as white as snow. After the last piece he was called out six times; the populace were “begeistered.” Who do you suppose were there? Dr. E. Haass, Mrs. Haass, and Herr Helmut Gorine! Imagine! Fraülein and I walked home. I got to bed at 10.30.
Nina Gabrilowitsch’s Diary
September 26, 1924
After The Diary of a Young Girl was published in the 1950s, millions mourned its young author, Anne Frank – and rightfully so. But who mourned for Nina? I did. Because I met her, knew her, and cared about her before I ever saw the name: “S.L. Clemens.”
There were no tourists, thank God, on that Wednesday in June of 1999, when I visited the Woodlawn Cemetary in Elmira. In fact, the cemetery was all but deserted. I walked up onto the pavestones surrounding the two large standing monuments. There, in front of me, was the grave of Mark Twain.
And I hardly noticed it.
Beside him were his wife Livy, and the two daughters, Susy and Jean, who had preceded Twain in death. Beyond them, just outside the flagstones, were markers for Clara and Ossip. And off to the side of them…separate, alone…
…was Nina.
I started to cry.
It occurred to me that I might be the only person since 1966 to mourn her, to look at that gravestone and weep. Considering how her life ended, maybe I was one of the only people ever to mourn for her.
That clever little girl, so full of life and joy. That sad, lonely woman, inheritor of an impossible legacy. Against the odds, she had connected with someone and changed lives, long after she was gone.
After a while, I went and got the items I had brought with me. Your last words, Nina. I took them to heart:
“When I die, I want artificial flowers, jitterbug music and a bottle of vodka at my grave.”
I cried as I placed the articles against the gravestone. She could have said it as a joke, not knowing the overdose awaited only hours later. It might not have meant anything to her. But it meant something to me. Was I the only person, ever, to honor her whimsical last wish?
Was she there? Was she watching? If she was, then they all were: Ossip and Clara, all the Langdons and Clemenses, and old Sam himself. What would they make of the skinny hippie at the end of the Millennium, who stands at the grave of the last Clemens and weeps?
I also wondered, briefly, about the next student, tourist, or caretaker who came to the Clemens plot. What would they think when they saw the swing CD, the plastic flowers, and the bottle of vodka sitting at her grave? I would never know. But I did know one thing for sure: I was so overcome with emotion at seeing Nina’s grave, I hardly even noticed Twain’s plot there next to me. It might have been the first time in history Nina overshadowed her famous grandfather…
It would be worth mountains more to me to feel that people love me for being a wonderful person than for being the greatest artist…. However, it’s very amusing when you stop and think of it – if people asked what you were doing…and you weren’t doing anything, and…answered, “Oh, [I’m] just living the life of a truly great person,” I’m sure the people would laugh. I mean, you couldn’t say such a thing, and yet, why not? Isn’t it possible to be great without doing anything?
Nina Gabrilowitsch
Letter To Father (April 7, 1935)
Alan Rankin is a writer with an abiding interest in unexplored corners of history. His biographical column, “It’s A Faire Life,” appears in Renaissance Magazine.
Outstanding article. Thanks
Life is funny and unusual. Great article
Loved your article on Nina. Thank you for sharing.
@H.L.Dowless: Nobody is a “nobody”; and s person’s worth – or “greatness” – is not determined by the value placed on their actions by others. Is a homeless drunk worth less than Rembrandt? If so – why?
It is a utilitarian – admittedly, very popular – concept that denies the intrinsic worth of life “as is”.
This girl, even though she wrote it as a semi-joke, somehow sensed the fallacy of such a view.
Great article, loved it.
No, I am sad to report, Miss Nina, if one is a nobody, then he surely must accomplish something to be great. Only those who are born into families of great people might enjoy the pleasures of inheriting that greatness without investing any effort into some sort of above average accomplishment.
What a lovely article. So beautifully written and full of emotion. I have fallen under Nina’s spell and want to know so much more about her.
