page_title: Clara Clemens
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Clara Clemens / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) with Clara Clemens (foreground) and her friend Miss Marie Nichols.
context_page_description: Clara Langhorne Clemens Samossoud, formerly Clara Langhorne Clemens Gabrilowitsch, was a daughter of Samuel Clemens, who wrote as Mark Twain. She was a contralto concert singer and she managed his estate and guarded his legacy after his death as his only surviving child. She was married first to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, then to Jacques Samossoud after Gabrilowitsch's death. She wrote biographies of Gabrilowitsch and of her father. In her later life, she became a Christian Scientist.
context_section_description: Clara lived in Vienna with her parents from September 1897 to May 1899 where she cultivated her voice for the concert stage. Her voice was characterized as unusually sweet and attractive. She also studied piano in 1899 under Theodor Leschetizky, who had been a pupil of Carl Czerny. In December 1900, she was invited by the people of Hartford to perform at a grand concert given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She studied for several years under masters in Europe before making her professional debut in Florence. She made her American debut as a contralto concert singer on the evening of September 22, 1906 at the Norfolk Gymnasium in Norfolk, Connecticut, assisted by violinist Marie Nichols. She rented Edgewood there in 1905, and she used the proceeds from the concert to purchase a memorial window for her mother in the Norfolk Church of the Transfiguration. Charles Edmund Wark (1876-1954) was a classical pianist from Cobourg, Ontario, and he became Clemens' piano accompanist from the winter of 1906 to late in 1908. Clemens and Nichols also continued to perform together, including a series of concerts in London and Paris in 1908. On May 30, Clemens debuted in London at a benefit concert, raising money for American girls to attend Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
caption: Twain with his daughter Clara and her friend.
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