The general routine of the house was informal and relaxed. n.o.body was expected to show up for breakfast at a fixed time or place. Guests could come and go as they liked as long as they showed a proper regard for the beauty of the place and the genial company of their host.
There was a constant stream of guests that summer. Their names began to fill up the pages of the guestbook, which was usually kept on a table in either the front hall or the living room. Such devoted admirers as Robert Collier and George Harvey showed up with their wives, and there always seemed to be at least one angelfish coming or going, often accompanied by a relative. But there were also visits from old acquaintances who had not seen much of Twain in recent years. One day the great muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell came to pay a call, bringing with her Richard Watson Gilder"s sister, Jeannette, who was also a writer. Tarbell had a house on the outskirts of Redding and wanted to welcome Twain to the neighborhood. She avoided raising the subject of her old investigations into the corrupt business methods of Standard Oil and was content merely to chat with Twain about his charming house. "It was a pleasant company," Lyon wrote after the visit, "and the King approves of those 2 fine old girls. They love the house with its mellow colorings, its "mouthwatering" colorings, as Jeannette Gilder calls it."16 In her autobiography Tarbell recalled that Twain was so eager to show off his house that he once employed the local butcher to make sure that everyone in Redding received an invitation to one of his parties. To a few of his old friends in New York, he wrote little notes trying to entice them to pay a visit. "You wouldn"t have to play billiards until three in the morning," he wrote Henry Rogers"s attractive young daughter-in-law, Mary, "unless you felt a little dissipation like that would do you good." Despite the isolation of the place, he rea.s.sured her, "It isn"t lonesome here, and I don"t intend that it ever shall be. ... The friends come and go, right along-laps and slams-the new visitor getting into the old visitor"s bed before it is cold."17 He invited almost everyone in Henry Rogers"s family to "bring a trunk" and stay for a while. He even asked the formidable Katharine Harrison at the Standard Oil headquarters if she wanted to come for a weekend, and she promised to do so. But Rogers himself was preoccupied for most of the summer with the job of completing his Virginian Railway and wasn"t able to visit Redding. Twain was eager to show his old friend the new house and was disappointed that he couldn"t persuade him to put everything aside and spend a few days enjoying the pleasures of Innocence at Home. To Emilie Rogers he wrote, "I wish you and Mr. Rogers had elected to come here for a few weeks" rest, for this is the very quietest place outside the dungeon of St. Peter and St. Paul; no strangers, no crowds, no fashion." As an added incentive, he promised that if they came he would "learn bridge, and entertain you, and rob you."18 One member of Twain"s Aquarium was a frequent guest because she lived in the neighborhood and was able to walk up at short notice to entertain other angelfish coming from out of state. "What a lovely place he made of it," Louise Paine said of Twain"s house in an interview fifty years later, "and how we used to enjoy visiting him there. ... I could walk there easily, but other "Members of the Aquarium" came with their parents or governesses to stay for weekends or longer, and he taught us all to play Hearts and, with infinite patience, to manage billiards cues. He never made us feel that he was an elderly man whose good manners included being kind to children. On the contrary, he seemed to be having such a genuinely good time himself that age differences were forgotten."19 As a general rule, the house didn"t have any pictures on the walls. Twain said that he wanted the tall windows to serve as frames for the views outside, which were much better than any artist could capture on canvas, he insisted. He said that the house offered "what you might call a feeding view, for every time you look away across the hills and vales you see some new point of interest to feed upon and enjoy."20 The walls of the billiards room, however, were an exception to his ban on pictures. Because the room was the "Official Headquarters of the Aquarium," it was lined with photographs of the young members and a few drawings of real angelfish from Bermuda. The only other place in the house with a picture on the wall was Twain"s own bedroom, where he kept a portrait of Jean.
