When Twain was ill and incapacitated, Isabel was sometimes asked to speak for him. In early January 1905, a reporter invited Isabel to make up a statement from Twain that he was willing to publish, a comment about the recent report that he was suffering from illness. Isabel declined the reporter’s journalistic largess. And it was Isabel to whom Twain turned to a month earlier when he desired that the books in his personal library be organized: “For 3 days I have been very busy classifying the hundreds of books of Mr. Clemens’s library—and Coming across many interesting volumes. It is exhausting work.” Isabel spent weeks “trying to find places for the books that are scattered—piled—on the library floor;” her task was significantly delayed when, in February, she discovered Katy Leary, who had always been entrusted with such tasks in the past, “vigorously declassifying those books. & arranging them according to color & bindings—So there is a hodge podge of science & poetry—history & fiction now. But it was funny enough to be enjoyable.” Isabel was amused, but not deterred. She held her ground, and her system of classifying Twain’s books replaced Katy’s.
Isabel was granted access to all of Twain’s private papers, and she immediately realized that his manuscripts were very valuable. In January, she observed: “Quite an interesting man—Mr. Hellman” had come inquiring if “Mr. Clemens has any manuscript to sell. He has bought nearly all of Mr. John Fiske’s mss. And others too of value Some of Howells & N. Hawthorne.” Twain was not interested in peddling his manuscripts. On one occasion, Isabel found “among Mr. C’s papers” the obviously precious “note book that he used on The Quaker City [the ship on which he traveled while writing what became Innocents Abroad] in 1867.” She was hunting for manuscripts in the study one day, when Twain entered and recounted an observation William Dean Howells had made:
he Said that a few days ago Mr. Howells made the remark That Mr. Clemens possessed a great advantage over him, because he never had to put any love scenes in his book. Mr. Clemens said that he couldn’t do it anyway—if he ever put a girl in a book he Soon found that he had to make an excuse to drop her overboard. While poor Mr. Howells has to have love scenes & the task of having them to Suit him is a terrible one.
This was the second time Twain had mentioned to Isabel his reluctance to include romantic passages in his work. The first occasion occurred when a dramatist interested in adapting Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc visited him. After the individual had departed, Twain told Isabel that if the adaptation were done, one of his “striking” conditions was “that there could be ‘no love passage in it.’” Twain later explained to Isabel that his insistence was due to his inability to write a “successful play” containing a “love element, which he said he could not handle—He never knew what to do with the woman.”
By early 1905, Twain was preoccupied with securing his literary legacy, and he made Isabel an offer that was, for him, unusually generous. He asked her to edit his letters. This was an extraordinary request considering her dearth of editorial experience, and one that was guaranteed to inflame his daughters’ jealousy. Twain’s invitation indicated that he trusted Isabel to portray him in the most sympathetic manner imaginable. Isabel was politically savvy enough to approach his offer with extreme caution:
Today Mr Clemens talked with me on the editing of his Letters. He wished me to do it—Gently I protested & told him that Clara was the logical one for that. And though he said “Ben [his nickname for Clara] would never be interested in that.” I believe he knew that I … am right—for the authority must rest with some one heavy and deep in the knowledge of how Mrs Clemens could wish the publication.
At the same time, Twain was considering who would be the appropriate person to write his authorized biography. In June, he told Isabel that he was ready to “appoint his biographer,” namely his old friend William Dean Howells. Isabel naturally concurred with Twain’s choice and declared that Howells was the only person,
with the Sure enough touch—and the one who loves him well enough to do it as it should be done—for it would take worship & appreciation & homage and [illegible] a strong rare brain—and friendship. All those things it would take to make the man who could most fittingly describe the mighty soul who would be the subject of that biography. He has in him the forces of many men—many men of many kinds. And he is so magnetic—that you can feel his presence in a room when you dont hear him enter.