Wonderful article. Thank you.
Great article . Very touching . It’s a hard act to follow to be a child of great geniuses.
Do you have any idea how Nina and family were coping with 1918-20 pandemic as in June 1919 Ossip insisted Detroit Orchestra Hall be built in record time (four months )while people were masking and social distancing. Who dared to attend in the hall and how far apart did they sit etc. I am interested to learn from and be inspired by those collaborators in Detroit who conceived and assisted in the survival of great culture against all odds.
Wow, her monthly income was so very, very comfortable. In 2021, my income is not even double that amount. I wonder where Twain’s remaining estate money went after Nina’s death? Ah yes, the self medicating when there is mental illness and then the inherited gene for alcoholism/addiction. What n unfortunate combination!
Made me cry, and made me glad. Thank you for the article, moreover thank you for taking such care of this woman’s memory. You are a virtuous man in the world for such a thing.
The article should have made reference to Jacques Sammossoud Nina’s step Father who is in a conspicuously unmarked grave next to Clara.
The story of his marriage and the life style with Clara, the treatment of Nina followed by his access to the income of the estate of Clara after her death is perpetually overlooked.
Sam Leonard
I knew Nina 65 years ago when I was 19 years old .My dad and I lived in the same house with her ,owned by Segfred Tour . .He would cash her $750.00 check every two weeks ,take his rent ,buy her a 5th of whiskey and she would put the money in her room. I moved and didn’t know what hapened to Nina for years. Wes
Well, I may as well tarnish this thread with a few thoughts of my own. I was born in Hartford and except for a few vagabond years traveling around Europe, here I remain. I have always had an affinity for Twain. I enjoy collecting his first editions, and reading them, too. As a high school student at Hartford High, which is next door to the Twain house, I used to sneak out during the lunch hour and bring my lunch bag over to the porch at the Twain house where I munched and imagined Mark Twain himself coming out to talk with me. The years were 1969–1972.
I wrote and self-published my first book in 2020 which is a bunch of satires on Trump. My next book which is almost finished, is on cats. My father once entered me and my frog in the frog jumping contest that used to be held on the grounds. The year was 1958. My frog didn’t win but my crazy father mumbled something about some controversy over the judging. The Twain House did tell me who had won that year.
My comment was not supposed to be a response. And my name is Bill Katz not Waterloo-4me. Please correct this if you wish
I was reading about Mark Twain’s life and ended up reading this. Such a beautifully written article. I love old diaries even if they aren’t written by anyone famous. Such an intimate look back in time.
Thank you for making public these excerpts, your research and comments. Her thoughts deserved to be appreciated and your suggestion that she kept this diary as a link to a “golden year” strikes me as entirely plausible. This is how she should be remembered.
Excellent read. Thank you for the insight into the life of a person living in the shadow of her grandfather, but able to create a light that shines thru
Thank you gentle persons.
I found this article in the weirdest situation, but I’m glad I did.
thank you
Bravo to the historian who finds wisdom from a path on their own,
To sleuth and wrangle details lost or forgotten to now become known.
Thank You, Alan
Sometimes life feels odd and uncomfortable to bear. Her life was not a wasted one. Maybe she smiles from somewhere far away every time we think of her. RIP Nina, and thank you for the article and alle the comments below
Excellent article about Twain’s last descendent. Thanks to Mr. Rankin for telling us Nina’s story.
I had an uncle who was a friend of Nina in the mid to late 1930’s. He was then a photographer for the Ford Motor Company. He told me he met Nina at the University of Michigan, where they were both students. They became friends and dated occasionally. There was newspaper mention of them attending a social affair in Detroit, in 1938 as I recall. I haven’t been able to find the article again. After Nina and her mother moved to Los Angeles, she urged my uncle to come out and get work in the movie industry. He did go, but became a taxi driver just before Pearl Harbor. He was drafted and led a photography and movie unit in the army, the first photo unit into Dachau prison camp I have a letter that my uncle wrote to Nina at the end of the war.