The Aquarium headquarters contained a list of club rules and regulations. They didn"t amount to much, however, because in his capacity as Admiral, Twain created so many loopholes that almost every clause was open to review or revision at his discretion. A parody of the restrictions that other clubs of the period liked to impose on members, the list creates bogus obligations of a kind that no other club would propose-such as one encouraging the angelfish to engage in conspiracies (but only on the condition that they "give notice to the Admiral & tell him what it is about. Except when the proposed conspiracy is against the Admiral himself; in that case notice must be given to the Official Legal Staff"). The doc.u.ment also includes dire warnings of criminal prosecutions for members who engage in "conduct unbecoming an Angel-Fish," with stiff penalties for such crimes as bribery or the failure to answer letters from the Admiral. It is all written in the same spirit of fun as Twain"s famous "Notice" at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, which threatens that any reader "attempting to find a plot" in the novel will be shot.21 Because he had the means and the imagination, Twain was able to create the illusion at Redding that he was still the father of young daughters living in a sunny house where everything was arranged to perfection, and where a faithful circle of friends watched over him and amused him. When his angelfish Dorothy Quick and her mother came for a long visit that summer, she found that Twain was now completely at ease in the kind of life he wanted most. "Mr. Clemens was never so happy," she recalled, "as when he had a number of congenial people around him, and he ruled his little household with a kindly despotism." Dorothy was especially impressed by the way that the openness of the house created an impression that it was in harmony with nature. Windows and doors were often left wide open, and when the orchestrelle was playing, the sound flowed in all directions, drifting over the terrace or into the loggia as if by magic from a pa.s.sing cloud. Within the limits of the technology of his time, Twain and his guests were able to enjoy a little wonderland of their own that seemed far removed from the rest of the world.22 It amused Dorothy that Twain, in his easygoing mood, would have a bath upstairs and then come down to the loggia to dry his hair in the sun, draping a Turkish towel over his white clothes. Freshly washed, his hair would lie flat against his head and make him look like a different man. But after an hour on the wicker chaise longue, his hair was restored to its usual curly ma.s.s, and he was ready to start the day. Then he would wander off to the terrace or down to the garden pergola or take his guests on a tour of the countryside and return to the loggia for tea. He liked being outdoors so much that sometimes he wouldn"t come in until well after dark. On moonlit nights his white figure on the lawn looked like a ghost"s.
One day that summer he came downstairs and found the view from the loggia so entrancing that he didn"t mind when he suddenly realized there were no guests to share it with. The scenery had become familiar and comforting, like a friend. "It is a luxuriously lazy & delightful day; & the sun, & the shade, & the far-spreading greenery, & the sumptuous dense foliage, & the soft blue distances, & the gossiping birds make me stay out doors. With myself for company."23 It took only a couple of weeks for Twain to decide that the new house was so good that he didn"t need to keep No. 21 after all. Ashcroft was asked to negotiate an early end to the lease on the townhouse. Twain wanted to be rid of it and didn"t care if he never saw it again. In the future, when he needed to go into the city, he planned to stay with friends like Henry Rogers or Martin Littleton.
Though he was never satisfied with No. 21, he had started to overlook its faults in the first part of 1908, and had almost talked himself into keeping it as his permanent residence, with the Redding house serving only as a summer home. But all that changed after the move. Now that he had experienced a taste of the good life in his new place, he didn"t want to live anywhere else. He paid the house the highest compliment when he wrote Helen Allen about it and said, "My child, it"s as tranquil & contenting as Bermuda."24 At last, he was certain that he had found a real home again. "It is a home-unquestionably a home," he wrote Mary Rogers. "I have lived in only one other house which was able to produce in me the deep feeling implied by that word; that was the Hartford home." By comparison, No. 21 seemed to him irredeemably inadequate. "It was crude and rude, and its too p.r.o.nounced and quarrelsome colors broke the repose of my spirit and kept me privately cursing and swearing all the time, even Sundays."25 Isabel Lyon shared his desire to leave behind their old life on Fifth Avenue. As she looked back over her years at the house, the sad experiences seemed to dominate her recollections. She had found happiness working alongside Twain, but also great sorrow in her difficulties with Jean and Clara. In her journal she wrote, "In that house. ... I saw Jean in her convulsions, and I saw Clara in her agony and in her illness, and in her strugglings with her career and 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, and the stairs I climbed were often pitifully weary ones."26 At Redding, Lyon hoped she would find the "peace" that No. 21 lacked. Determined to make sure that everything ran smoothly, she was ready at any hour to attend to the needs not only of her employer but also his guests. To some, she gave the impression that she considered the house to be as much hers as Twain"s. Though the original plan was for her to work at the house during the day and go to her own cottage-the Lobster Pot-at night, she liked the new place so much that she claimed a spare bedroom for herself and usually stayed overnight. She soon brought her elderly mother down from Hartford to live at the cottage.
