"It cuts me to the heart, now," he confesses in the ma.n.u.script, "to know that Jean made many an imploring & beseeching appeal to me, her father, & could not get my ear, that I, who should have been her best friend, forsook her in her trouble to listen to this designing hypocrite whom I was coddling in the place which should have been occupied by my forsaken child."
Twain"s account of the Ashcroft-Lyon debacle is not a "literary curiosity," as one critic has called it, but a powerful, often gut-wrenching effort by a great writer to speak directly to readers about his most personal failings. With its preface addressed "To the Unborn Reader," the ma.n.u.script is Twain"s last effort to explain himself to posterity. The portrait of the artist that emerges is not that of a petty or mean-spirited man, but of one who wears his pa.s.sions on his sleeve, and who cares too much about the truth to let it be obscured by half-truths and lies.29 It is not the work of a broken-down writer or a bitter one. From beginning to end, it breathes a sense of urgency, as if the author can"t wait to share his story. And it isn"t lacking in humor. In his efforts to convey his disgust with the Ashcrofts, he is often his old playful self, embellishing descriptions with the kind of exuberance Isabel might have admired in another context: Miss Lyon is good company, agreeable company, delightful company, drunk or sober, but there is nothing about her that invites to intimate personal contact; her caressing touch-& she was always finding excuses to apply it-arch girly-girly pats on the back of my hand & playful little spats on my cheek with her fan-& these affectionate attentions always made me shrivel uncomfortably-much as happens when a frog jumps down my bosom.
A COUPLE OF YEARS after Twain"s death, his sister-in-law, Susan Crane, addressed the Ashcroft-Lyon controversy by observing of Isabel, "How she hastened the good man out of this life!"30 There is no denying that the controversy took its toll on Twain"s health. In June, during a brief visit to Baltimore to attend the high school graduation of his angelfish Frances Nunnally, he felt a sharp pain in his chest while he was resting at his hotel. His biographer, who was accompanying him on the trip, asked if he needed help.
"It"s a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain," the author said.
"Where is it, exactly, Mr. Clemens?"
He pointed to the center of his breast. "It is here, and it is very peculiar indeed."
Thinking that he might be suffering from rheumatism, he asked Paine to bring him a hot water bottle, and that seemed to help. But when the trouble returned a little while later, the biographer suspected it was angina and urged him to see a doctor when they returned to New York. It was the first sign of what Dr. Quintard would later diagnose as "tobacco heart." For Twain, the worst part of it would mean having to cut back on cigars, smoking "only 4 times a day instead of 40."31 But it can"t be entirely coincidental that his heart trouble surfaced at the height of his feud with the Ashcrofts. Indeed, it grew progressively worse over the summer. By the end of August Twain was drinking "barrels of boiling water to keep the pain quiet," as he explained in an effort to joke about one of his home remedies. His tolerance for the pain was amazing, as his biographer observed repeatedly. "I have seen it crumple him, and his face become colorless while his hand dug at his breast; but he never complained, he never bewailed, and at billiards he would persist in going on and playing in his turn, even while he was bowed with the anguish of the attack."
He would also insist on taking long walks, and wouldn"t turn back if the angina flared up. Occasionally, when he was feeling better, he liked to pretend that nothing was wrong with him, and that his only serious health problem was "acute indigestion." As Paine recalled, "There would come a week or a fortnight when he was apparently perfectly well, and at such times we dismissed the thought of any heart malady."32 Not wanting to disappoint an angelfish, Twain suppressed any concern about his chest pains during his trip to Maryland and took part in the graduation ceremony at St. Timothy"s School for Girls, on the outskirts of Baltimore. If he felt any lingering discomfort, it probably disappeared the moment he walked onto the grounds and found himself surrounded by an admiring group of "kodaking girls," as the local paper called them. "I always like the young ladies," the smiling author declared, "and would go a long way to be in their company."
He delivered an entertaining commencement speech. Wearing his white suit and a big Panama hat, he sat patiently on the stage listening to the other speakers offer uplifting words of wisdom and advice. The last person to speak before him was Edward Martin, a poet from New York whose daughter was one of the graduates.
"I don"t know what to tell you girls to do," said Twain when his turn came. "Mr. Martin has told you everything you ought to do, and now I must give you some don"ts.
"First, girls, don"t smoke-to excess. I am 73 and a half and have been smoking 73 of them. But I never smoke to excess-that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.
"Second, don"t drink-that is, to excess.
"Third, don"t marry-that is, to excess."33 The girls laughed and were full of compliments when they spoke to him following the ceremony. After he returned home, he sent Frances a note thanking her for inviting him to the school and added, "If I were not so inadequate in age & s.e.x I would go there and take a term or two."34 n.o.body at the school seemed to notice that he was feeling his age. In fact, he made a point of telling one of the Baltimore reporters, "I am just as young now as I was forty years ago. Why, I don"t see any reason why I shouldn"t live another hundred years."35 Thanks to Thomas Edison"s film studio in New York, it is possible for later generations to see how easily Twain was able to give contemporaries the impression that he was still strong and healthy. Shortly after his return from Maryland, a film crew came to Redding to shoot a few scenes of the author at home. In May Edison"s company had purchased the rights to make a short movie of The Prince and the Pauper, and the studio manager-Horace Plimpton-thought the feature should conclude with some footage of the author. He wanted the public to know that Twain had approved the film and was willing to promote it. As an advertising circular for the production boasted, "Mr. Clemens gave his full authority for the production of his celebrated story in motion pictures, and we believe it is the first time a writer of international fame has been so used."36 In an age of silent film Twain couldn"t entertain viewers with humorous anecdotes and droll remarks, so he put on his usual white uniform and simply showed off for the camera. The brief footage is the only surviving example of Twain in motion. With his hair flying in all directions, he parades in front of his house and blows cigar smoke at the camera as he rounds the corner. Taking quick, vigorous strides, he doesn"t look at all like a man with a bad case of angina.
The camera also captures him in a more relaxed pose, having tea outdoors with Clara and Jean. At one point the butler Claude (whom Clara had recently persuaded to return to Stormfield and serve the family again) appears in the scene and hands Clara a hat, which she puts on just before getting up to lead the others inside. The footage ends with a ghostly frame showing only Twain and Jean, who is wearing white like her father. Her thin summer dress is loosely gathered at the waist, and the sleeves are pushed up, as if she has come to the house straight from her work at the farm.
