Mark Twain's Other Woman

by Laura Skandera Trombley

  With the arrival of the Italian spring Isabel’s spirits soared, and on April 14 she exclaimed, “And we came over here to live—It is Too perfect for life. There are no flaws.” This joyous declaration strikes an odd note considering the events of February and Olivia’s heart attacks.

  And indeed, less than six weeks later, on a warm, clear, Sabbath evening in June 1904, Olivia finally surrendered to her last illness, progressive heart disease, and quietly slipped away. She was fifty-eight years old. Although the family obviously knew that Olivia was gravely ill, in a time when severe and prolonged illnesses commonly forecast the worst, it is equally true that they were utterly unprepared for her death. Katy Leary held Olivia in her arms as she died, and bore witness to the terrible moment when Twain saw his deceased wife:

  Mr. Clemens ran right up to the bed and took her in his arms like he always did and held her for the longest time, and then he laid her back and he said, “How beautiful she is—how young and sweet—and look, she’s smiling!” It was a pitiful thing to see her there dead, and him looking at her. Oh, he cried all that time, and Clara and Jean, they put their arms around their father’s neck and they cried, the three of them as though their hearts would break.

  Olivia’s corpse was lifted into a coffin and moved to the parlor. Clara collapsed beneath her mother’s casket and sobbed uncontrollably, then stood up and went to her mother’s bedroom and threw herself into her mother’s bed. She finally went to her own room, lay down in her bed and remained motionless and silent for four days. Twain spent a night kneeling and pacing next to Olivia’s coffin.

  Isabel captured the enormity of Olivia’s death and the family’s intense reaction to it in three cryptic lines:

  June 5—Mrs. Clemens died at nine

  in the evening.

  Clara is prostrate—

  Life is Too desolated—

  Olivia Langdon Clemens, dead at age fifty-eight, Florence, Italy

  A year later Isabel recalled, “Today is the anniversary of the great Tragedy of this family … after a sweet chat with Santissima, Mrs. Clemens’s light went out—Now I can see Mr. Clemens’s face when I flew to his room & told him to go to Mrs. Clemens’s room—‘Is it an alarm?’ he said—but I didn’t know—they only told me to run & get him.”

  The passing of Olivia had a less histrionic but much more devastating effect on Jean. Amazingly, she had the fortitude to take a number of photographs of her dead mother as personal keepsakes. In Jean’s photographs, Olivia looks creased and worn, with her mouth slightly open. She is dressed entirely in white, still wearing her bedclothes. When her mother died, Jean suffered a seizure, the first in over a year, and for the rest of her life she would never be free from such attacks for so long a time. Jean, her mother’s beloved baby, was now dependent upon her grief-stricken father and sister to help manage her illness.

  While the shocked family members prepared to return to the United States, Isabel steeled herself for a difficult good-bye to the priest, Don Raffaello. On June 16 she wistfully recorded, “The trunks are pulled out. life in Italy is almost finished—Don Raffaello comes every evening for a little or a long while—He grows more beautiful Each day as priest and man.”

  On June 28, three weeks after Olivia’s death, the remaining Clemenses bade farewell to Italy and boarded the Prince Oscar along with Isabel, Georgiana, Teresa Cherubini (the Clemenses’ Italian maid), and Olivia’s coffined corpse. When the ship docked, on July 12, at 7:00 p.m. in New York, the family was greeted with a directive signed by President Roosevelt and his cabinet that allowed them to bypass customs. Twain, Clara, and Jean immediately left the ship to spend the night at the stately Wolcott Hotel, while Isabel, her mother, and Teresa went to the more modest St. Denis. The next day the Clemenses departed for Elmira, where Olivia would be buried, and the task of passing the nineteen pieces of luggage through customs fell to Isabel. She later noted with satisfaction in her journal that she had managed “to get the 16 Trunks booked to Lee [Massachusetts] without paying extra for overweight of 2500 lbs.” Twain had decided to rent a home on Four Brooks Farm, Richard Watson Gilder’s property in Lee, as an appropriate summer and fall retreat. Isabel arrived first with the mountain of luggage.