For a.s.sistance and emotional support, she was beginning to rely more and more on Ralph Ashcroft, who was often in Redding despite the fact that he lived in Brooklyn and didn"t receive a salary from Twain. He had his own work to do in the city, where he dabbled in various minor investments, including companies that made such ordinary items as safety pins and shoe insoles. But Twain had grown so accustomed to having him around that he didn"t question why a man of modest means would want to serve him for no pay. He liked to think of Lyon and Ashcroft as a devoted pair working together for the sole purpose of making his life easier. His hospitality and the pleasure of his company were their reward.
"Miss Lyon is extravagantly fond of the place," Twain wrote Helen Allen, "& so is Ashcroft. Ashcroft comes up every Friday & stays over Sunday."27 To make the Lobster Pot more comfortable for her mother, Lyon hired a local builder-Harry Lounsbury-to renovate parts of it and paid him about $2,000. Twain would later loan her another $1,500 to cover the cost of additional work, and he planned to turn that loan into a gift in a year or so. What she failed to tell him, however, was that she had already used his money to pay for the first renovation. She knew how much he hated deception of any kind, yet with his checkbook under her control, she couldn"t resist the temptation to begin fixing up her cottage at his expense, slipping her bills in with his.
Because $2,000 was a relatively small sum in his annual budget, he wasn"t likely to notice how it had been spent, and she must have considered it a reasonable reward for all the work she had put into the main house. For at least a year she had been in the habit of taking small amounts of cash from the household accounts to buy clothes and other minor items for herself, and the ease of doing this may have emboldened her to pay Lounsbury from Twain"s checkbook.
Part of the problem was that her place in his life had never been clearly defined. If he considered her only a household secretary, then he had every reason to a.s.sume she would not use his money as though it were her own. But he had come to expect a lot more from her, and it isn"t surprising that she began to want more for herself. Having done so much to make his house comfortable, she didn"t want to neglect her own. And because she was expected to entertain his friends, and to accompany him on social occasions, she wanted to look her best. She told Twain about some of these extra expenses, but he didn"t pay much attention to her spending habits and a.s.sumed that now and then she would buy a few things for herself when she shopped for him or Clara. But he expected her to be open and responsible about it. Instead she overspent and tried to hide it. It was a big mistake, and would later cost her dearly.
BEFORE MOVING TO REDDING, Twain had reluctantly agreed to attend a public event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the end of June. Getting there would involve several hours of travel on a railroad he particularly disliked, and the event itself would bring him into close contact with a person he couldn"t stand. But he agreed to go because it was a ceremony to honor his old friend the poet and novelist Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had died the year before. Lilian Woodman Aldrich, his widow, had established a museum in the writer"s boyhood home near the wharves in the old Puddle Dock section of Portsmouth, and had invited hundreds of people to the dedication, including such important literary figures as Twain and William Dean Howells.
Because the house was the original of the one where the fictional Tom Bailey lives in Aldrich"s best-known work, The Story of a Bad Boy, the author"s widow a.s.sumed that it would become a shrine for his admirers. But after almost forty years in print, the novel had lost much of its popularity-unlike the major work it had influenced, Tom Sawyer-and some people wondered whether the museum would attract many visitors. Twain was one of those who thought it would soon go bust. "Aldrich was never widely known," he said in one of his dictations. "His fame as a writer of prose is not considerable; his fame as a writer of verse is also very limited." A museum devoted to Aldrich, Twain said, wouldn"t attract enough visitors even in the heart of a large city, much less in a place as small as Portsmouth. "A memorial museum of George Washington relics could not excite any considerable interest if it were located in that decayed town."