In the fall, when Twain was offered the chance to view the film at a theater, he seized the opportunity, saying that he had always been curious to see what he was "really like to others." Afterward, a magazine reported his verdict: "He said it was like looking in a mirror, but it was so lifelike it gave him a creepy feeling." What his voice sounded like, we may never know. Though he once made a recording on a wax cylinder, the original was apparently destroyed and no duplicates have yet to surface.37 ...
DR. QUINTARD WARNED TWAIN repeatedly that he needed to take better care of himself. In addition to his angina, he was also suffering from high blood pressure. But as long as he was able to keep the pain in his chest from hurting too much, Twain didn"t want to talk about his health problems or make much of an effort to follow his doctor"s orders, especially with regard to smoking. "It is the pains that persuade you to behave yourself," he said. "Nothing else could do it."
One problem, he joked, was that Quintard couldn"t tell him whether his disease was "the kind that carries a man off in an instant or keeps him lingering along and suffering for twenty years or so." He wanted to figure out whether it was worth planning ahead or not. "I was in hopes that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any minute; but he didn"t. ... He didn"t give me any schedule."
And then one day that summer-while he was entertaining himself with books on astronomy, and his own amateur efforts to calculate the distances between stars-he announced to Paine that if he couldn"t make long-term plans, he would prefer to stick to a schedule set ages ago that promised a reasonably quick, and suitably spectacular, exit. "I came in with Halley"s comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don"t go out with Halley"s comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." Oh! I am looking forward to that."38 All his life Twain had been fascinated by the fact that at his birth the skies had blazed with the light of a famous comet. Visiting Earth every seventy-five years, the comet takes it name from the British astronomer Edmond Halley, who first spotted it in 1682. In 1835, it reached perihelion-its closest approach to the sun-on November 16, and its light was still visible from Earth when Twain was born on the 30th.
"The most absorbing topic of interest," said the New York Tribune in a June 1909 article on astronomy, "has been the expected return of Halley"s comet." But, as the paper went on to report, astronomers were worried. So far their telescopes had not picked up any sign of the comet"s approach. "Probably it has been declining in size," the article speculated, "and may not be so imposing a sight as popular imagination has pictured it."39 Twain didn"t seem to doubt that it would return right on time, and that it would look as splendid as ever. Only a few years before making his dramatic announcement to his biographer, he had described a feeling of mystical connection with comets in a ma.n.u.script note for his short work No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: "How do you know, when a comet has swum into your system? Merely by your eye or your telescope-but I, I hear a brilliant far stream of sound come winding across the firmament of majestic sounds & I know the splendid stranger is there without looking." Such a feeling was probably picked up at his mother"s knee. Jane Clemens was fond of stargazing and took the name for her oldest son, Orion, from the constellation.40 Twain enjoyed keeping track of the latest discoveries in astronomy, but had little use for scientific jargon. At the beginning of 1909, when the Harvard Observatory announced that "perturbations in the orbital movement of Neptune" might indicate the presence of a new planetary body, he offered his own interpretation of the discovery. Writing in the Harper"s Weekly of January 30, he said that he was an old expert on perturbations, having learned all about them from youthful encounters with dogs guarding watermelon patches.
These recent perturbations are considered remarkable because they perturbate through three seconds of arc, but really that is nothing. ... There isn"t any Neptune that can outperturbate a dog. ... You let a dog jump out at you all of a sudden in the dark of the moon, and you will see what a small thing three seconds of arc is: the shudder that goes through you then would open the seams of Noah"s ark itself, from figurehead to rudder-post, and you would drop that melon the same as if you had never had any but just a casual interest in it.41 One day that summer he had a chance to take a close look at something that had come from outer s.p.a.ce. While on a short visit to New York, Twain and his biographer stopped by the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side to admire the collection of meteorites on display in the lobby, including the three famous ones from Cape York, Greenland-the ma.s.sive Ahnighito or "The Tent," and "The Dog" and "The Woman"-all of which had been transported to New York by the Arctic explorer Robert Peary in the 1890s.
Weighing more than thirty tons, the Ahnighito was then the heaviest and largest meteorite known to scientists. "Never," said Peary, "have I had the terrific majesty of the force of gravity and the meaning of the words "momentum" and "inertia" so powerfully brought home to me as in handling this mountain of iron." When it was shipped to New York, the ma.s.sive load of iron caused the vessel"s compa.s.s to freeze in its direction. Moving it from the docks to the museum required a specially built cart pulled by "a block-long line of twenty-eight horses."
It isn"t surprising that Twain was in awe of this exhibit, and also of the one in the Hall of Dinosaurs. "To him," Paine recalled, "these were the most fascinating things in the world. He contemplated the meteorites and the brontosaur, and lost himself in strange and marvelous imaginings concerning the far reaches of time and s.p.a.ce whence they had come down to us."42 ...
WHILE TWAIN WAS MUSING on the great questions of eternity and mortality, a friend of the family lay seriously ill at a hospital on the Upper East Side of New York. The patient was Ossip Gabrilowitsch, who had entered the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in the first week of July for an operation to treat a severe case of mastoiditis. In May he had given the last of his New York performances for the year and was preparing to return to Europe when he had suddenly fallen ill. His on-again, off-again relationship with Clara had entered another low period, and they had not seen much of each other in the last few weeks. She was aware that he was going to have an operation, but didn"t know that complications had arisen, and that his doctors were worried he might not survive.
One day at Stormfield a visitor who didn"t know of her relationship with the pianist mentioned the bad news in pa.s.sing.
"What a shame he is dying!" the visitor said of Gabrilowitsch. "Such a fine fellow, they say!"
Clara dropped everything and raced to catch the next train to New York. When she arrived at the hospital, she found Ossip in the grip of a high fever and too weak to sit up. "He cannot possibly live," she was told.43 She stayed at his side day and night, and summoned Dr. Quintard to see if he could help. On July 9, one day after the New York Times reported that the pianist was "dangerously ill," the fever abated, and Clara was cautiously optimistic that he would pull through. "Gabrilowitsch seems a little better today," she wrote her father on the 9th, "& the doctors think that they are getting control of the fever at last."44 His recovery was slow but sure, and Clara believed that it was her prayers and constant presence that had helped to save him. When he expressed the fear that she might drift away from him again after he was well, she "hinted" that the ordeal of his illness had permanently affected their relationship, and that she was ready to think of marriage.
"Do you mean it?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, "I mean it."