Twain’s magnetic presence aside, Isabel worried that a biography just might derail the edition of letters Twain wanted her to edit, and she defiantly asserted: “Letters would be the best kind of biography anyway.” Twain tried to enhance his invitation to Howells to write his biography by cultivating his favor for several months. He had begun “writing an appreciation of Mr. Howells” in March, sending the completed manuscript to Frederick Duneka at Harper and Brothers in April. Later that same month, Twain and Howells dined at 21 Fifth Avenue with Isabel, who gleefully listened to their extravagant expressions of admiration for each other: “That they lay Their homage at Each others’ feet—a noble gift—& are the more lovely for the giving—They look into Each others’ eyes & their speech is—‘Oh noble you—’ and it is enough.”
Despite Twain’s sweet talk, Howells ultimately declined the biography project. In early June, after discussing the matter with his daughters, Twain had Isabel write to Duneka, asking him not to bother Howells about editing his letters as now Clara and Jean had expressed interest in the project (even though in January he had suggested that Isabel should edit them). Two weeks later, he wrote Clara at her Norfolk, Connecticut, sanitarium saying he had appointed “you and Jean to arrange and publish my ‘Letters’ some day—I don’t want it done by any outsider. Miss Lyon can do the work, and do it well … and take a tenth of the royalty resulting.” Just three months later Twain changed his mind again, telling Isabel that Clara would be the principal editor and she could assist in the project. Jean was out. Visions of royalties danced in Isabel’s head:
Tonight as Mr. Clemens lay on the wicker couch reading Macauly’s Life & Letters edited by his nephew Sir Trevelyan & I was playing to him; he … said—“There’s one Thing I wanted to say to Clara. In fact I have said it—& that is that she is to edit my letters when I’m dead. You can do the drudgery but she can do editing, & it will be principally striking out.”
Twain’s maddening fickleness in assigning the editorship would come back to give whiplash to everyone involved. The monetary value of his letters was already high. In April 1906, a single Mark Twain autographed letter to Thomas Nast, dated November 12, 1877, was sold for $43 at auction in New York City. This was a considerable sum of money, and there were thousands of letters. Twain’s fetched a higher price than the letters of all the other authors and public figures of the day, including those of Ulysses S. Grant. An edition of Twain’s letters would be a guaranteed best seller.
Choosing to ignore Twain’s inconstancy, Isabel hungrily realized the potential financial promise this project would hold for her. Lack of money was her constant enemy. While she must have gained a measure of relief from her monetary pressures by living with Twain, the benefit was limited because she paid for her mother’s room in a nearby boardinghouse. And while her duties had significantly increased over the past year, she had not received a raise. Feeling increasingly pinched, she sewed and sold pincushions to offset her inadequate salary: “All the days … are sprinkled with pin cushions—They’re pretty little creatures—& best of all they sell—Teresa [the housemaid] calls them my boys.” In October 1905, she proudly “piled up 172 little pincushions on the bed to-day—172.”
Isabel was struggling to maintain the self-image of a lady, while she was simultaneously a sewer of handcrafts, a seamstress. Indeed, her only compliment on her piecework came from the housemaid. Now, to be named an editor of Mark Twain’s letters by the author himself, that was a befitting occupation and certainly a leap in elevation of her status! If Twain allotted Isabel a share in a posthumous publication from which she would rec
eive a portion of the royalties, this could generate a substantial income. It seemed that the financial security Isabel had been searching for since her father’s death was nearly at hand. She reflected on the rosy publishing history of General Grant’s memoirs:
Away back when General Grant was about to publish his memoirs, & he asked Mr. Smith of the Century Co. $25,000 for the ms. Mr Smith said it wasn’t possible to pay such a price—& so McClure was just about to get the publishing when Mr. Clemens happened to be at General Grants house at the time that he was about to sign the agreement. And he told Gen. Grant that the price was ridiculous—& that he would give him his own check then for $50,000,00. But Gen. Grant wouldn’t consent to that. Finally Mr. Clemens offered to publish the book. Giving Gen. Grant 3/4 of the profits—& that he would pay the expenses out of his fourth. An arrangement was finally made—& the Grant family got five or six hundred thousand dollars out of a book that the Century Co had refused to pay $25.000 for.
