A Little change has taken place in The routine of my life. And it has unbalanced me—I cannot yet arrange my forces. Oh, Santissima—you who make a shrine of any house you inhabit—You who are a gift to Every one who falls under your Sweet Thrall—Oh Santissima—
I bend my head in silent worship of your flower soul. & of the white white soul—the rainbow Soul backed by the black clouds of experience—of your father.
Isabel was granted a temporary reprieve from the “flower soul” when Clara decided to delay her return to New York and to summer in Norfolk. In early May, Isabel, Jean, Katy Leary, and Jean’s dog Prosper relocated to Dublin, New Hampshire. Isabel loved the summer retreat and found a measure of peace there.
The view is wonderful wonderful—Far far distant hills—hoary Monadnock to the South East—and forever the singing sighing breathing pines & hemlocks … close to the very windows—And so silent—except for the songs of the pines & the birds—You see a glint of the Lake too. The restfulness of it is beautiful—The house is charming—I find it all in exquisite taste, because it has the lovely plasters & casts & books & colorings & pewters & Things that I love.
Twain remained behind in the city because on May 10 Clara had to have an emergency appendectomy, a very serious operation at the time. After making such excellent progress in regaining her health, this was a significant setback. Twain was terrified about the prospect of losing a third child, and the time he spent waiting for news while Clara was still under ether must have been torturous. When he saw his daughter after the operation, he was extraordinarily relieved to have “found her plump & oh so pretty.” The day after Clara’s procedure, Isabel wrote, “Oh the anxious hours for Santissima’s safety;” though this concern for Clara did not keep Isabel from complaining just two days after the operation about Twain’s decision to delay his trip to Dublin in order to keep watch over his daughter’s recovery. When Twain did arrive at the end of May, Isabel was ecstatic:
Today Mr. Clemens arrived.
Today the sun burst through the clouds just after the telegram came saying that he would arrive in Harrisville at 11:35
Today the aeolian came. Seven New England men unpacked it—Such nice soft speeched gentle New England [men]. Something sweet about them. I like them. It was dear to see Mr. Clemens arrive Today with a furtive searching glance at Things & people—as he drove up to the house.
Twain delighted in his summer accommodations. Typically self-centered, he appropriated Isabel’s room for his bedroom and Jean’s room for his study, and immediately immersed himself in writing. During the last part of May and through June, he worked with such ferocity on a new short story, “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes,” that Isabel worried he’d make himself ill: “Mr. Clemens spends too much Time over his work. Hours & hours & hours he sits writing with a wonderful light in his eyes, the flush of a girl in his cheeks—and Oh the luster of his hair.” Isabel had established Twain’s ideal writing environment: quiet surroundings, a regular routine of cards and music, and an appreciative audience. Rising early in the morning and sometimes working until after sunset, Twain was obsessed with his latest project. Nightly readings of the day’s production were given to Isabel and Jean.
This evening after dinner Mr. Clemens read the ms. he worked on all day. A cholera microbe’s own story of microbe life in a human being. It is a marvelous imaginative scientific little story—With his acute eye that little microbe sees undreamed of wonders & kingdoms in the body of the dirty Russian Tramp that he inhabits. I asked Mr. Clemens how long he’d been turning those marvelous imaginings over in his mind, & he said that the idea had been there for many years—he tried to work it up from a drop of water, & a Scientist with a powerful microscope; but it wasn’t right—He had to be-come the microbe, & see & think & act & appreciate as a microbe. He truly said to Jean that it isn’t a story for babes—But it will delight physicians & bacteriologists—Oh he is such a marvel. Such a marvel.
In the midst of all this creative ferment, Isabel received a letter from Clara in Norfolk, asking her to write with family news and sharing her recent religious conversion. Clara eventually embraced Christian Science, a religion her father caustically attacked in a 1907 publication, Christian Science: With Notes Containing Corrections to Date, that Harper’s only reluctantly published. (Clara had the final word about Christian Science in her book Awake to a Perfect Day, published in 1956.) Isabel deduced that because Clara could not find comfort for her continuing grief in her family, she had sought refuge in religion.