But Twain thought it was his duty to attend the dedication. He had known Aldrich since the early 1870s and had been fond of his company, largely because of their shared sense of humor. "When it came to making fun of a folly, a silliness, a windy pretense, a wild absurdity," he recalled, "Aldrich the brilliant, Aldrich the sarcastic, Aldrich the ironical, Aldrich the merciless, was a master." The wife, however, was the opposite. Self-important and self-righteous, Lilian Aldrich took everything too seriously, including her husband"s modest reputation. Twain never had any use for her. He considered her "a strange and vanity-devoured, detestable woman," and declared privately, "I do not believe I could ever learn to like her except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."28 And now that her invitation to the new museum was going to force him to leave his newfound paradise at Redding and take a slow train to a "decayed" town, he was seething with resentment and determined not to enjoy the trip. "It is possible," he admitted to himself, "that I would never be able to see anything creditable in anything Mrs. Aldrich might do."29 To add to his misery, Isabel Lyon talked him out of wearing his white uniform to the ceremony, saying that it wouldn"t be appropriate at an event honoring the memory of a man who had died so recently. The weather on the way up to Portsmouth was hot, and Twain squirmed uncomfortably in his stiff black clothes while he rode in a sooty old carriage of the Boston and Maine Railroad. He regarded the line as one of the worst in the business, which was saying a lot, and later claimed that he spent the whole journey swallowing cinders.
According to Paine, who accompanied him, Twain "was silent and gloomy most of the way." By the time they arrived in Portsmouth, the heat was sweltering, and no one came to welcome them. Lilian Aldrich had been at the station earlier, but had taken off in her "sumptuous and costly" automobile, as Twain described it, to drive the governors of Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire directly to the ceremony at the town"s Music Hall. Twain and his biographer had to walk.30 As one of the speakers, Twain was obliged to occupy a prominent place on the stage. For two hours, he stared at the audience and sweated in the "suffocating" heat while one dignitary after another rose to praise Aldrich in solemn tones. He was scheduled to speak last. When his time came, he was so fed up with the dreariness of the event that he pocketed his prepared remarks and decided to pay a different kind of tribute to Aldrich, one that would be more appropriate to his old friend"s love of irreverent humor.
Striding to the podium, he pulled out a big white handkerchief. Without saying a word, he slowly ran it across his forehead and put it away. Then he pulled it out a second time to wipe his cheeks. Still silent, he started to put it away again, but brought it back up to his neck and began dabbing at the sweat.
"Poor Tom! Poor Tom!" he exclaimed finally in a sad voice. "I hope-he isn"t-as hot-as I am now."31 It is not known how the widow reacted to this bit of comic relief, but the rest of the crowd welcomed it, and Twain responded by launching a vigorous denunciation of the black clothing he was wearing and of the "lugubrious custom of having tailors to help us mourn for the dead." Besides, he declared, this was no time for sad reflection. Aldrich wouldn"t have wanted it. "He had been a man who loved humor and brightness and wit." Accordingly, Twain spent the rest of his time entertaining his fellow "mourners" in the only way he thought proper, delivering what he later described as "twelve minutes of lawless and unconfined and desecrating nonsense." They loved it. "The audience," Paine recalled, "that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine waves of laughter."32 ...
IN THE END Twain had more fun playing the "bad boy" in Portsmouth than he wanted to admit, and he certainly enjoyed lambasting Mrs. Aldrich afterward in his autobiographical dictations. Moreover, the journey had a side benefit that especially pleased him. Because Jean"s summer home in Gloucester was just fifty miles down the coast from Portsmouth, he and Paine were able to stop there for a visit on the return to Redding.
To his delight, he found that Jean was living comfortably in a "very pretty cottage" and glowing with robust health. She had made good use of the new freedom allowed her in Gloucester and was now more active than she had been in years. She and her friend Marguerite had even taken up sailing. As a result of spending many hours in and around the water, she looked tanned and fit. Paine agreed that this new life by the sea had done wonders for her. "We were charmed & surprised," Twain said later, "to see how well she was, how sound & vigorous in mind and body."