Clearly Twain’s own story was a highly marketable commodity, and Isabel recognized its value when she repeated a comment that the author and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson made to her in August 1905, “that really if publishers had any sense they would be approaching me on the subject of ‘writing up’ Mr. Clemens.” Isabel had modestly declined: “How terrible. And just because I know Mr. Clemens in his strongest best silent beautiful self. That is the very reason why it would be an impossible thing for me to do. It wouldn’t be possible for me to do him justice in any one of his characteristics.”
And yet Isabel was disingenuous, at the very least, in her response to Higginson: she had begun “writing up” Twain from the first moment of her employ with the family. Timing, though, is everything, and Isabel probably viewed Higginson’s tempting possibility as a liability. After all, why risk Twain’s good favor when she was going to coedit his letters? Isabel wasn’t about to compromise her winning hand. Sewing pincushions as quickly as she could, she decided that waiting to publish Twain’s letters was the best investment she could make for her future, and she reminded herself, “‘Our maker himself has taught us the value of silence by putting us speechless into the world: if we learn to Talk later we do it at our own risk.’ (Who of us thinks enough to remember the risk—).” In 1906, Isabel scribbled a cryptic note and dropped it between the pages of her daily reminder: “Mr Clemens closed the matter & it is not my place to open it again.” Apparently the debate about who would edit Twain’s letters had ended—but only for the time being.
10
With their similar childhoods, their shared evenings of cards and music, and Isabel’s supplanting of his daughters, Twain and Isabel had formed a multilayered intimacy. Isabel constantly exulted about the “solemn joy of living in the same house with Mr. Clemens who grows ever sweeter with the white white years.” She found him quite physically attractive, noting in her journal “his great—very great beauty.” For his part, an energized Twain effectively returned to his creative life. He had read news reports describing attacks ordered by the Czar against strikers in St. Petersburg, and quickly completed his story “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” which he read to Isabel and Jean at the end of January. Isabel wrote, “He is at his best then. Today he was wonderful. Thrilled with the Tremendous interest of the naked Czar’s soliloquy. His voice shook with emotion.” Her enthusiastic reaction to Twain’s prose would be repeated anew with each piece he produced.
Twain was pleased by the warm reception from Isabel and Colonel George Harvey, editor of the North American Review and president of Harper and Brothers, and “The Czar’s Soliloquy” was published in the March edition of the North American Review. Twain then began “another Soliloquy King Leopold’s—who is gloating over & excusing to him-self the Congo atrocities.” Susan Crane, Twain’s sister-in-law, who was visiting, was treated to multiple readings, along with Isabel and Jean, from his latest horror-inspiring effort: “Breathless we sat. & were weak with emotion when he finished the bald … truthful … statements that rolled from Leopolds vicious lips—Horribly—too horribly picturesque it is, & Mr. Clemens … will … cut out some of it—It’s a pity too—but I suppose it would be too strong a diet for people & governments.” (Twain subsequently blamed Frederick Duneka’s Catholicism for Harper’s refusal to publish “King Leopold’s Soliloquy.”)
