A distinct pattern had gradually emerged over the previous two years with gossip bedeviling the members of the Twain household and those in close contact with them. It is doubtful that Isabel would have been the source for this latest rumor, since over the summer Clara had forgiven her for her role in the construction and decoration of Stormfield, and Isabel would have been reluctant to rekindle Clara’s wrath. At times it is useful to look where there is silence, and the one individual not mentioned in the press or gossiped about during the same period is Paine.
Twain’s biographer may have been spreading rumors about Clara and raising questions about her behavior as payback to Isabel. His frustration over Isabel’s influence with Twain had reached the boiling point, and the two had been arguing for months about his lack of access to Twain’s private papers. Isabel wanted to restrict Paine’s usage of any letters in his biography because of Twain’s promise that she could edit an edition of his letters and receive a percentage of the royalties. Previously published letters would diminish the value of her volume. Paine was equally unwavering about his absolute need to use them in order to add to the authority of his work. Printing excerpts from the letters in his biography, Paine argued, would amount to publicity for Isabel’s edition of the letters and could only enhance her future sales. Isabel, in Paine’s opinion, was being shortsighted and selfish. Isabel was unconvinced by Paine’s argument, displeased about the deleterious effect prepublication could have on a future edition, and alarmed that Paine refused to inform her when he had solicited letters from individuals to whom Twain had written. These letters were precious, not just because of their possible inclusion in a future edition, but because they also possessed a distinct monetary value. Isabel was determined not to let any letters slip through her fingers and demanded accountability from Paine in order to safeguard them.
In January 1908, when Isabel discovered that Paine had asked Samuel Moffett for letters without first asking Twain’s permission to do so, she immediately informed the King. Twain’s reaction was to write Samuel and tell him not to comply with any such request. Also at Isabel’s urging, Twain wrote to Twichell and to Howells urging them to resist Paine’s requests to see any letters. “Paine could have killed me,” Isabel remarked, “because he told me how he had asked for & obtained from Mr. Howells a lot of the King’s letters when we were in Dublin in 1906. [Crossed out: the King wrote to Mr. Howells at that time asking for some of the letters & Mr. Howells to let him have them] but Paine managed to get them—He said I must not tell the King, when I told him that the King & Clara would be hurt. Angry.”
YEARS LATER, Isabel wrote to Irving Howe that by January 1908 Twain had begun to lose confidence in Paine. The situation reached its climax when Katy Leary found Paine going through private papers and letters and told Twain about her discovery. Twain apparently responded by asking Isabel to “lock the Ms. Trunk and the box … containing all the letters he had written Mrs. Clemens (always kept in his room … just as Mrs. Clemens had kept them close to her.) and to give the keys to him. [Crossed out: He had been a little annoyed by Paine for some reason I do not remember now.]” A frightened and upset Paine approached Isabel and beseeched her to intercede on his behalf with Twain. Isabel told Paine that she would lobby for him. Twain agreed that while he would allow Paine to continue his work, any “letters must first be submitted to him before Paine could use them.” Paine was infuriated that Isabel had such clout with his subject.
On the eve of Clara and Wark’s return to New York, the tension over Paine’s right to freely view Twain’s letters and manuscripts had resurfaced. A livid Paine and Isabel argued, with Isabel receiving an additional tongue-lashing over the phone from Mrs. Paine regarding her husband’s lack of access to “the red Ms. Trunk.” An enraged Mrs. Paine insulted “the King & Benares [Ashcroft] & me.” If it was Paine who had talked to the press about Clara and Will’s relationship, his purpose might have been to create additional rancor between Clara and Isabel, in the hope that Clara would suspect Isabel of betraying her most personal secrets and consequently convince Twain to fire her. With Isabel gone, Paine would have his choice of Twain’s letters and manuscripts, and he would be the logical choice to compile an edition of his letters. But no matter who was doing the talking, the newspaper stories failed to separate the singer from her accompanist and the secretary from her King. Clara’s European tour had done her a world of good, and she now declared Stormfield “very beautiful.”