Thank you for sharing…
Mark Twain and his contacts are such an important part of my life – I dare say he never knew what he started. Thought he did, but he really didn’t.
Great article
Great article. As one who attended your presentation in 2019, I remember how polished it was and this article reflects that same care. The Mark Twain family left so many stories and artifacts behind that we can use to reconstruct life in those important years in America. I am still working on my book about Clara Clemens, tracing her life from Gilded Age childhood in Hartford to keeper of the Mark Twain legacy after her father’s death and, finally, impoverished in Hollywood, borrowing money from friends to survive as her husband gambled it away. Not a typical story, to be sure, but one that projects many truths about the lives of women in the Victorian age and beyond.
Such a thoughtful, interesting, and compassionate article. Thank you.
I saw this information from Facebook:
Her first 9 years were spent in Germany and New York. In 1919, the family moved to Detroit, Michigan when Ossip took on the position of conductor of the Detroit Symphony. Nina lived there until she enrolled in Barnard College in New York City in 1929. She soon moved in with a man, bohemian and jobless, against Clara and Ossip’s wishes. Her companion introduced Nina to hard liquor, which she would eventually become addicted to, as well as various drugs.
Nina graduated in 1934 and began training as an actress. Attracted by her mother’s movie connections, Nina moved to California. Mother and daughter bickered about Nina’s alcoholism and Clara’s intolerance of her actor friends. Fed up, Clara bought Nina a house and set up an irrevocable trust from the Twain estate that gave her daughter $1500 a month for life. On her own now, Nina got worse, drinking heavily and taking trips to Mexico in search of illegal drugs. By the mid-1940s Nina was rooted in a cycle of treatment in sanatoria, followed by release and relapse.
In 1958, she spent a year in detox at the California State Psychiatric Hospital in Camarillo. That same year Clara disinherited Nina. She told her daughter why in a letter: “Since I created a trust for you several years ago, I am leaving you nothing in my will. Too much money increases your difficulties caused by alcohol.” After that, mother and daughter only communicated through letter.
One early morning, in January 1966, Nina declared to the bartender of a local bar, “When I die, I want artificial flowers, jitterbug music, and a bottle of vodka at my grave.” She was found dead on January 16, 1966 in a Los Angeles motel that she frequented. The New York Times reported that several bottles of pills and alcohol were in the room. Nina had died four years after her mother at age fifty-five, in what was possibly a suicide.
Me topé con esto por casualidad. Me encantó. Gracias
Interesting article but half-baked. What was Nina’s life between her diary years and when she died circa 1966? That is a 40-year period that is blank (apparently). Census records, school records, property transactions, marriage records (was she married?) may give clues as to what happened to Nina. Are researchers sure SL Clemens did not have great grand children??? All data is public record which county recorders usually do not expunge despite the passage of time.
Nina deserves an honest, accurate story.
Personally, I would have poured the vodka on the ground at the grave and left the empty bottle (keep kids from getting a hold of it).
Also, how accurate is that reporter’s quote from the LA bartender (what was his name or was the quote created by the reporter?) It lacks credibility and true attribution.
From the appearance, I would say it was an accidental death (or natural death) and not suicide as implied “verbal suicide note.” Did anyone take time to read the autopsy? It’s a public record.
Interesting that Twain’s scholars claim Nina “as a tragic figure: perpetually unhappy” but there are no anecdotes or specific examples of this “tragic figure”. It’s a bit of a mystery, filled with speculation … (FYI a lot of people die of accidental alcohol poisoning in hotel/motel rooms who do not necessarily lead “perpetually unhappy” lives. Nina might have been one of those victims of the bottle. Let’s give this educated, Mark Twain grand daughter, Nina, a break).
Thank you so much for writing this. People are connected through stories like this, and the world is changed for the better by things that seem small and insignificant, like a young girl’s diary, more often and more deeply than by major events.