  At the end of June, a worried Twain had written to Charles Langdon, his brother-in-law, that unless Clara found some relief soon from her “strain,” “she will go down with a crash and her present two-thirds nervous breakdown will take on an additional third and be complete.” Clara’s confused mental state was magnified at her mother’s funeral. The private service took place on July 14 at the Langdon’s home in Elmira. The ceremony was held in the parlor where Twain had married Olivia thirty-four years earlier. Olivia’s final resting place was next to her deceased son and daughter in the Langdon plot on a grassy hill less than a mile from her family’s home. At the cemetery an inconsolable Clara tried to jump into her mother’s grave as the coffin was lowered, and she had to be physically restrained by her bereaved father. Two days after the funeral, Clara arrived at Four Brooks Farm in Lee, “pale weak exhausted,” followed by Twain, Jean, and Katy Leary. By all appearances, Clara’s feelings of guilt and loss must have been unbearable.

  There is a single surviving letter in which Twain expresses the full extent of his grief over losing Olivia. In the letter, written less than two weeks after her funeral, Twain revealed his most emotionally vulnerable side to Susan Crane, Olivia’s older sister.

  Dear Susy—

  Yes, she did love me; & nothing that I did, no hurt that I inflicted upon her, no tears that I caused those dear eyes to shed, could break it down, or even chill it. It always rose again, it always burned again, as warm & bright as ever. Nothing could wreck it, nothing could extinguish it. Never a day passed that she did not say, with emphasis & enthusiasm, “I love you so. I just worship you.” They were always undeserved, they were always a rebuke, but she stopped my mouth whenever I said it, though she knew I said it honestly.

  I know something, & I get some poor small comfort out of it: that what little good was in me I gave to her to the utmost—full measure, the last grain & the last ounce—& poor as it was, it was my very best, & far beyond anything I could have given to any other person that ever lived. It was poverty, but it was all I had; & so it stood for wealth, & she so accounted it.

  I try not to think of the hurts I gave her, but oh, there were so many, so many!

  With Twain’s beloved wife dead, Isabel would now become a key part of the family dynamic. Isabel was the willing “Typewriter” who would give Twain the “Sympathetic wave.”

  8

  At the time of Olivia’s death, Isabel was forty years old and feeling the burdens of her age. She had a permanently injured eye, frequent headaches, and suffered from bouts of depression. A glowing beauty in her youth, Isabel had now become what she never could have imagined growing up—a spinster. Years of work and worry had etched themselves into her face, and her rich brown hair had become streaked with gray. Photographs exposed rawness in her expression, a nakedness born of past disappointments. Although men had found her attractive, none of her relationships had lasted. Isabel was now at a crossroads, and she was keenly aware that her opportunities had dwindled. Olivia’s demise created a vacuum that Isabel would do her utmost to fill on a permanent basis. She had always been a crafty cardplayer, and she could not afford to waste her few remaining good hands.

  At Lee the careful housing arrangement that Olivia had insisted upon—that Isabel would live outside the family’s residence—was abandoned. Isabel and Twain began living in the same house, and during their future travels they usually lodged at the same hotel. Twain had made a career of questioning and challenging propriety, and this change in living arrangements was a substantive departure from his earlier expressed views. While he prided himself on his iconoclasm, where sexual propriety was concerned he was extremely sensitive to public opinion. Two years after he and Isabel started living in the same house, Twain told an indignant Jane Addams th
at the reason he withdrew his support for Maxim Gorky was because Gorky was rumored to be staying in a hotel with his mistress. “[Gorky] could not offend against one of the strongest of our customs.” Twain was well aware that his immediate family felt such an arrangement with Isabel was inappropriate, although he brushed off Clara’s objections to Isabel’s live-in status by joking, “No, I want her here. She’s like an old pair of slippers to me.” Isabel was happy to comply, her earlier criticism of Countess Massiglia’s behavior with her servant and public perception of such an arrangement apparently forgotten. For Isabel, Twain’s immediate emotional needs took precedence over what anyone would say—damn propriety.