After spending a long weekend at Stormfield, the energetic Wark returned to New York City on September 17 and rented an apartment on the eastern edge of Stuyvesant Square. Just two and a half weeks later, Clara rented an apartment in the same location. Rejecting appearances, Clara left her father in order to be with Will. Clara found a “very pretty” apartment in the Stuyvesant building, located at 17 Livingston Place (since renamed Nathan D. Perlman Place), also on the eastern edge of Stuyvesant Square. The Stuyvesant was New York City’s first apartment building in the French style, built in 1869 by the architect Richard Morris Hunt for Rutherford Stuyvesant, one of the most respected men in New York. There were twenty suites and four artists’ studios on the top floor. Rents for the suites ranged from $83.50 to $125.00 per month, too expensive for any but the wealthiest New Yorkers. The four studios rented for $76. 00 per month; Clara rented one of these. Tenants’ needs were attended to by a full-time concierge, and the city’s most “varied and free-spirited” elites resided there, including the publisher George Putnam, founder of G. P. Putnam’s Sons; Elizabeth Custer, the widow of the general (Twain published her memoir of her late husband, Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas, in 1889, under the auspices of Charles L. Webster and Company); and Elizabeth Jordan, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, as well as an editor of and contributor to the collaborative novel The Whole Family.
Clara moved into her new abode on October 2. Four days later, Isabel came to visit her and that night enjoyed a “wonderful sleep in Santa’s little apartment.” Clara and Wark were keeping very close physical company, something Isabel doubtless noted. In having a sexual liaison with a married man, smoking cigarettes, living in a studio apartment, flitting from place to place, singing before strangers, and associating with musicians, Clara had deliberately chosen a lifestyle that her socially astute mother never would have tolerated.
The two music lovers were together constantly throughout the fall, making frequent weekend trips to Stormfield. On September 17, 1908, robbers broke into Stormfield. Wark, along with the French butler, Claude Joseph Beuchotte; the contractor H. A. Lounsbury; and the sheriff gave chase and captured the two thieves. The day after the two men were taken into custody, Wark accompanied Clara and a white-suited Twain to a court hearing to watch justice take its course.
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With Clara preoccupied with her accompanist, the only dark cloud in the sky was a conversation she and Isabel had at the end of October regarding Twain’s finances and Clara’s allowance. Twain was worried about the expiration of the copyright from Innocents Abroad and anticipated that this would mean his annual income of $25,000 would be reduced by 20 percent within a year. Isabel explained to an angry Clara that this meant she would receive “only 800 a month instead of 2000.” Clara’s churlish response was that “she had supposed that her father was very rich & that he had a million saved.” Twain’s daughter was not one to live on a budget, and she deeply resented being told to limit her expenses by her father’s secretary. Clara’s angry retort also might have been aggravated by the likelihood that she was supporting Will and did not want to explain any extra costs to Isabel or to her father. As a professional musician, Will’s income was meager. With Clara’s assistance, he had money available to travel constantly, to maintain an apartment separate from his family and provide them with living expenses.
Like Clara, Jean found her attention frequently occupied with romance and money. Jean resented what she regarded as Twain’s parsimonious attitude toward her requests for f
unds (never mind her expensive treatment at Hillbourne Farms), and, unlike Clara, she despaired over ever finding anyone who would love her. Although she called Isabel the day after leaving 21 Fifth Avenue, telling her that she liked Hillbourne Farms and had already “been fishing with the doctors,” it did not take long for Jean to become bored with this slow, cautious, and repetitive way of life. A little more than a month after her arrival, Jean began forming a romantic attachment to Dr. Hibbard, a physician on staff. At the beginning of December 1906, she started to accompany Dr. Hibbard while he was making his patient rounds in the area. During the course of their drive, the two amiably conversed about a multitude of subjects, and on one occasion in early December, on a freezing-cold morning, they engaged in a remarkably frank exchange about female and male relations.