Instead of staying in New York after his release from the hospital, Gabrilowitsch went to Stormfield with Clara to continue his recovery in one of the guest rooms. For more than a month he remained in a weakened state, and stayed in bed much of the time, attended by Clara and Katy Leary. As Paine would recall of that period, the pianist "rarely appeared, even at meal-times."45 With Ossip convalescing, and Twain suffering from angina, the last thing anyone at Stormfield wanted to hear was that Isabel Ashcroft was coming back home to contest the seizure of her cottage. But on Wednesday, July 14, when the liner Carmania docked in New York, Isabel was aboard. She was returning in style on one of the most elegant ships in the Cunard fleet, and her husband-who would follow her two weeks later-had alerted the newspapers to her arrival. Reporters and photographers were waiting as she came down the gangplank. One newspaperman described her as "a pretty, Quakerish-looking little woman, the kind you expect to wear a folded kerchief over her shoulders and dove-colored frocks."46 After a month abroad, the Ashcrofts seemed to have concluded that one of them should return and try to make peace with Twain. As her reason for leaving in the first place, Isabel told the press that she and her husband had gone on their honeymoon, and that the seizure of her cottage had forced her to come home early to defend herself against false charges. Though the honeymoon excuse was a new twist in the story, it made sense to the newspapers, one of which ran a headline the next day saying, "Mrs. Ashcroft Hurries Back from Her Honeymoon Abroad to Find Out About $4,000 Suit."47 With a convincing air of innocence, Isabel insisted that she couldn"t understand why Twain would have taken action against her. "I loved him as a daughter loves a father," she said. "For seven years I relieved him of every care I could."
The problem, she suggested, could be traced either to a misunderstanding with Twain"s older daughter or to mischief from some unnamed enemy. "She is of a highly artistic temperament," she said of Clara, "which is apt to lead her very far afield. And yet I don"t think that she would do this of her own accord either. There must be somebody acting behind her-somebody who doesn"t like me."48 One way or the other, she vowed to the press, she was going to make things right, and was leaving immediately for Redding to see Twain and resolve the matter face-to-face. "The whole case will be settled, but the shame of it is that I should have been placed in an improper and false light."49 She did indeed travel straightaway to Redding, but couldn"t summon the courage to enter the grounds of Stormfield. Instead she let herself into her cottage and waited for Twain to come to her. He didn"t take the bait, but sent Charles Lark to say that if she deeded the house back to him, the suit against her would be dropped and no further action would be taken. As a witness, Lark brought along Jean, who sat quietly during the visit, never once saying anything to rebuke the woman who had done so much to undermine her place in the family. For the most part, Isabel ignored Jean and tried not to look at her. Though she supposedly believed that Jean was unstable and p.r.o.ne to violent outbursts, she didn"t seem in the least bit worried about her safety.
Lark was a persuasive advocate and didn"t have much trouble talking Isabel into giving back the house. Ralph Ashcroft may have been hoping that his wife would prevail by using a softer approach, but in the end she simply gave up and signed over the deed. At Jean"s suggestion, she was given six weeks to vacate the property. When Ashcroft learned of this development, he was livid. Returning to New York at the end of July, he immediately fired off a letter accusing Lark of using "threats and intimidations" to trick Isabel into surrendering the cottage.50 The feud took a turn for the worse on August 4 when the New York Times allowed Ashcroft to launch a major attack against Twain"s family on the front page of the paper. After a few words of introduction by the editors, the article simply quoted Ashcroft"s written account of his side of the dispute. Running to about 1,200 words, his statement filled one column of the first page and part of another on page two. Knowing that the public wouldn"t be sympathetic to criticisms of Twain himself, Ashcroft directed most of his fire at Clara, but also took a few shots at Jean.
He tried to depict both women as troublemakers and hinted that each suffered from some vague malady affecting their mental stability. "For two years or more after their mother"s death, both girls were in sanitaria most of the time, and the younger daughter has been under the care of nerve specialists ever since. Under these circ.u.mstances, Miss Lyon naturally became Mr. Clemens"s hostess. ... Both daughters, however, became jealous of her, were afraid that Mark Twain would marry her, and often endeavored to destroy his confidence in her."
Obviously, Ashcroft had no interest in establishing the truth. In his anger over the loss of the cottage, he simply wanted to stir up a scandal and force Twain to buy him off with a quick and generous settlement. He made it clear that he was willing to do anything to smear the daughters. In Jean"s case, he played on a cruel stereotype of epileptics by hinting that she was an emotional wreck. In Clara"s case, he used some hard truths to hit her where she was most vulnerable, lambasting her for neglecting her father while spending money on a career of dubious worth and a male friend of questionable character. She wasted her ample allowance, he wrote, on "the delightful experience of paying for the hire of concert halls destined to be filled with "snow" or "paper," for the maintenance of her accompanist, Charles E. Wark, and to defray other cash expenditures that an embryonic Tetrazzini is naturally called upon to make."
To rub in the fact that Clara"s talents couldn"t match those of Luisa Tetrazzini-then one of the biggest and best-paid opera stars-Ashcroft observed sarcastically, "One"s vocal ambitions ... sometimes exceed one"s capabilities ... and the bitter realization of this has, in this instance, caused the baiting of a woman who has earned and kept the admiration and respect of all of Mark Twain"s friends."51 Disgusted by the sheer nastiness of Ashcroft"s statement, Twain refused to speak to the Times when the paper called the house to ask for a response. Though Ashcroft was now desperate enough to go after Clara with some of his most damaging criticism, and to do it in such an influential paper, the attack failed to win him any sympathy from the public, and it didn"t intimidate anyone in the family. Instead it made him look petty and vindictive. Nevertheless, for Twain and his family, it was the kind of humiliating public exposure that Livy had always dreaded, and that, ironically, Isabel had worked so hard to guard against during her time as the family secretary.
During the rest of August, Ashcroft tried in vain to win concessions from Twain"s lawyers. He sent bills for various fees and charges that he claimed were owed to him for previous services, and for expenses incurred by Isabel. He demanded that Twain return the cottage and promise not to file any more suits, and he wanted compensation for agreeing to cancel his employment contract with the Mark Twain Company. His lawyer and Twain"s hotly debated whether the audit of the household expenses proved conclusively that money was missing. The question is one that scholars still debate. But Twain was convinced that thefts had occurred, and his opinion was reinforced by the behavior of both Ashcrofts in the aftermath of Isabel"s dismissal. They had acted like scoundrels, he believed, and therefore they must be scoundrels.
It soon became obvious that Ashcroft"s threats and demands were not going to work. On almost every issue Twain stood his ground and refused to make concessions. As the deadline was approaching for Isabel to vacate the cottage, she realized that it was time to go. She knew Twain well enough to understand that her husband couldn"t make him budge once he had made up his mind. And, no doubt, Ashcroft was disappointed by his failure to gain any advantage from his lengthy attack in the New York Times. If dragging the names of Twain"s daughters through the mud couldn"t bring the great man to his knees, nothing could. So, in the last week of August, Isabel moved out, joining her husband at his home in Brooklyn.
