Mark Twain's Other Woman

by Laura Skandera Trombley

  In the midst of all the names being tossed around for Twain’s residence, John Howells good-naturedly suggested that an appropriate title for Isabel’s abode would be Lyonesse. Isabel appreciated the literary allusion and described Lyonesse as “‘the magic land’ that went down into the sea.” While the well-intentioned Howells was obviously playing off Isabel’s last name, a more disturbing name would have been hard to imagine. According to Arthurian legend, the land Lyonesse reeked of tragedy. In Tennyson’s epic poem Idylls of the King, Lyonesse rises from the depths of the ocean upon King Arthur’s return. It is the location for the final battle between King Arthur and his deceiver Mordred. In the end, the King slays his enemy and Lyonesse sinks once again beneath the moaning ocean waves. Suggesting land appearing and disappearing, and a murderous battle between a King and his betrayer, the nickname for Isabel’s new home would prove prophetic.

  Clouds began gathering over Stormfield even before its completion, and they arrived in the form of Clara’s fury about Isabel’s control regarding the decoration and furnishing of the residence. It was obvious to Isabel that her security was fully dependent upon Twain’s satisfaction with his future home and his willingness to take possession of it. The stakes were extraordinarily high, as was the pressure for a woman already on the verge of an emotional and physical collapse. Her reaction was to expend all her energy finishing Stormfield and to personally approve every detail. At the beginning of May 1908, Isabel wrote that she had wept for hours due to exhaustion and Clara’s criticism:

  Santa misunderstood all my efforts in working over the house—My anxiety over the furnishings, my interest in my search for the right things for the King’s house has all been misinterpreted, & the child says I am trying to ignore her. All my effort has been to please her, to keep her from the dreary search of hours & hours to find the right thing, or shape or color. The King has resented my being out of the house so much, until I’ve told him that I only seem neglectful—& that all my days are only for his interest, & that when he thinks that I am out frolicking, I am only trying to save his money.

  Actually, Clara had read Isabel exactly right. While Isabel would not openly admit it, she loved buying all the beautiful, luxurious furnishings for Stormfield as well as for Lyonesse. Her new purchasing power was certainly a welcome change from her days of enviously watching Clara make purchases at Tiffany’s or going window-shopping at Schriners jewelry store. Isabel now fancied herself a member of the group of “leisured, urban women who shopped.” She had never before experienced the pleasure of having her bankroll equal her taste, and the stores in New York City offered an abundance of goods from which to choose. Stormfield boasted Persian rugs (Khiva and Bokhara), heavy carved furniture, ornate draperies, beautifully upholstered furniture (including a daybed in the library for Twain to lounge upon), and wicker chairs for outdoor seating. John Howells took Isabel to look at gas fixtures at Caldwell and Company, the preeminent designer of lighting fixtures in America. Isabel described Caldwell’s as a “wonderful place on 15th Street where they have most exquisite reproductions from all nations. These men (Mr. Von Lossburg among them) spend their lives searching museums & excavations … & palaces for the most beautiful, perfect lamps & chandeliers & lanterns—& their place is as comforting—more comforting than a museum.”

  Paine accompanied her to “Bogagian’s” “to look at rugs—& bought one—a Khiva” for Lyonesse. And despite the awkward encounter with the reporter in Halifax, Isabel had not departed Nova Scotia before purchasing an enormous four-posted bed for herself with posts measuring seven and a half feet high that she had had shipped to Redding. As angry as Clara might be, Isabel was determined that Stormfield would be her sole creation, and she would not be deterred from fulfilling what she regarded as her right and responsibility to create a home for the King as well as for herself. Nevertheless, Isabel’s turning a deaf ear to Clara’s objections would prove dangerous.

  Twain had spent the winter and spring of 1908 traveling back and forth to Bermuda, the first trip at the end of January for twelve days with Ashcroft and the second trip with Isabel and Henry Rogers for nearly six weeks (February 22 to April 11). His first visit to his property took place on the same day he moved in—June 18, 1908. He delighted in his new surroundings. His first two guests were Louise Paine, Albert Bigelow Paine’s oldest daughter, who lived nearby, and Dorothy Harvey, daughter of Colonel Harvey. Twain’s two daughters were absent that day. Twain was openly appreciative of Isabel’s efforts, writing Angelfish Dorothy Quick a few days before seeing Stormfield, “Miss Lyon is working very hard, these days, getting the new house upcountry ready. … She has been at it night and day, the past week, and has gotten all the furniture and the Orchestrelle and a billiard table in, at last.”

  Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, ca. 1908–09

  Isabel had designed a home whose sole purpose was to entertain the King. She chose to believe that if she created a pleasure palace for Twain, he would become so dependent that he would be unable to live without her. The Ayton Castle mantel from the Hartford house was installed in the living room along with the Orchestrelle. The house, designed after an Italian villa, featured on its ground floor a grand hall, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a billiard room, Isabel’s office, and an outdoor terrace that provided sweeping views of the grounds. The second floor included Twain’s master bedroom and bath, Jean’s room and bath, Clara’s suite, Isabel’s bedroom (the room originally meant for Clara, which she had rejected), two guest bedrooms, and servants’ rooms. The first-floor billiard room had pictures of Twain’s Angelfish hanging on the walls and a Hawaiian koa-wood mantelpiece (a gift from an admirer) with the word “Aloha” carved on its face. Indeed, Stormfield was a grand space, eighteen rooms in all and over 7,600 square feet. A steam generator supplied the heat and an acetylene-gas system provided light. For the vast majority of Americans, this degree of luxury was unimaginable. In 1908, 90 percent of Americans lived without indoor lighting, and indoor plumbing was considered “a pipe dream.” Outside the house, under the porte cochere, the closed carriage that Twain’s father-in-law had given his daughter and son-in-law on their wedding day nearly forty years earlier stood waiting to receive its passengers. By 1908, the carriage showed its age, as did its owner, and the inside wood was autographed by the hundreds of matches Twain had struck against the varnish to light his cigars.

  Louise Paine, Mark Twain, and Dorothy Harvey on Twain’s first day at Stormfield

  When Twain took up residence at Stormfield, he declared to Isabel that it was his desire to have one Angelfish under his new roof at all times. Isabel was less than pleased with this aspiration, as it meant an increased workload for her. Clemens’s friends found his Angelfish hobby a puzzling, yet harmless, occupation, although Clara had never felt comfortable with her father’s attachments to little girls. Nevertheless, Twain took great pleasure in his newest, and youngest, friends.

  Despite having finished Lyonesse’s renovations, Isabel did not choose to live there. Instead she lived with her King at Stormfield. Her efforts to please brought only a fleeting respite from the external and internal pressures that disturbed her. She concluded at the end of June 1908,

  I shan’t ever be able to write any thing again, for all my time—my strength are given over to the finishing & furnishing & installing—the King in this beautiful home. I am savagely interested in it—not tenderly; because although in a way much of it is my creation, I have no sense that any corner of it belongs to me. Not even my own cluttered room.

  The pages for the next thirty days in her 1908 daily reminder were left blank.

  Twain was so delighted with Stormfield that while sending crowing letters to his friends Howells, Twichell, and Rogers, he unthinkingly threw gasoline on the fire when he wrote Clara that “the thought of ever going back to that crude and tasteless New York barn, even to stay overnight, revolts me.” The “tasteless barn” happened to be the place Clara had personally renovated and decorated. By August,
Twain had declared Stormfield his permanent residence.

  Mark Twain at Stormfield

  Mark Twain at Stormfield

  During the month of September, Isabel was in charge of clearing out the family’s remaining possessions from 21 Fifth Avenue. Twain had ended his lease, and the brownstone had been let for five years to a medical doctor who planned to turn Twain’s billiard room into his consulting office. Writing down her thoughts in the quiet of a Stormfield evening, Isabel found the “packing & clearing out the dreadful rubbish of many years’ accumulating” brought back memories, both pleasant and ill, of her years with the family.

  The burden of this house is heavily upon my shoulders. Being on my shoulders it is an alien weight & has all the chances of being shifted to other props. I keep it there rather than in my heart too securely for if it were, or when it is taken from me, all the bleeding heart of me would be torn out with it. It’s because I’ve been down to the N.Y. house working hard all day, & because Paine was there & was sad at leaving it. Sad at seeing the dismantling of the rooms where we’ve had charming times, & gay times. But for me they have been sadder than gay I think, or more agonizing—for in that house I saw the terrible sorrow & grief of the King, after Mrs. Clemens’s death—& I saw the crying rage of servants dismissed by Jean & Clara. I saw Jean in her convulsions. & I saw Clara in her agony & in her illness, & in her strugglings with her career, & in her hates and fierce lovings. And while my heart was full of loving for all of them, there was a long long lack of peace, & the stairs I climbed were often pitifully weary ones—But against it all was the great joy of living close to the King & of learning his ways & his moods. & of holding my spirit arms about him, & of having my life fuller than I thought it could be.

  BIDDING FAREWELL to 21 Fifth Avenue meant that a chapter of Isabel’s life with Mark Twain had ended. Twain, too, seemed to realize that a fundamental change was taking place, although it had nothing to do with his change of physical address.

  “I wish he wouldn’t talk quite so often of his death,” Isabel wrote. “It is terrible just to think of it. But when he speaks the word, all the world is hung with black, such terrible black & the pillars of the temple are shattered.” Mark Twain had become increasingly preoccupied with his demise, only half facetiously complaining to Charlotte Teller Johnson two years earlier that he was tired of being interrupted “every time I try to arrange about my funeral.” Isabel panicked whenever Twain brought up the topic: “The King talks so much about his death in these days—[crossed out: His death—what can that mean to those of us who live only as he lives].” Isabel’s concern was not unwarranted, as Twain’s health was steadily eroding.