Very soon we got out onto forbidden grounds and talked openly. There was no occasion for embarrassment. Dr. Hibbard is a nice, clean young man and when he said he thought it decidedly wrong for girls to be brought up in such absolute ignorance of the real facts, that they believed their men friends were as clean as they themselves, I agreed absolutely. He said he had never known anything at all until he went to the grammar school, and only a little, then, but that when he went to the Medical College his eyes were opened. Almost without exception the students were bad. At last I vouchsafed what I have so often heard made as an excuse for the immorality of men: that the desire is actually a physical need and very difficult to withstand. I asked Dr. Hibbard if he believed that to be true. He said “no” most emphatically and backed it up by adding that he didn’t believe any physician could be found who would hold that as a possible thing. Therefore, most men are weak, dirty brutes. And the reason for that? The willingness of women to overlook the former character of men that they wish to marry and whom they hope to reform after marrying them. What idiots! Men demand that their wives be clean, moral women, but of course they have the privilege of belonging to the stronger sex and believe themselves without fault, or, that no one would dare find a fault in one of their loose and moralless [sic] number. More than ever before, I liked Dr. Hibbard. I have liked him from the beginning, but I especially liked the way he talked today.
Having a conversation of this nature for the lonely and longing Jean was tantamount to adding gas to a fire. A week and a half later, when Dr. Hibbard casually mentioned that he doubted he would remain at Hillbourne beyond June, an emotionally distraught Jean swore that the place would become “absolute Hades to me” with him gone. “I don’t in the least hope to win him, fond as I am growing of him,” she wistfully wrote, “but I can’t help wishing that if he is engaged I didn’t have to be thrown with him so incessantly as I am. If there could only be some other nice young man here it would be a relief to me & doubtless to him. I wonder if he considers me a fearful burden? He always seems mighty nice & cordial & friendly, & I think he likes me but I must try & not force myself onto him too much. … Doubtless for that very reason no one will ever care for me and I shall have to drag my useless, empty life out by itself. Oh! Is there no hope whatsoever for me? What can I do! I feel as tho’ I must find some means to prove attractive to a person that I can also learn to love.”
Jean confided in Clara about her feelings for Dr. Hibbard, but her sister proved unsympathetic. An appalled Clara demanded that Dr. Sharp to put an immediate end to Jean’s drives with the young physician. Clara then lectured Jean “that what I do is just the kind of thing a fiancée would do and that if it were known in the city people would be likely to remark on it.” A horrified and defiant Jean responded that she did not care in the least about gossip. “I am here to regain my health as best I can & one of the principle methods is being out as much as possible,” Jean reports that she retorted, “besides which being out in that way is my chief source of pleasure. I know that … doesn’t improve the situation any, but while, to quiet her, said I would not go quite so often, that really was a lie.” Jean supposed that Clara feared she would “fall in love with Dr. H. and wishes to ward it off & she feels, as mother did, that I must never marry.”
Considering that Clara was having an affair with her married pianist, this directive seems hypocritical at best and cruel at worst. Jean was furious with her sister, writing that her “action was low, I think, & I don’t feel that she had any right to do as she did. And I told her too, that she wasn’t my mother & that I didn’t consider that she had the privilege of doing as she had done. However, it will be some time before I forgive this performance of hers—this breaking up of about the only real pleasure in life I had been getting & even more than that her speaking of it to Dr. S. & not telling me is what I consider the worst part of it.” Clara’s attitude left Jean “cold & that her own idea was to stick to all rules & not regard—where it concerned me—my comfort or pleasure.”
Twain’s visits to his ill daughter were rare; he made the trip to Katonah only three times during Jean’s entire fifteen months there. His first trip came during the second week of January 1907, three months into her stay, when an agitated Jean was “in a Torrent of impossible moods & distressed her wonderful father until he was ready to weep.” He did not return until May 21. Jean’s letters complaining about her life and inadequate living situation were poorly received by her irritated father, who harshly criticized her: “Jean’s making out a bad case about herself—Bees wont [sic] sting an idiot—”
When Twain finally visited Jean again, on August 12, 1907, the conversation quickly turned acrimonious. She asked for $16 so that she could continue to board her dog Prosper and was appalled by her father’s callous response. Twain told his daughter that Prosper should be “destroyed,” as he had never found dogs to be of any value. An infuriated Jean “squelched the idea” by telling him that Prosper had been her mother’s last gift to her. Twain eventually sent the money. In an attempt to attract her father’s attention, Jean insisted that he pay her special favors not given to either Clara or Isabel. When he journeyed to England to accept his Oxford honor, Jean made him promise that he would cable only her when he arrived. Isabel sighed, “Jean may or may not bother to let us know,” and she asked Ashcroft to send her a cable as well.