On the spot he decided that Jean was ready to come home. To him, it seemed that her months of seclusion had finally given her enough strength to overpower her disease. And now that he knew what a peaceful and sunny place his new house was, he thought that Redding could do as much for Jean"s health as Gloucester.
He a.s.sumed that Dr. Peterson would object to the idea and argue that Jean would find life at home too stressful. But given how much her condition had improved, he didn"t see how living at his beautiful and s.p.a.cious house could cause a relapse. Of course, he wasn"t aware that Lyon had been telling the doctor for months that Jean"s return under any conditions would be too upsetting for all concerned. It had been easier for him to accept the doctor"s orders when Jean was being treated at the sanitarium, and when he was living on busy Fifth Avenue. But now it didn"t make sense that she should stay away from home.
At last he was ready to act. He quickly thought of a plan that might satisfy Peterson. On his walks around Redding, he told Jean, he had seen a vacant farm for sale, and thought the old house could easily be fixed up to accommodate both her and Marguerite. That way Jean could live under her own roof, yet be close enough to visit him. Over time, he reasoned, she could prove beyond a doubt that the doctor"s worries were unwarranted and take her rightful place at his side. Jean responded enthusiastically to this plan, saying that she had always wanted to live on a small farm.
Seeing her happiness, Twain believed that at last there were good reasons to be hopeful about her future. He said that he would tell Isabel Lyon to get in touch with Dr. Peterson right away. They would ask his approval for Jean to "come home at once," and then buy the farm and fix it up. Even though father and daughter spent only a few hours together in Gloucester, the visit raised their spirits and made them think they would soon be reunited in Redding.33 When Twain arrived back home on July 2, he took Lyon aside and "in an outburst of enthusiasm" shared the good news about Jean"s health. The secretary seemed to share his joy, but as he vaguely sensed at the time, there was-as he later put it-"frost upon her raptures." In fact, she was deeply unsettled by his sudden proposal to move Jean to Redding and began talking him out of it, gently explaining that the house he had in mind wasn"t suitable for Jean and couldn"t be improved without a great deal of work. Besides, she cautioned, they shouldn"t interfere with Dr. Peterson"s successful efforts, but wait for him to decide when Jean was well enough to come home. It didn"t take long for her to kill his enthusiasm, and by the end of the night she had planted so many doubts in his mind that he decided to abandon the plan. He was too exhausted from the long trip, with all its emotional ups and downs, to think clearly, and once again found himself feeling defeated by the complications of his daughter"s illness.34 Before going to bed he wrote a painful letter to Jean, calling off the move and explaining that he had been wrong about the farmhouse. He was no longer sure what the best course of action was, except to continue the one plan that seemed to be working-her doctor"s. "I am disappointed, distressed, & low-spirited," he wrote, "for that dream of yours and mine has come to nothing. ... I wish I could situate you exactly to your liking, dear child, how gladly I would do it. And I wish I could take your malady, & rid you of it for always. I wish your mother were here; she could help us."35 The next morning he took out his frustrations on Lilian Aldrich by beginning the first of a series of autobiographical dictations that slowly and methodically piled ridicule on her character, her museum project, and her dreary dedication ceremony. He knew that his attacks were excessive and admitted as much in the dictations, but he needed some way to vent his anger, and the subject of her vanity was fresh in his mind. It also gave him a chance to demonstrate once again his peerless ability to position his target in one part of a sentence and blast it in the next. "She is one of those people who are profusely affectionate," he said, "and whose demonstrations disorder your stomach."36 After a few days of making Mrs. Aldrich pay for her sins, Twain felt happier. Gradually, he returned to the mellow condition he had enjoyed before going to Portsmouth, and he vowed not to leave his cool haven for the rest of the summer. Visitors continued to come and go, and he was cheered by the growing chorus of praise for his house from both guests and neighbors. By the end of July he was feeling so much better that he rarely had a bad word to say about anything. In Gloucester, Jean was continuing to enjoy her summer by the sea, and seemed happy to stay there for the rest of the season. Her upbeat letters took away some of his disappointment at failing to bring her home and made him think she was better off to stay put for the time being. "Go on with your boating, dear Jean," he wrote, "& have the very best times you can!"37 Though Lyon was successful at preventing Jean from coming home for the summer, she knew that the sh.o.r.e of Eastern Point would lose its appeal as soon as the weather turned cold. By September, she would need to find another place to send Jean or risk having her at Redding. A solution came to her when she heard of a medical professor in Berlin-Hofrath von Reuvers-who was supposedly achieving great results in his work with epilepsy patients. Actually, Dr. Von Reuvers"s treatments were no better than Dr. Peterson"s, but Lyon probably exaggerated their effectiveness in order to create a good excuse for sending Jean abroad. She knew that a long stay in Germany wasn"t something Jean would object to. After all, Jean was fluent in the language, and she had enjoyed living in Berlin with the rest of her family when she was eleven. If Lyon wanted an effective way to keep father and daughter apart for another year, sending her to Germany made sense.