Twain relished the news. "That rotten-hearted pair of professional thieves, liars & forgers have cleared out ... & are not likely to return," he told Elizabeth Wallace, who had been quick to take his side in the dispute and to end her friendship with Isabel. "I feel nearer to the Lord than I ever was before," he continued. "I feel as He feels of a Sat.u.r.day night when the weekly report is in & He has had a satisfactory clean-up of the human race."52 About two weeks later, he noted proudly that Ashcroft had resigned from the Mark Twain Company "to keep from being thrown out." As a condition of his resignation, he had asked that Twain send him a conciliatory note accepting his departure "with regret," but the request was refused. In the end Ashcroft"s schemes came to nothing. And though the dispute cost Twain hundreds of dollars in legal fees, the author consoled himself for this loss by listing three ways in which the Ashcrofts were now much worse off as a result of their chicanery: They are married; They live in Brooklyn; She adores Society-& she ain"t in it any more.53 Twain may have thought he had heard the last of the troublesome pair, but Ashcroft wasn"t quite finished tormenting the family. An opportunity would soon arise for him to deliver one last nasty shock.
After a couple of broken engagements, Clara and Ossip finally married in October 1909. "What! Again?" was Twain"s response when Clara brought him the news of her third-and last-engagement to the pianist.
TWENTY.
Letters from the Earth.
I am only human, although I regret it.
Mark Twain.
BY THE MIDDLE OF SEPTEMBER the mood at Stormfield had brightened considerably. The weather was good, Jean was busy with her new life, Gabrilowitsch was feeling better and was almost his old self again, Clara was glad to be rid of Isabel, and Twain was writing the final parts of his ma.n.u.script about the feud. He felt as though he had finally awakened from a bad dream, and though his heart trouble was showing no sign of going away, he was learning to live with it. "I guess it"s all right," he wrote Dorothy Quick in response to a question about his health. "Infirmities & disabilities are quite proper to old age."2 He missed having his angelfish visit him, but he lacked the strength to keep up with them, and didn"t want to be dull company. For the first time in almost three years, however, both his daughters were living under his roof, and he was happy to see so much of them. In fact, they all agreed that a celebration was in order, and it was decided that a concert would be given at Stormfield featuring Clara and Ossip. Invitations were quickly sent out to a large number of friends and neighbors, who were asked to pay a small admission price for the benefit of the Redding Library. A well-known opera singer in New York, the distinguished-looking baritone David Bispham, was invited to join Clara and Ossip on the program, and he gladly accepted. A crowd of two hundred or so was expected, but more than twice that number of tickets were sold.
All the excitement of the concert-which took place on Tuesday, September 21-made Twain forget his heart trouble, and he thoroughly enjoyed the event. "If we hadn"t stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the performance," he later wrote, "we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the library (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining-room, the hall, clear into the billiard-room, the stairs, and the brick-paved square outside the dining-room."3 A few hours before the concert began, David Bispham visited Twain in his room, where he found him propped up in bed smoking a pipe and looking as though he had no plans to go anywhere. But when the crowd began to fill up the house, the author appeared right on schedule in his white suit to host the event. "He was in great fettle," recalled Bispham, who shook with laughter when Twain introduced him to the audience. After making much of the fact that both Bispham and Gabrilowitsch were international stars, Twain said, "My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so much better-looking."
After the concert, there was a dance, and the festive atmosphere seemed to reflect a general sense of relief among the family and their close friends that the Ashcroft ordeal was over. As Paine recalled, Jean looked especially happy and healthy. She "danced down that great living-room as care-free as if there was no shadow upon her life."4 Meanwhile, out on the lawn in the warm night air, Ossip and Clara were admiring the stars and talking about their future. Now that he was almost well again, it was time for the pianist to resume performing in Europe, if his fragile health could bear it. But he wasn"t going to leave Clara behind, and made it clear that he would need her help. While they stood together on the lawn, he asked if she would marry him, and the answer was yes.
"What! Again?" was Twain"s response when Clara brought him the news of her engagement. Then he shrugged and said, "Well, anyway, any girl would be proud to marry him." After Clara"s two previous engagements to Ossip had fallen through, Twain was understandably reluctant to believe this one would hold until the wedding day. But the couple decided not to make Twain or anyone else wait long to find out. Clara announced that the wedding would be a small one at home and would take place in two weeks.5 On Sunday the 26th she wrote Reverend Twich.e.l.l asking him to come to Stormfield and marry her on October 6. To explain the haste, she said that Ossip needed to sail for Europe on October 12. "Because of concerts which he can not cancel," she wrote, "we have to be married at once." And then she added, "I couldn"t get married without you." Of course, he replied at once that he would come. Thirty-nine years earlier he had presided over the marriage of her father and mother in Elmira.6 In large part, it was her experience of nursing Ossip through his long illness that had swayed Clara in the direction of marriage. But after enduring the attacks of the New York music critics in the spring, and the scandalmongering of the Ashcrofts in the summer, she seemed to welcome the chance to escape from her old life for a while and try living as a famous pianist"s wife after thirty-five years of being a famous novelist"s daughter. She had already scheduled another concert tour of her own in the autumn, but marrying Ossip at the last minute provided her with a ready excuse for canceling the tour and making a quick getaway from her past. With Jean at home, and the Ashcrofts banished, it must have seemed to her impulsive nature a good time to bolt.
All the same, she didn"t want anyone to think that Ossip had won her hand by taming her independent spirit. She told Twich.e.l.l, "There is one great favor I have to ask of you-just one-my very last. Please exclude the word "Obey" from my marriage vows." He agreed, but after getting to know Ossip a little, he couldn"t see why Clara was concerned that he might try to dominate her. As far as Twich.e.l.l could tell, the pianist was a harmless fellow who wasn"t in the least bit intimidating. After the wedding he described him as "a refined, gentle-mannered young man, quite modest and unaffected and not at all foreign in mien."7 In a great rush Clara went to Altman"s department store and picked out a wedding dress, and also purchased a dress for her bridesmaid, Jean. Her Elmira cousin and childhood playmate, Jervis Langdon, agreed to serve as Ossip"s best man. The pianist Ethel Newcomb-who had studied with Clara and Ossip in Vienna under Leschetizky-was asked to play the wedding march. At Stormfield, Claude searched the surrounding fields for colorful wildflowers and autumn foliage to use as decorations in the living room, where the wedding was to take place. Besides the immediate family, about two dozen guests were invited.