Clara at least saw her little sister more frequently. After her first visit, she left greatly affected by “the place & the Great pathos of the Situation.” Clara promised Jean that she would try to see her on a weekly basis, and to Jean’s joy kept her pledge into the winter. On December 14, 1906, during a Saturday call, Clara told Jean that her doctors had decided she was improving under their care and should remain over the summer. Jean was profoundly disappointed, as a summer spent at Katonah meant no chance of seeing Gerry Brush in Dublin. On Christmas Day Clara was the only member of the Clemens family to visit Jean—her father preferred to stay in the city, spending the day with Isabel at home and in the evening dining out with Henry Rogers and his family.
Isabel also frequented Hillbourne Farms to speak with Jean and consult with her doctors. Twain had relegated to Isabel the responsibility for making sure Jean was well cared for as well as assuming financial control over her needs. This situation created considerable tension between Jean and Isabel, because Jean knew that any requests that might cause her father concern would immediately default to Isabel. On occasions when Jean would ask for a magazine subscription or a second new lap robe and receive a negative response, her anger would be immediately directed toward Isabel. But it was not difficult for Jean to figure out that Isabel was being used as Twain’s shield. Twain simply chose not to say no directly to his daughter and used Isabel to do it. Nevertheless, despite the awkward circumstances, Jean and Isabel did manage to share a congenial relationship, and during a March visit the two spent a happy day together, with Isabel noting that Jean was improving both in health and outlook and was very excited about the plans for Stormfield.
Jean possessed remarkable self-awareness when it came to analyzing her situation and where she stood in regard to the time and consideration her sister and father were willing to d
evote to her. Nevertheless, having their attention was important to her. By the summer, Clara’s regular visits had ceased as she became more interested in developing her voice and her relationship with Wark intensified. Jean was “distresse[d] beyond words” on the occasion of her twenty-eighth birthday when her sister sent a $10 check as her present. An insulted Jean returned the money with a note explaining why she was offended by the impersonal gift—as a patient, Jean had no access to stores where she might spend the money. Oddly, Clara responded by sending a “chilly note & second check for ten dollars.” Jean returned the check again, and by August 5, her older sister finally managed to get the message and sent her a strand of “lovely pinkish-red” beads.
Jean’s sharp tongue and temper were inherited from her father, and she would frequently take out her loneliness and frustration on her maids. Anna Sterritt had originally accompanied her to Hillbourne Farms to help care for her. After six months, Anna could endure no more of Jean’s verbal abuse or the isolation of Hillbourne, and at the beginning of April, Isabel brought a new maid, named Therese, to Hillbourne Farms, where Isabel made the simple observation “Poor Jean—and poor Therese.” Two months later, Therese could endure no more of Jean’s many “unkindnesses” and returned to New York, weeping as she told Isabel about the harsh treatment she had received. Isabel then took another maid, Blanche, to Hillbourne in mid-June to care for Twain’s increasingly angry and resentful daughter. In October 1907, after Jean had spent a lonely and seemingly endless summer picking wildflowers and going bird-watching, to Isabel’s consternation she expressed her anger directly to Twain.
Oh Terrible—Terrible that his children cannot come under the spell of his glories, his subtleties, his Sweetnesses. For this morning there was a cruel letter from Jean damning me—finding fault with him—with him. Always he says that she is not to blame, it is the God who can create such natures such maladies as hers—& in the creating, run them into a … mould as inflexible as bronze.
Mark Twain's Other Woman Page 20