A great faith has come to Santissima. She had to reach out to some-Thing in her grief—a woman has to. She can comfort others perhaps, but she cannot comfort herself. & she has to reach out for the help that is in the eternal—Perhaps a man doesn’t need it—I don’t know—He can shield & comfort & protect a woman—he’s shelter & comforter & protector by his right & instinct—& the woman who hasn’t that human protector has got to turn to the spiritual one—and Santissima Turned.
Despite Clara’s newfound religiosity, her health travails continued throughout the summer. She was disappointed with the diagnosis by her throat specialist, who told her that she could not sing for at least four months as her vocal cords had been affected by the appendectomy.
At the end of June, Twain switched to another writing project that he had begun in Florence but never completed. He dropped the unfinished manuscript in Isabel’s lap and asked her to read it “when I had leisure.” An incredulous Isabel joked, “Leisure? You’d boil it out of midnight if you couldn’t find it anywhere else.” Twain spent the next six weeks reworking No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger. Of course, Isabel thought it brilliant.
On the evening of Independence Day 1905, Twain mused to Isabel about how “the world is full now of young writers who admire each other.” Twain confided that he did not feel such a group of people had existed when he came of age as a writer, although it had for the generation that preceded him—Holmes and Emerson principal among them. Twain divulged to Isabel the unexpected admission that he had never had much fruitful interaction with male writers: “For himself there are only Mr. Howells and Mr. Aldrich—and he surprised me into recognizing the truth by telling me that he hasn’t had much of a literary friendship with men. And he hasn’t—Hartford is presumably between New York & Boston—but it isn’t.”
In mid-July, Twain wrote the lyrical “Eve’s Diary,” a short story consisting of diary entries chronicling the relationship between Adam and Eve. The writing went quickly, with Twain reading drafts to Isabel every night; the story was completed in a week. In it, Adam and Eve are together for forty years, and Eve hopes that the more resilient Adam will outlive her because she could not bear life without him. Her wish is granted, and the closing line is one of Twain’s most memorable: “Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.” Isabel was overcome with the beauty and sentimentality of the text as well as with her own happy existence:
This summer is so exquisite that sometimes I am afraid to speak into the silence fearing to break the magic spell—Oh don’t let me break it—Let it be broken by sounds from other lips than mine. “After the Fall”—Mr. Clemens read Tonight & Eve sums up all the reasons why she could love Adam—but doesn’t—It’s Something Else. It’s because he’s hers. Dear little Eve.
Isabel thought Twain had created “a lovable creature & So innocent & So human—‘The Same old Sex’—he said—when I said ‘Oh, but she’s a woman.’” “Eve’s Diary” is Twain’s most insightful piece presenting a woman’s perspective, and the narrative touchingly explores the beauty of a cherished relationship. The story was published in the 1905 Christmas issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine. “Eve’s Diary” has always been considered Twain’s endearing tribute to Olivia, and appropriately so, although considering the contentment he was enjoying with Isabel, he may have been acknowledging her as well. While Twain struggled for years composing Extracts from Adam’s Diary (beginning in 1891), he wrote “Eve’s Diary” in just six days (July 12–18
, 1905). Contained within “Eve’s Diary” is a line that sounds strikingly similar to a sentiment expressed by Isabel about Twain: “I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as to increase his regard.”
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While Twain was putting the final touches on “Eve’s Diary,” Isabel read a story by Rudyard Kipling, one of her favorite authors, which also delved into a loving couple’s growing intimacy.
This afternoon I read Kipling’s new story. “An Habitation Enforced.” And it has some darling strokes in it. The spinster who heard the swearing & felt that she had lost her virginity because of it is one of the best Ever. And I feel as if it must have originated with Mr. Clemens.
Isabel’s enjoyment over the spinster’s lost virginity is illustrative of the sexual allusion in her journals. Here is at the very least the suggestion that her rhapsodizing over Twain had a libidinous dimension, emerging in its least carnal form in the appreciation of the attractiveness of the man, but bursting forth at times in more explicit identifications.