At the wedding rehearsal on October 5, Twain seemed less than enthusiastic about the prospect of losing a daughter who had only recently moved back home. When his presence was requested at the rehearsal in the living room, he was playing billiards and didn"t want to be interrupted for the purpose of merely going through the motions of a pretend ceremony. Clara"s good friend the violinist Marie Nichols came to get him, but he refused to leave his game. It was no use arguing with him, though Nichols tried. As it happened, he had donned his Oxford garb earlier in the day, thinking he would try it out as part of his wedding outfit, and when Nichols wouldn"t leave him alone, he turned to her in exasperation and did something unexpected. "He put the mortar board on my head and the robe over my arm," she recalled, "and told me to go in and take his place."8 The next day, however, during the real ceremony, he behaved himself. He gave the bride away without incident, and then posed for pictures wearing his cap and gown. In a photograph taken outside, Clara looks happy but uncomfortable in her heavy wedding dress, and Ossip"s thin frame shows the effects of his recent illness. Pale, with short hair and pinched features, he bears little resemblance to his younger, more flamboyant self, when he had a full head of dark curls and a fresh, boyish expression.
Twain appears to be scowling at the camera, but he often looked that way whenever a photographer asked him to pose. No doubt he was unsettled by the speed with which Clara went from engagement to marriage, but he seemed content with his daughter"s decision. When Elizabeth Wallace wrote to get his reaction to the marriage, he replied that he approved of it. "Happily it is congratulations, not condolences. We have known Gabrilowitsch intimately for 11 years. ... They were engaged years ago-twice. Broken both times, to Mrs. Clemens"s great regret. Gab is a very fine human being in every way." Because he liked and respected Wallace, and enjoyed giving her his unvarnished opinions of the Ashcrofts, it is unlikely that he would have shared with her his praise of Ossip if he didn"t mean it.9 ...
THE NEWLYWEDS HONEYMOONED in Atlantic City, but their plan to go abroad on October 16 ran into trouble when Gabrilowitsch faced another medical crisis. While they were staying in the seaside resort, he began having pains in his side and was advised by doctors that he needed an appendectomy. He felt well enough to return to New York, and an operation was scheduled for October 18 at a private hospital. Despite his weak condition, he went to the pier on the 16th to cancel his pa.s.sage on the liner that he and Clara were supposed to have taken to Germany. To his surprise, he was approached by a couple of reporters who wanted an interview.
It wasn"t his latest illness that interested them. What they wanted was his reaction to the recent rumor that a lawyer representing Mrs. Charles E. Wark was intending to bring a suit against Clara for alienation of affection. Some of the New York newspapers had received an anonymous letter "saying that every effort was being made to serve Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, the former Miss Clemens, with papers in an alienation suit." What did Mr. Gabrilowitsch know about this suit? asked the reporters.
Ossip did his best to give a dignified reply. "My wife and I are at a loss to know what it all means. There has been no suit for alienation against her, nor is she engaged in any other litigation. Mr. Wark is a personal friend of both of us, and I am sure he has nothing to do with it." Ossip was careful not even to acknowledge the existence of a Mrs. Wark, and dismissed the anonymous letter as a lie circulated out of "maliciousness."
Hoping that there was more to the story, a reporter telephoned Stormfield for a response and was fortunate to get Jean rather than Twain. She didn"t mind saying exactly who was responsible for the rumor. The culprits, she declared, were the Ashcrofts. Isabel, she explained, "still felt revengeful as a result of the recent litigation between her and Mark Twain."
This comment brought a forceful denial from Ralph Ashcroft, who insisted "that neither he nor his wife had anything to do with the circulation of the rumors of Mrs. Wark"s suit."10 There is no evidence that Wark"s wife ever intended to file such a suit. As Jean indicated, it was one last effort by the Ashcrofts to embarra.s.s Twain and his family. For Ossip and Clara, however, it was the worst possible time to have a fresh rumor hanging over their heads. He was ill and was going to have a serious operation in just two days. "Once more a hospital and days of misery," Clara was to recall of this period. They must have feared that their marriage might end in death and scandal before they were given a proper chance to make it work.
But once again Ossip survived a close call and was soon able to recover his health. In early November he felt well enough to return to Atlantic City with Clara and to resume their honeymoon. He even gave a few "informal recitals" at the hotel where they stayed, the Marlborough-Blenheim. Meanwhile, the European concerts that he had wanted so much to play were canceled or postponed. It wasn"t until the end of November that the couple rebooked their pa.s.sage to Europe and sailed away to start a new life.11 Before Ossip"s appendectomy Twain had written to Clara"s manager and made excuses for why she couldn"t honor her engagements. The manager-R. E. Johnston-was understandably angry, but seemed to appreciate having a personal letter from Twain explaining the situation. "I am very, very sorry for these untoward things," he told Johnston, "but you see how they come about, and that neither you nor I could have helped it."12 Privately, Twain was relieved that Clara"s marriage had given her a chance to give up performing. It wasn"t that he begrudged her a career. He never failed to show her support. But he knew that her talent was limited, and that there were better ways to spend one"s life than traveling from town to town trying to entertain audiences who might applaud or sit in silence. After her marriage he wrote, "She is done with the concert-stage-permanently, I pray. ... I had a "career" on the platform. I could not learn to like it."13 In some ways, Twain may have thought that touring made it easier for Clara to conduct her affair with her accompanist. Though her father could speak freely to her on many subjects, it is unlikely they ever had a frank discussion about Charles Wark. Yet it does seem that Ashcroft"s campaign to undermine her reputation had the effect of increasing Twain"s sympathy for women accused of adultery. As his biographer recalled, Twain spent much of the period immediately following Clara"s marriage writing a new work t.i.tled "Letters from the Earth," and one of its most interesting sections includes a brutal a.n.a.lysis of male hypocrisy on the question of female adultery.
In s.e.xual matters, Twain says in one of the "Letters," women are "competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. ... But man is only briefly competent. ... After 50 his performance is of poor quality, the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great value to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new."
By the laws of nature, Twain contends, a woman should be allowed not merely the occasional adulterous fling, but "the high privilege of unlimited adultery." The problem, as he sees it, is that society refuses to acknowledge the obvious and sanction this privilege. "Does she live in the free enjoyment of it? No. Nowhere in the whole world. She is robbed of it everywhere. Who does this? Man."