Working quickly in August and early September, Lyon won Dr. Peterson"s approval of the trip and made the necessary arrangements for Jean to sail to Germany with Marguerite and a maid on September 26. Such haste to get her out of Gloucester before the end of the month should have aroused everyone"s suspicions. But Lyon handled the trip in a way that made Jean think she was following the wishes of her father and her doctor, while Twain was led to a.s.sume that Jean and Peterson had come up with the idea.
"Jean goes to Germany ... to be placed under a famous specialist in Berlin," Twain wrote Mary Rogers in August. "And she is glad, for she likes Germany and the language."38 In fact, Jean wanted to spend the winter in Redding, and was apprehensive about taking such a long journey, telling Lyon, "I"m scared." But the secretary convinced her that Germany was the better option. It must have occurred to Jean that by going so far away from home, she would finally be able to enjoy the kind of freedom that she had so often dreamed about in Katonah. Though life in a big city wasn"t what she preferred, she realized that all kinds of new opportunities would be available to her there, including the possibility of romance. "I am wildly excited at the idea of going abroad again," she told Nancy Brush in August.39 Lyon arranged everything so quickly that Jean was on her way to Germany before either Twain or Peterson could give the plan more thought. On the day of departure Lyon wrote in her journal, "Jean, pathetic & wan, sailed at eleven today on the Pretoria." At the very least, Twain might have asked why Jean was well enough to make a transatlantic voyage and to live in a large European capital, but not to come to Redding and sleep in her own bedroom. It wasn"t logical that only nine months after leaving the safe world of the sanitarium she would be sent thousands of miles from home to live independently in Berlin for the sole purpose of receiving occasional treatments from a doctor she had never met. But Twain seemed to think the risks were worth taking. No doubt he hoped that, with the help of the new doctor, Jean could finally achieve some lasting control over her disease. As Lyon shrewdly calculated, the promise of a cure was the best excuse for keeping Jean on the move and far from home.40 ...
ON THE FIRST WEEKEND in August, Twain was jolted by sad news about his nephew-and nearest male relative-Samuel Moffett. At forty-seven, Moffett was a reasonably successful man with a long career in journalism that had included jobs in both the Hearst and Pulitzer organizations. He was the only son of Twain"s sister, Pamela, and was born in St. Louis when his uncle was still plain Sam Clemens, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. Partly because of his uncle"s influence, he had landed the best job of his career at Collier"s Weekly in 1904, becoming a senior member of the editorial staff. He bought a house in the New York City suburb of Mount Vernon, where he lived comfortably with his wife, Mary, and their two young children. Then tragedy struck on Sat.u.r.day morning, August 1, 1908, as he and his family were beginning their vacation on the New Jersey sh.o.r.e at Sea Bright.