Kipling’s story “An Habitation Enforced” culturally and personally held immense meaning for Isabel. Turn-of-the-century middle-class women were actively encouraged by magazine advice columns and self-improvement manuals, good-naturedly titled What Books Can do FOR YOU, for instance, to practice “reading up.” That is, readers were advised to read books with plots and characters they could identify with and were told that through their engagement with the text they could remake themselves through both material and intellectual “cultural acquisition.” Readers were assured that their lives would be “vividly enlarged and clarified through [this] experience.” To take this notion of self-improvement one step further, readers were encouraged to practice a kind of active wish fulfillment, meaning that the more intense their connection with the story and characters, the more likely they were to be rewarded with class mobility and consequent material wealth.
Kipling’s story begins with protagonist George Chapin’s nervous breakdown. His doctors recommend living in Europe for at least two years and abstaining from all work. Millionaire George and his devoted wife, Sophie, spend months drifting through various continental capitals until they meet the prescient Mrs. Shonts, who sends them to southern England to stay at Rocketts farm. George and Sophie are enchanted with the quaint ways of the British country folk and begin to explore their surroundings, discovering a semi-abandoned colonial home named Friars Pardon. Sophie impulsively bows to the structure and declares to George: “We began here.” The elderly caretaker shows them the house and grounds, and George realizes with a start that he has not thought about himself for an entire two and a half hours. The two learn that five farms surround Friars Pardon.
George and Sophie become increasingly infatuated with the beauty of the area, and George offers the London solicitors $68,000 for the house and all the farms as a business venture. Sophie, moved and pleased by George’s purchase, bursts out, “We’re two little orphans moving in worlds not realized, and we shall make some bad breaks. But we’re going to have the time of our lives.” George and Sophie shyly inform the tenants that they are the land’s new owners, and they are heartily welcomed. The next day in church George and Sophie feel the stares of all their tenants on the backs of their necks:
Here was nothing but silence—not even hostility! The game was up to them; the other players hid their cards and waited. Suspense, she felt, was in the air, and when her sight cleared, saw, indeed, a mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven motto, “Wayte awhyle—wayte awhyle.”
The two immediately begin reconstructing Friars Pardon and caring for the dilapidated farms. Sophie soon becomes pregnant, and persuades George, whose first impulse is to set sail immediately for America, that they now belong to their land and to leave would be “desertion.” After their son’s birth, Sophie learns that Friars Pardon is actually her ancestral home when their neighbor delivers a silver christening mug. “The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was the crest of a footless bird and the motto: ‘Wayte awhyle—wayte awhyle.’”
It is hardly surprising that the theme in “An Habitation Enforced” would resonate with Isabel. Sophie had achieved the social climber’s ultimate dream—the goal of upward mobility with a baby and an English title thrown in. The narrative was evocative of Isabel’s past and current life experiences: the emotional paralysis of a nervous breakdown, the feeling of being culturally adrift, the art of maintaining an intimate relationship, and the reestablishment of family status.
It must have come as a rude shock and quick return to reality when, just two days after reading “An Habitation Enforced,” Isabel received a letter from Clara containing a thinly veiled threat. “Santissima has given me a creed. No—a watchword—‘Never take anything for granted.’” Apparently, news had reached Clara about Isabel and Twain’s domestic bliss. In retrospect, Isabel may have been a bit too effusive in her letters to Clara, regaling her with happy tales of life at home with her father and his renewed zeal for writing. Surely Twain’s friends would not have been particularly surprised to see him wed again; he certainly required an enormous amount of devoted care and undivided attention. Clara, however, with plenty of time to ruminate while summering at the sanitarium, had no intention of allowing this mere secretary, obsequious and pleasant though she might be, to usurp her mother’s place as Mark Twain’s wife.
Undeterred, Isabel divided her journal page in two and countered Clara’s warning:
Kipling has given me another in his [crossed out: Dear] story “An Habitation Enforced—” or rather he has forcibly put into two words what I say often to myself in many words—“Wayte A. Whyle.” It’s the only True way to live. When you’re lying at night with weary wakeful eyes waiting for the dawn. Just say “Wayte A. Whyle—”
Isabel had her dreams and was prepared to fight for them.