In a welcome moment of comic relief Twain ill.u.s.trates the proper exercise of the woman"s privilege by recalling the case of "a buxom royal princess" in the Sandwich Islands whose funeral was attended by her harem of "36 splendidly built young native men." As he explains, the princess had often boasted "that she kept the whole of them busy, and that several times it had happened that more than one of them had been able to charge overtime."14 Like many of the other ma.n.u.scripts he was h.o.a.rding, Twain knew it would be a long time before any publisher might be willing to print his "Letters from the Earth." The only person he allowed to see the ma.n.u.script was Paine, but he did threaten to read selected parts of it to Elizabeth Wallace. "This book will never be published," he told her; "in fact, it couldn"t be, because it would be a felony. ... Paine enjoys it, but Paine is going to be d.a.m.ned one of these days, I suppose."15 Except for the comments on adultery, and a few similar remarks about masturbation and s.e.xual appet.i.tes in general, "Letters from the Earth" doesn"t contain much that might have provoked a prosecution for obscenity. Most of the time he is on the rampage against his favorite examples of divine injustice, biblical horrors, and religious hypocrisy. But it is worth noting that no one tried to publish the work until 1939, when Harper & Brothers decided it was safe to issue a collection of Twain"s "uncensored writings"-including "Letters from the Earth."
At the last minute, however, the project was killed, and the person responsible wasn"t a nervous executive or moral crusader. It was Clara, who "objected to the publication of certain parts of it on the ground that they presented a distorted view of her father"s ideas and att.i.tudes." There was nothing distorted in the work. It is more likely that she didn"t want anyone raising questions about her father"s controversial views of adultery. It must have been a sensitive subject for her because she continued for another twenty years to block publication. It was only shortly before her death that she changed her mind and allowed the work to appear. The whole collection came out in 1962 under the t.i.tle Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings, by which time her relationship with Charles Wark was long forgotten.16 ...
AT SOME POINT in the autumn Harper"s Bazaar asked Twain to write a short essay on "the turning point of my life." He didn"t like the premise because he didn"t believe that anyone"s life had just one "turning point." As he saw it, there was "a very long chain of turning points" in each person"s history, and no link in this intricate chain meant much without the others. Looking back over the events of his early life, he saw five or six crucial links-or turning points-starting with the day his mother "apprenticed me to a printer." His vagabond life as a young printer led to adventures along the great waterways of the American frontier, which aroused his interest in becoming a steamboat pilot. When "boats stopped running" during the early days of the Civil War, he went farther west and caught "the silver fever" in Nevada. When he didn"t strike it rich, he traded a miner"s shovel for a journalist"s pen and made a name for himself in the West, which inspired him to try his luck as an author back East.
He believed that he had stumbled from one turning point to the other, allowing his temperament to react to circ.u.mstances as they arose rather than making a clear plan and sticking to it. Sometimes he had made a good choice, at other times a bad one. "Circ.u.mstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it. Sometimes my temperament is an a.s.s."
The main trouble, he was convinced, is that "by temperament I was the kind of person that does things. Does them, and reflects afterwards. ... I have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things first and reflecting afterward. ... When I am reflecting, on those occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think."17 Though he couldn"t say it to the readers of Harper"s Bazaar, the circ.u.mstance of finding Isabel Lyon at his elbow ready and willing to wait on him after Livy"s death had started him doing things that he now had lots of time to think about. And, as Paine could have attested, Twain was doing some very loud reflecting that autumn.
"He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of his most notable mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot, he said: "I wish to G.o.d the lightning would strike me; but I"ve wished that fifty thousand times and never got anything out of it yet.""
All this violent reflecting only made his chest pains worse. After he had written the first part of his Harper"s Bazaar essay, he started to read it one night to Jean and Paine, but was forced to stop. Clutching his chest, he said, "I must lie down," and Paine helped him upstairs. When he was in bed, his biographer gave him hot water, and Jean came in to make sure her father was all right. He seemed to be struggling and couldn"t speak.
"We sat there several moments in silence," Paine remembered. "I think we both wondered if this might not be the end."
But the trouble pa.s.sed, and soon he was feeling so much better that he insisted on getting up and playing a game of billiards.
On another occasion, when Jean came to him and said that a woman caller was waiting to see him, he waved her away with the words "Jean, I can"t see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute and it would be most embarra.s.sing."18 After years of being treated like an invalid, Jean now found herself in the strange position of having to look after her father. It wasn"t easy. He was often grumpy, wouldn"t follow his doctor"s orders, and would make a fuss over little things. "Although he is very good and generous," Jean wrote her friend Marguerite Schmitt, "when he has an idea in his head, it"s like melting marble with a piece of ice to make him change his mind!!"
If he opened a letter and didn"t think it was worth answering, he would wad it up and throw it away. But Jean would rescue it from the wastebasket and write a reply for him. She thought that "all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer." Twain forgave her, remarking that "her mother brought her up in that kindly error."19 As the weather grew colder, he went outside less often, but would often stand at one of the windows and admire "the autumn splendors," with their "cozy, soft colors," and "the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance." Though he was content to spend the winter at Stormfield, Dr. Quintard was worried that any bout with the flu or an attack of bronchitis might aggravate his heart. He advised a trip to a warmer climate, and once again Bermuda seemed the best place to go.20 This time, however, Twain wasn"t sure he should attempt it. He thought he could make the voyage, but was worried about leaving Jean in charge of Stormfield with only the servants to keep an eye on her. He may also have felt that Bermuda now held too many painful memories as a place where he had spent a great deal of time in the company of Isabel Lyon, and where he had shared a long holiday with Rogers, whose death still weighed on his mind.
"I"ve got to make a trip, by the doctor"s orders," he wrote Dorothy Quick. He told her that he preferred to stay home, "but I must obey, I suppose." He turned for help to Paine, who arranged the voyage and agreed to accompany him. Twain wasn"t sure when they would return. "Perhaps we shall be back by the middle of December-we can"t tell yet."21 He said goodbye to Jean, who seemed to think she could manage the big house well enough during his absence. On Sat.u.r.day, November 20, he and his biographer sailed to Bermuda, arriving in Hamilton on Monday.
THEY WERE MET at the dock by Marion Allen, the mother of his an-gelfish Helen, and she invited Twain to stay in the guest room at the family"s bungalow, Bay House. He was happy to accept, and didn"t regret pa.s.sing up the chance to stay with Paine in one of the island"s big hotels.