  Isabel was privately challenging decorum with her continued attraction to Don Raffaello. After her return to America, she often expressed her longing for the priest: “I wonder if I am glad or sorry that I miss him so much.” On July 28, she wrote and then crossed out, “Oh stretching straining heart that reaches out to Florence.” Isabel’s Florentine romance became a diversion for her during the long summer nights in Lee, and in August, she inked over another entry, in which she had exulted, “Today I have an uplift. Perhaps it comes surging out of my soul by the Continuous and beautiful Thought of Italy. Last night I dreamed of Don Raffaello, and it was sweet dreaming. I like to wander alone into the fields here and Talk across seas to Italy. It makes sweet living.” Isabel and Don Raffaello corresponded for months and often sent each other small gifts. Although Don Raffaello had promised to visit her in America (and Twain was persuaded by Isabel to write a letter of introduction for him), he fell into ill health, “lost money,” and never did.

  Approximately one month after Clara’s arrival at Lee, she left for New York. Isabel described Clara’s condition in a record she later crossed out:

  Santa Clara went away with Katy [Leary] today. Last night we talked the night away, for I did not go to my room until dawn was breaking. The Strain of living here has been too great—She Cannot stand the Sounds in the Tiny house. Two days ago with a strange effort of her will she got up. Saying it was only a question of will—And simply because her mind would not be normal that did not mean that the body was ill—The body must be ignored. She went alone last Evening down to the little river—fearing to face the new life she has taken up—(for she is making herself the housekeeper) and feeling that She must be guided. And so after the sad reaching out by the little river, She felt She must go—and it is best—though what it will be for me—With Santa Clara away—I don’t like to think.

  An emotionally shattered Clara entered Dr. Angenette Parry’s sanitarium at 117 West Sixty-ninth Street in New York City. Clara became further distraught when she learned that just a week and a half later, Jean, an avid equestrienne, was struck by a streetcar in Lee while riding in the moonlight with Rodman Gilder, Richard Gilder’s son. Jean was knocked unconscious and her horse, Rhea, was killed. Twain traveled to New York to tell Clara about her sister’s accident, and unfortunately, with his tendency toward exaggeration, he further upset his daughter. Horrified by her father’s alarming words, Clara immediately traveled back to Lee to see Jean. Jean’s injuries proved to be relatively minor: “a broken tendon in her left ankle. And her face and back were bruised and disfigured and she suffered much. But was very plucky.” Twain’s only comment to Isabel was that “the Whole affair was simply another stroke of a relentless God.” After spending three days with her sister, a “hysterical” Clara returned to Dr. Parry’s care. In September, Clara checked herself into a second sanitarium, in Norfolk, Connecticut, to continue her recuperation. At the end of September, she returned to New York and Dr. Parry, where she remained under doctor’s orders to have virtually no contact with her family until spring. Grief-stricken and depressed, Clara was restricted to her bed and not allowed to read her mail for several months.

  With remarkable speed, Twain, Isabel, and Jean established a routine life of relative normalcy. The three spent their evenings together playing euchre and reading excerpts from Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Ponkapog Papers and Rudyard Kipling’s Five Seas. Richard Gilder, along with his oldest child, Dorothea, and oldest son, Rodman, were frequent guests, and on July 26, the popular author “[Alice] Hegan Rice, who wrote ‘Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch’” paid a social call. Isabel was disappointed with Rice because she thought she appeared “very unliterary and inconsequent. Mr. Clemens says that Mrs. Wiggs is not literature so there is less need than might be for a literary flavor to Mrs. Rice.” But the slow, quiet country pace of Lee proved boring for Isabel: “It has been a long waiting up in those hills,” and she was restless to depart for the social whirl of New York City with Twain and Jean at the end of November.

  Twain had leased a house in New York at 21 Fifth Avenue for a period of three years. Isabel was thrilled to leave her country surroundings and loved the new home: “This house is … nicely oldish—with gothic adornments over the doorways & windows on the main floor. When it shall be finished—weeks hence—it will be harmonious.” Twain and Isabel’s abode, with its fashionable address, was located next to the venerable Brevoort Hotel. James Renwick, Jr., the architect of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church on lower Broadway, had designed the building approximately sixty-five years earlier. Isabel thought the surroundings provided a suitable frame for her King:

  the real picture of Mr. Clemens standing as I have seen him, near the arch of the Gothic window in the middle with the fading light of the afternoon softening our blemishes & enhancing his great charm as he [crossed out: stands smoking with] stops in his walk with his cigar between his fingers the smoke & like incense curling affectionately about him as he waits to hear the remark of some person present, or waits to catch a thought of his own to … give to his listeners.