In mid-October, an increasingly suspicious Clara wrote Isabel reminding her a second time: “‘Never take anything for granted—‘A pretty good watch word—& when C.C. reminded me that it was a good one, she didn’t know that I’d learned it when I was a pretty young ‘Freshman’—Oh a very young one … that was nearly twenty five years ago—and I’m nothing but a rusty ‘Soph’ now.” If Clara was going to try to take away Isabel’s winning hand, she had better play her cards carefully. Isabel was carefully scripting the plotline to her life story, and she was willing to sacrifice everything to risk a happy ending.
Toward summer’s end Jean visited the recovering Clara in Norfolk, and upon her return she confided in Isabel about her sister’s travails. In a daily reminder entry, Isabel seemed to recognize a certain predilection for unhappiness within the Clemens family:
Jean has told me much about C.C. [crossed out: I wish I didn’t suffer a little over other people’s griefs, and distresses other than griefs.—] There seems to be a tragic something hanging near; [crossed out: & who can say. Oh to be able to protect the ones that you love. I have the feeling that I must scream at the] Some Fate that is Coursing along in their blood, & waiting to drop with a clutch at their hearts. [Crossed out: Really I don’t sleep.]
Isabel knew that her fate was bound up with Twain’s, and she understood that Clara would oppose any kind of arrangement that made her affiliation with the family permanent. This realization left her sleepless with worry. In reaction, she became hypercritical about her performance, chastising herself for any perceived missteps: “It’s terribly Thin ice I’m walking on, for watch as I will, I cannot cure myself of my capacity to make mistakes—It isn’t any consolation to know that I … make Them unintentionally—and it isn’t any excuse That other people make mistakes Too—Those Things don’t make it any better.”
While much of Twain’s attention was directed toward Clara’s health, a frustrated Jean was having her own struggles. From May to July 1905, Jean averaged one seizure a month. Isabel understood that Jean needed close supervision and with typical hyperbole referred to her responsibility as “my Sacr
ed charge.” Jean spent the summer studying French, German, and Italian, as well as busying herself birding, hiking around the lake, riding (astride) through the woods to Mount Monadnock, and reading to Isabel in the evenings: “Now it is a book by Madame Laschovska—a Viennese friend of the Clemenses—on Transylvania—and now it will be a little French History—and now it is Heine—Dear Child that She is—Such a Complex nature. & yet so entirely simple—Consistent—yet so inconsistent. There is a power in that young nature.”
Isabel’s greatest challenge with Jean was helping her find a purpose for her life. Jean despaired after an overnight visit from the strikingly handsome Gerome “Gerry” Brush, a successful sculptor and painter eight years younger than she and son of the well-known artist George de Forest Brush. He made her “feel the uselessness of the days she is living—doing nothing of value—Everything to be called a ‘whim.’” Jean was now twenty-five years old and because of her health, she had no prospect of ever being allowed to marry and bear children.
With oversight of Jean safely delegated to Isabel, over the course of the summer Twain indulged himself by flitting from one writing project to the next. He insisted on reading to Isabel everything that he wrote and eagerly solicited her predictably positive comments. In September Twain became engrossed with his latest piece, “A Horse’s Tale.” This story was the last transvestite tale Twain would write, thirty-five years after his first, “A Medieval Romance.” Written at the urging of Minnie Maddern Fiske, a leading American actress and animal-rights advocate, the story follows the adventures of nine-year-old Cathy Alison (modeled on Twain’s daughter Susy) and her horse, Soldier Boy. After the death of her parents, Cathy is sent to live with her uncle, General Alison. She travels from Rouen, France (the site of Joan of Arc’s trial and execution), to the American western territory, where she pretends to be an officer and routinely inspects her soldiers while dressed in military clothing. Twain worked for hours on the manuscript and while reading the piece to Isabel he would signal her to make bugle calls on the Orchestrelle at the appropriate intervals. Isabel pronounced the maudlin tale “a prodigious piece of work.” While Isabel freely criticized other writers in her journal, when it came to Twain’s work, if she held a contrary opinion about its literary merit, she never expressed it. Nearly thirty years later, Isabel recalled watching Twain compose during that magical summer of 1905:
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