Pleased to have him back in Bermuda, Mr. and Mrs. Allen and their daughter did everything they could to make him feel comfortable in their home. Calling himself a "grateful & contented guest," he observed, "You can"t make a home out of a hotel, & I can"t be completely satisfied outside of a home."22 He joked that he had come to Bermuda to escape the Thanksgiving celebrations, but Marion soon realized that he had come to the island hoping that the climate would once again work its magic on his health. Over the next few weeks he did seem to improve. A change for the better was soon apparent to Paine, who visited him at Bay House nearly every day. Not long after their arrival on the island he noted that Twain "was looking wonderfully well after a night of sound sleep, his face full of color and freshness, his eyes bright and keen."23 Writing to Clara at the end of his first week, Twain said, "Everything-weather included-is in perfection here now. Paine & I drive in a light victoria about 3 hours every day, over the smooth hard roads, with the dainty blues & greens & purples of the sea always in sight." In a letter to Frances Nunnally, he claimed that the ocean breezes and the calm atmosphere had driven "the dyspeptic pain in my breast almost entirely away. Also the furious thoughts about Miss Lyon & Ashcroft, that pair of professional traitors & forgers."24 On November 30 he celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday with a quiet ceremony at Bay House. It was raining, so he sat by the fire and played cards and told stories. While he was spinning some yarn, he forgot a word and complained, "I"ll forget the Lord"s middle name some time, right in the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get." After dinner, the Allens gave him a birthday cake, and he returned the favor by treating them to a reading from Tom Sawyer.25 As another way of repaying the family for their hospitality, Twain ordered from Harper"s a set of his works in the Author"s National Edition, and inscribed all but four volumes for Helen. In her copy of The Prince and the Pauper, he wrote, "Up to 18 we don"t know. Happiness consists in not knowing." When Marion noticed that he had not written anything in a few of the books, he explained that it was "so he would have to come back to finish them." In fact, he often did such things when he visited places he didn"t want to leave. In the days when he used to spend the summers in Elmira, he "would never take away all his things." According to Paine, "He had an old superst.i.tion that to leave some article insured return."26 The Allens definitely wanted him to come back. "He was an ideal guest," Marion recalled, "enjoying everything, and most appreciative of any little thing done for his pleasure." It helped that she was an uncommonly easygoing hostess. She didn"t mind that he liked to smoke in bed, and that he would usually stay there until noon, littering the sheets with pipe tobacco, matches, discarded pieces of writing paper, and some of his favorite books-Thomas Carlyle"s French Revolution, Samuel Pepys"s Diary, and various works by Kipling. In his gown and slippers, he would sometimes wander outside for a stroll on the lawn, oblivious to the way he looked. Marion wondered what the neighbors thought of the spectacle, but never said anything to him about it.
While he was living under her roof, she came to know him well, and he seemed to enjoy confiding in her. She liked his funny stories and appreciated his endless curiosity. In her view he was essentially a simple man with a good nature, and she believed that "all that was mean and small in others came as a surprise to him." One day he told her that he had always "craved affection, but found it very hard to express this feeling."
While Helen was away at school during the day, he and Marion would often have long conversations, and one of their favorite topics was the history of the island. He was especially intrigued by the possibility that Shakespeare"s The Tempest might have been inspired by tales of sailors shipwrecked on Bermuda, which the play calls "the still-vex"d Bermoothes." His friend Kipling-who knew the island well and was convinced of the play"s debt to reports from returning mariners-once remarked that anyone visiting "a certain beach some two miles from Hamilton will find the stage set for Act II. Scene 2 of The Tempest-a bare beach, with the wind singing through the scrub at the land"s edge, a gap in the reefs wide enough for the pa.s.sage of Stephano"s b.u.t.t of sack, and (these eyes have seen it) a cave in the coral within easy reach of the tide, whereto such a b.u.t.t might be conveniently rolled ("My cellar is in a rock by the seaside where my wine is hid"). There is no other cave for some two miles ... and here the currents strand wreckage."27 Twain would quiz Marion on the subject, checking her knowledge of local legends and culture for connections to the play. When she speculated on the various ways that Shakespeare might have picked up information on Bermuda in London, he was quick to correct her casual use of the name, saying that she must have meant to say "the man who wrote the Shakespeare plays." It was her opinion that "Caliban, with his gruntings and groanings, was probably suggested by the wild hogs which were the only sign of animal life on the island." As for Ariel, it made sense to her that a creature "who so lightly flitted about, was probably suggested by the almost always present refreshing breeze." At her suggestion, he found more information on the subject in J. H. Lefroy"s two-volume Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands 1511-1687, and this ma.s.sive tome soon joined the select group of books kept on or near his bed.28 At peace in this home away from home, Twain paid little attention to news from the outside world. In early December he wrote Clara, "Never in my life before, perhaps, have I had such a strong sense of being severed from the world, & the bridges all swept away."29 ...
AT STORMFIELD, Jean was enjoying her independence and her new authority as head of her father"s house in his absence. She was a good manager and reacted calmly and intelligently whenever problems arose. One night, when the new burglar alarm began ringing loudly after everyone had gone to sleep, Claude went downstairs to investigate with Jean"s German shepherd at his side. Hoping the dog would chase away any burglars, Claude tried giving him commands in some of the German phrases he had heard Jean use. But he mixed them up and was frustrated when he mistakenly shouted "Leg dich!" (Lie down!), and the dog obediently stretched himself on the floor. As Twain later explained in his version of the story, which was based on an account his daughter sent him, "Jean came running, in her night clothes, & shouted "Los!" (Go! fly! rush!) & the dog sped away like the wind, tearing the silences to tatters with his bark."30 Though her father wasn"t eager to leave Bermuda, Jean asked him to come home for Christmas, and he agreed. He knew how much the holiday meant to her, and didn"t want to disappoint her. She had big plans, making up a gift list with fifty names on it. She and Katy Leary-who had decided to remain at Stormfield after Clara"s marriage-went on frequent shopping expeditions, coming home from New York with armloads of gifts, including a world globe for her father. The house was decorated with greenery, and in the loggia she and Katy put up a large Christmas tree with bits of silver foil on the branches.