  Mark Twain House on left, with gothic windows; Brevoort Hotel on right. New York City, 1935

  With Clara under medical care and away from her family, Isabel assumed the household duties, capably managing the servants and organizing Twain’s meals: “Tonight at dinner the Soup was not very good and Mr. Clemens said ‘The cook didn’t put her heart into that Soup—it was probably her foot.’” As for keeping the staff happy, Twain’s tongue-in-cheek recommendation to Isabel was to “be good to Them—put a hunk of pie under Their pillows every night.” Unamused by his advice, Isabel huffed from her newly elevated status: “The attitude that one has to assume toward servants in this city.”

  At 21 Fifth Avenue, the card playing continued in full force with Hearts and 500 as favorite choices: “This evening after dinner we played 500—a very good game. & after Jean left us—which she did at an early hour for she has [a] cold—Mr. Clemens and I continued—Rodman Gilder came in for an instant to pay his respects—but he wouldn’t stay to take a hand in the game. And after he left Mr. Clemens and I continued until eleven. I won most of the games.” A bad strategy with Mark Twain. Isabel amusedly observed that when Twain played cards with her and Jean, he did not rein in his language:

  When Jean is in Mr. Clemens’s room and we play cards—or don’t—he gives a freer vent to … his words and is therefore a dear delight. Tonight he had nothing but little “spot” Cards. & he called them a “perfect puke of spot Cards.” Ah his babbling is of a Strength—Jean remonstrated—and In a chuckle of joy he Told about a man—a good man—who many years ago was stranded somewhere in Mexico … without a cent. He hunted every where for work, and finally they offered him a chance to personate Christ in … one of the religious processions … depicting Christ on his way to Calvary. The street was lined with godless folk who pelted him with rotten eggs—bad bananas, and hideous other things. The man stood it with great dignity until the Storm was too hot then putting down his cross he said “If I wasn’t personating God Almighty, Id show yer a Thing or Two.” I think it was apropos of the fact that a “perfect puke of spot cards” was nothing to what … Mr. Clemens could say if he were not upholding his dignity as Jean’s father. That’s what I think.

  Between the around-the-clock
card games, Twain gave Isabel her first lesson on the Orchestrelle, which she called “a truly wonderful instrument.” Built by the Aeolian company, the Orchestrelle could be played by hand like a piano or powered by foot. Twain’s Orchestrelle was the largest model built and cost $2,600. He reportedly visited the factory while it was under construction to listen to its tone. His desire was that it should sound as much like a pipe organ as possible. The Aeolian was delivered along with five dozen sheets of music. The enormous Orchestrelle towered over the diminutive Isabel. Over the next few years she would spend countless hours playing it at Twain’s request; he demanded to hear his favorite songs again and again.

  Listening to music from the Orchestrelle was therapeutic for the aging literary giant, and he rarely missed his daily session. Isabel understood that the “Aeolian satisfies … him [crossed out: as nothing else can].” Whenever Twain moved to Dublin, New Hampshire, or Tuxedo, New York, to spend the summer, the Orchestrelle was carefully dismantled, transported via train, and painstakingly reassembled. On particularly tedious evenings, when Isabel’s attempts to find visitors proved fruitless and cards failed to distract, a morose Twain entreated her to play two special selections that reminded him of his lost daughter, Susy, and his wife:

  I have been playing to Mr. Clemens, playing his favorites—and after I had played many things that he loves, I took up the Largo—He sat in the big green Tufted chair quite near me, with his back Toward me, and when I had finished it he said—“If you’re not tired play the Susie one.” That is the Intermezzo. I played it & he said “I can fit the words to both those pieces, as the coffins of Susie & her mother are borne through the dining room & the hall & the drawing room of the Hartford house, Susie calls to me in the Intermezzo & her mother in the Largo—& they are lamenting that they shall see that place no more—” Oh, his soul is so lonely—Days are when it is so Terrible—