Colonel George Harvey
While Isabel’s perceived experience of living with Twain may have been all sweetness and light, bleakness was pervading Twain’s writing. His work during this period can easily be described as reformist—obvious examples are his essays demanding that injustices perpetrated by the Czar and Leopold immediately cease. Yet lurking beneath his calls for ending oppression was a constant note of misanthropy, a hopeless refusal to believe that mankind could ever be anything but cruel and inhuman. Isabel was soon treated to another work in this same vein, What Is Man?, a philosophical essay relating a dialogue between Young Man and Old Man, examining questions of free will and the existence of God. In early May, Twain sent the manuscript to Frank Doubleday to publish anonymously. Doubleday arranged for publication by the Manhattan-based De Vinne Press, and in August, 250 copies were printed. The book was copyrighted under the pseudonym J. W. Bothwell. Twain hoped it would create a literary sensation; instead, it fell flat. The arguments were not particularly new: Shaw and Nietzsche had already plumbed these topics. Years later Isabel recalled, “The disinterested reception was a keen disappointment to Mr. Clemens, and he wanted to burn the 240 volumes left.” Isabel chose to love the piece, and she reiterated superlatives about Twain: “He is so wonderful—so ennobling.” Jean was not quite so forgiving (or perhaps self-deluding); she hated the manuscript and made her disapproval clear to her father. Isabel was most disappointed in Jean’s inability to appreciate What Is Man?, or, as Isabel called it, his “Gospel”:
This morning I played for Mr. Clemens. & Then he said “Now Come up stairs.” We went up to the study. & he read aloud to me a part of his Gospel—his unpublishable Gospel. But Oh it is wonderful—Always I’ve been afraid of it—but that was because my only knowledge of it was through Jean who hates it. & if you hate a thing you can’t see any of its good. This is full of wonderful thoughts—beautiful Thoughts, Terrible Truths—oh such a summing up of human motives—& if it belittles … does it belittle?—every human effort. It also has the power To lift you above that effort. & make you fierce in your wish to better your own conduct—such poor stuff as your conduct is—
Frank Doubleday
Practical Jean was much more interested in dealing with the daily realities of life than in the spinning of nihilistic fantasies. She took it upon herself to find a suitable place to vacation for the summer, traveling through heavy snow in early 1905 to Dublin, New Hampshire, to inspect the home of the author Henry Copley Greene. Jean loved the heavily wooded area and Twain gladly signed a lease.
Five days after reading What Is Man? to Isabel, Twain completed his short piece “The War Prayer,” continuing his increasingly shrill cries for justice, an ideal he ultimately believed unachievable. He was angered by the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, both of which he considered unjustified, and “The War Prayer” was a pacifist indictment of war. He took particular aim at those providing patriotic and religious justifications for it. Isabel defended “The War Prayer” as Twain’s “eternal Slap at the human race—‘All machines’ we are—not responsible for any action of ours.” Twain sent his “Prayer” to Elizabeth Jordan, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who politely responded that while she liked it, she “didn’t think it would do for a woman’s magazine.” Twain’s friends, family, and publisher all advised him not to publish it, due to its inflammatory subject matter, and “The War Prayer” was withheld from publication during his lifetime. It was finally published posthumously in Harper’s Monthly in November 1916, during World War I.
By the end of March, words were still pouring from Twain’s pen, and he busily worked on a sketch disavowing the notion of
a universal brotherhood:
Tonight Mr. Clemens read a very interesting unpublishable sketch. Unpublishable because it is what an old darkey says of the universal brotherhood of man—& how it couldn’t ever be, not even in heaven—for there are only white angels there. & in the old darkey’s vision the niggers were all Sent around to the back door. It’s a wonderful little sketch but it wouldn’t do for the clergy—They couldn’t stand it. It’s too true.
Twain’s misanthropic universe now included heaven, and in his hellish version, racist epithets were part of the landscape. In the midst of all this bile, Isabel was the picture of cozy contentment, writing in her daily reminder: “Life in this way is so vitally interesting—The hours are like [crossed out: strings & strings] of pearls and in a string I hope The cord that holds them is a strong one.”
The tie binding Isabel and Twain was still strong, primarily due to Clara Clemens’s continued absence from home. Clara spent the fall and winter under Dr. Parry’s care in New York City, allowed to communicate only with her nurse and specialist. Word reached Twain that she was finally allowed to sit upright for brief periods and read. Isabel reported that Clara had “gained 5 1/2 pounds” and was asking for copies of “Plato & Byron & the Iliad & dry essays.” Clara continued to improve, and she was allowed to take brief walks outside. At the end of March, it looked for a time as though her arrival at 21 Fifth Avenue was imminent. Isabel worried about Clara’s effect on the relatively stable environment she had established. She knew that Clara tended to take out her frustrations on the staff and her family, and that once she rejoined the household, she was sure to challenge Isabel’s new importance and access to her father. Wounded, arrogant, and insecure, Clara was engaged in a lifelong battle to develop a sense of personhood apart from her dominating father. Isabel, venting her nervousness, scribbled a heavily coded note:
Mark Twain's Other Woman Page 8