On Monday, December 20, Jean was at the pier to welcome her father home. It was a gloomy, bitterly cold day, and after a month in Bermuda, the nasty weather was a shock to his system. The moment he arrived his angina began troubling him. "When I got down to Bermuda," he told the usual gang of waiting reporters, "that pain in the breast left me; now, on my return, I have got it again."31 The reporters tried to cheer him up, hoping he would deliver some fresh examples of his quotable humor, but they didn"t have much luck. As the New York Tribune lamented the next morning, "He was not in the jovial mood so apparent on his return from the Bermudas last year with his close friend, the late H. H. Rogers. Whenever Mr. Clemens met the reporters he always had something humorous up his sleeve to drop casually when an interview was under way. It was different yesterday. The reporters clutched at straws to bring forth some droll remark."32 The newspaper accounts of his return were so uniformly glum that Jean worried about the effect of such stories on Clara, who would probably see them in the European press. Jean didn"t want her thinking that their father"s health was so bad he might die at any minute. After they got home, she urged him to send an upbeat holiday message to the a.s.sociated Press. To humor her, he dictated a brief message, and she gave it to the wire service over the telephone: "I hear the newspapers say I am dying. The charge is not true. I would not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as good as I can. Merry Christmas to everybody! Mark Twain."33 Anxious to make their holiday celebrations a success, Jean hurried to get everything ready. She wrapped gifts, mailed cards and packages, checked menus, did her usual ch.o.r.es at the farm, and tried to keep her father from sneaking a peek at the Christmas display she was preparing in the loggia. On the night before Christmas Eve she was worn out and suffering from a cold. After dinner she was ready to go straight to bed, but spent an hour downstairs talking with her father, who wanted to discuss his plan for returning to Bermuda.
Would she be able to manage on her own again, he asked, if he went back in February and stayed a month or so? She agreed that he should go back, but suggested that if he waited until March, they could go together. Thrilled that she wanted to come along, he approved the idea and began talking excitedly of finding a house for their stay on the island.
With Jean"s dog trailing behind, they went upstairs for bed and said good night at his door. Because of her cold, she didn"t want to give him a kiss, so he bent and kissed her hand. As he later wrote, "She was moved-I saw it in her eyes-& she impulsively kissed my hand in return. Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both, we parted."34 ...
THE NEXT MORNING Jean was eager to ride to the post office and mail the last of her Christmas cards. As usual she was up early, and at seven she lowered herself into the tub for a quick bath. The water was cold, but that was the way she liked it. One of the maids was nearby, and became suspicious when she didn"t hear anything from the bathroom for a while.
The maid called out to Katy, "Miss Jean is still in the tub. You"d better go in there, Katy."
Alarmed, Katy raced into the bathroom and saw Jean lying motionless in the tub. When she tried to lift her up, Jean"s head fell against her shoulder, and she knew then that the worst had happened.
"Oh, come! Come! Miss Jean is dead," Katy cried.35 With the maid"s help, she lifted Jean and placed her on a large towel spread across the floor. They tried to revive her, but there was no sign of life. Covering her with a sheet, Katy gave orders for the other servants to bring the nearest doctor, who lived a few miles away, and then she ran down the hall to Twain"s room.
"Katy entered," he would soon write in his own anguished account of the tragedy, "stood quaking & gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue: "Miss Jean is dead!""
Twain wrote, "Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart."
He rose from bed and made his way to her room. "In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor & covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, & as if asleep."36 The local doctor thought at first that she had drowned as a result of losing consciousness during a seizure, but then it was decided that the seizure had caused her heart to fail, and drowning was ruled out. In any case she was always at risk of being seriously hurt or killed in the aftermath of a severe attack. Without someone close at hand and ever vigilant, she was never truly safe, and if she had escaped death in her bath one day, she might have died the next while she was working on her farm or riding. As Clara later said of her sister, "She chafed at the chains in her life which could not be entirely removed."37 If Dr. Peterson had not been misled by Isabel Lyon for so long, he might have had better success persuading Jean to accept her limitations and to live accordingly. But after having endured the many months of moving from place to place without a chance to see her own home, she relished her new freedom more than her safety. All her pent-up energy came out like a shot and led her in many directions at once. As a result, she pushed herself in ways that would have been discouraged at a sanitarium or even in her own home under the supervision of qualified attendants. No doubt this overexertion contributed to her death.
But no matter what Twain might have done to protect her or to improve the quality of her life, he couldn"t have made her well. Knowing that, he found some comfort in the thought that she had finally been released from her long ordeal. "Now that dear sweet spirit is at rest," he wrote Twich.e.l.l.38 As soon as he heard the news, Paine came to the house to comfort the grieving father and to stare in disbelief at Jean"s lifeless body after Katy had dressed her. He had seen her at Stormfield the night before, and was now shocked to think that the vibrant young woman who had said goodbye to him on the stairs as he left was no longer alive. While he sat quietly with Twain, Katy telephoned Jervis Langdon in Elmira to discuss funeral plans. Jervis agreed to come to Stormfield and arrange for the body to be taken to Elmira for burial in the family plot.
The report of Jean"s death in the New York Tribune showed her in one of her favorite photographs, riding horseback.
Taking up his pen, Twain began writing about Jean in an effort to fathom what had happened, and "to keep my heart from breaking." He wrote about their last night together, her high spirits as they discussed their plans for the coming year, and the flood of memories that now overwhelmed him, going back to her childhood when she was free of illness and enjoying the magical life that he and Livy had created for their family in Hartford. Closing his eyes, he could see them all in their home again, the children playing happily, and his wife at his side.
"How poor I am," he wrote in his grief, "who was once so rich!"39 If he went to Elmira, he knew it would kill him. He couldn"t face another funeral. "He said he could never see another person belonging to him laid in the grave," Katy recalled. The next day-Christmas-he went downstairs to the living room, where Jean was lying in her coffin, and said goodbye. She was wearing the white silk dress she had worn as Clara"s bridesmaid. Katy added a bright buckle that Twain had brought home from Bermuda. It was to have been one of Jean"s Christmas presents.40 A cable was sent to Germany, giving the sad news to Clara and Ossip. Because it would take too long for them to return home, and because Ossip"s health was still fragile, Twain advised the couple to stay where they were. "Clara must not grieve about Jean," he later wrote Ossip, "but rejoice that she has escaped and is free."41 On Christmas afternoon the skies turned dark and a steady snowfall began, blanketing the countryside. "There was not the least wind or noise," Paine recalled, "the whole world was m.u.f.fled." Lanterns were placed at the door, and at six the hea.r.s.e came up the drive. Standing at an upstairs window, Twain watched as the coffin was carried outside and placed in the black carriage. Downstairs, a Schubert impromptu was playing on the orchestrelle. Twain remained at the window, watching, until the hea.r.s.e started on its journey and faded from view, "spectral in the falling snow."42 These are some of the last photographs taken of Mark Twain. The time is early April 1910, and the place is Bermuda. They are the work of Marion Schuyler Allen, whose daughter, Helen, is sitting beside Twain in the first picture. The black armband was for Jean, who had died four months earlier.
TWENTY-ONE.
Revels Ended.
I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker.
Mark Twain.