  Over a year earlier he had begun to lose “track of the hours of the day” and had suffered a number of dizzy spells since then. On multiple occasions when he had overexerted himself, his skin assumed a grayish cast. During a long celebratory evening at the Lotos Club in January 1908, halfway through dinner a visibly tired Twain announced that he was temporarily departing the festivities to take a nap. After dessert was served he returned, feeling refreshed, and gave a brief speech. Two months later, while Twain and Isabel were vacationing in Bermuda, a horrified Isabel found him hunched over the billiard table, where he had been playing with a young German tourist, looking “pale as death.” The young man was trying to comfort him by rubbing the back of his head: “[Crossed out: A terrified sickness ran through me, stayed through me & I dragged myself into the room to] I heard … him say ‘Do you feel better now?’ Then the King straightened himself up & said he did, he thought—It had been just a sudden ‘crick in his neck,’ & the pain … is always so acute with him that it makes him weak. [Crossed out: All day my terror did not leave me.] All day I too was weak with the memory of the look on his face.”

  While Isabel fretted about Twain’s mortality and the implications for her own future, the King seemed to view his demise as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for self-promotion. Twain thought the pageantry he had witnessed at Oxford during the ceremony granting him the honorary doctorate in 1907 provided a fitting template for his funeral procession, which he was busy “planning on a large scale.” Yet even more important to Twain than the style with which he would be ushered into the grave was how he would be remembered. He was determined to depart this earth with a reputation as unstained as his white suits, universally recognized as a literary lion, highly regarded as an icon of integrity, and widely remembered as a loving husband and devoted father—and woe to anyone, including his daughters, who might stand in his way. (His determination to achieve this grand legacy was so obvious that after his death, his published obituary insightfully recognized him as the “architect of his own reputation.”)

  Not only did Twain cultivate and shape his public persona, but he spent those years dictating his autobiography with the intention of creating a particular narrative of his life that would prove immune to critical scrutiny and also continue to generate royalties decades after his death. The autobiography was Twain’s vehicle for presenting his life as he wanted it to be—the facts were entirely beside the point. Telling this version of his life, Twain believed, was the most effective means of accomplishing literary and historical immortality. He defined his purpose in a letter to Howells: “An autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell (though I didn’t use that figure)—the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.” Twain—and no one else—would decide just how much dust would be raked.

  Paine understood that his purpose was to construct an official biography portraying Twain’s life in its most flattering light. And if he ever lost sight of that goal, when the facts did not agree with his subject’s version and he became tempted to deviate from the approved storyline, Twain, Isabel, and then Clara were waiting to reinforce with Paine the reason he was there. At the end of January 1908, Isabel asked Paine to account for some letters that she could not find, explaining that Twain and Clara would hold her responsible if they were misplaced, and she was appalled by his reply: “He was cross, & answered in a burst of ill temper that he had many letters & would take them when he wanted to—This is not quite right of Tino [Paine]—& is a new & regrettable attitude—[crossed out: & my anxiety over it is making me ill].” Contained in this note was a thinly veiled threat. Isabel wanted control over Paine’s sources and she would not hesitate to involve Twain in order to get her way. Doubtless she must have informed the King about this “regrettable attitude,” because two days later Paine sent her an extensive rationalization and apology.

  I have no desire to parade the things he would wish forgotten—to hold them up to the world saying, “See how weak a strong man may be,” but it is absolutely necessary that I should know all there is to know, whatever it may be, in order that I may build a personality so impregnable that those who, in years to come, may endeavor to discredit and belittle will find themselves so forestalled at every point that the man we know and love and honor will remain known as we know him, loved and honored through all time.

  On August 2, 1908, death struck close to Twain with the tragic drowning of Samuel Moffett, his favorite nephew, at age forty-seven. When Twain learned of Moffett’s death, which occurred while swimming in the ocean in full view of his hysterical wife, Mary, and their two children, Anita and Clemens, he was devastated. The horrific episode was chronicled in a lengthy New York Times article that Twain doubtless read. With Ashcroft accompanying him in the intense late summer heat, Twain attended the funeral service, held on August 4 in Mount Vernon, New York. Grief-stricken and physically spent, Twain collapsed upon his return to Stormfield. The episode was so serious that Isabel sent for two doctors and Colonel Harvey to assist in h
is treatment and recovery.

  Isabel blamed Paine for causing Twain’s alarming condition. Just ten days earlier, Twain had suffered a fainting spell and Paine had not thought to inform anyone about the incident until after Moffett’s funeral, when Twain became so ill. Taking in Twain’s increased fragility as well as his remote country location (approximately sixty miles from New York City), the doctors and Colonel Harvey appealed to Isabel never to leave “the King alone again.” Isabel received their charge with utter seriousness and dramatically proclaimed to Harriet Whitmore that “some days I feel as if I were moving through this house with my spirit hands folded in prayer that I may be the right woman in the right place. Ashcroft will stand by me, & with me, for to him the obligation is the Same. The King is very much better now, but I will not go even to N.Y. for a day unless Ashcroft can be here, & he is in Canada for a fortnight.”

  The shock of Moffett’s death made Twain even more resolute to get his affairs in order. What Twain could not have known at the time was that whatever semblance of order his life currently held was about to be snatched away.

  THREE

  “ANOTHER STRIPPED & FORLORN KING LEAR”

  FALL 1908–APRIL 21, 1910

  Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

  Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

  I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;

  I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,

  You owe me no subscription: then let fall

  Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,