Eager to go into the ocean, Moffett quickly changed clothes on his arrival and ran down to the beach. Despite being warned by his hotel manager that the surf was dangerously high, he plunged right in. "I"ll be all right," he told the manager. "I"m a fairly strong swimmer." Not long afterward, he was heard crying for help, and a lifeguard dashed out to rescue him from the waves. But it was too late. As his wife watched, his lifeless body was carried to the beach, where a doctor from the hotel p.r.o.nounced him dead.41 Though Twain was not especially close to his nephew, they were always on good terms, and his death was a great blow. It pained him to know that the death was witnessed by Mary Moffett. "It is the most heartbroken family I have seen in years," he said after attending the funeral in Mount Vernon on Tuesday. Once again dressed in black, he suffered in the heat during the services, and on the train journey there and back. Fortunately, Robert Collier took charge of the funeral arrangements and had "a splendid motor car" waiting to take Twain from the station to the funeral, which made the ordeal a little easier. But it took its toll, and when he returned to Redding, he was exhausted.42 On Thursday night he felt ill and had trouble staying on his feet. He went upstairs to retire early, but while he was getting ready for bed, he staggered into the bathroom and vomited. Isabel Lyon heard his groans and came immediately. She managed to get him into bed, but was so worried about his condition that she couldn"t sleep. For most of the night she watched over him. At dawn he claimed to be feeling better and said, "Well, I did have a clearing out." Then he sat down and began smoking a pipe as though nothing had happened. (Much as he loved his cigars, he also had a large collection of pipes and liked to smoke them in bed.)43 Though he refused to take this episode seriously, Lyon insisted on calling Dr. Quintard. A few days later Twain admitted in a letter to Livy"s sister, Susan Crane, that he had been ill, and that his doctor had told him to avoid leaving home again until the weather was cooler. After describing the pitiful scenes at the funeral, he told her, "I came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am all right again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptory orders that I am not to stir from here before frost."44 This "bilious collapse" made Lyon worry that Twain was headed for something worse. She couldn"t bear the thought of losing her King and resolved to work even harder to keep him healthy and at peace in the house she had prepared for him. She saw this as a sacred undertaking and believed she now had a trusted ally with whom she could share the burden-Ralph Ashcroft, or "Benares" as Twain nicknamed him. (In one of Twain"s favorite plays, Charles Rann Kennedy"s The Servant in the House, the Bishop of Benares creates a convincing disguise for himself as a butler.) On August 8 Lyon wrote in her journal, "Benares and I have a moral obligation now in looking after the King. I shall not leave him for an hour unless Benares or another as good is here to look after him, and together we must uphold him in our spiritual arms."45 Ashcroft managed to win her confidence that summer by siding with her against Paine. In July he had come to her room and told her that Paine was spreading rumors about her. When she asked what kind of rumors, he replied that the biographer claimed she was addicted to drugs and was becoming increasingly unstable. The truth was that she had been trying to hide an increasingly serious drinking problem, not a drug addiction. As Ashcroft was aware, the ample supply of liquor in Twain"s house had always been a temptation for her, but of late she had found it more difficult to resist and was sneaking drinks to her room at night. Lyon was aghast at the idea that anyone would accuse her of taking drugs, but she was flattered when Ashcroft echoed her words of indignation. He soon made it clear that he was on her side in other matters as well, including the question of whether her hard work was properly appreciated by Clara.
The more they talked that summer, the closer Lyon and Ashcroft became. Convinced they were the only ones who could protect Twain, they decided to work together to make sure no one else would exert more influence over him. But they worried about what might happen to them if he died suddenly. Lyon feared that her own meager income-not to mention her comfortable life in Redding-would be taken from her within weeks, if not days, of his death. As for Ashcroft, he had invested a lot of time in helping Twain, and was increasingly anxious to get something solid in return.
They couldn"t count on Clara"s support. She was too caught up in her own life to give any thought to their futures. And dealing with Jean was never under consideration. Ashcroft shared Lyon"s view that Jean was mentally unbalanced, and that she must be kept away from home at all costs.
It was obvious that they needed to make some long-term arrangement to secure their privileged positions. He emphasized that point to Lyon, but was careful to dress it up in high-sounding words that made him sound less calculating.
Aware of her weakness for vague romantic sentiments, he tried to explain his ambitions as n.o.ble and selfless. She was easily charmed by his inflated rhetoric and accepted without question "his sweet philosophy that we must pay for what we have. And to hold so great a treasure as the King means that the price one must pay can never be too high a one. It will be a high one. But to know that you know the King is to send big roots down to support your tree."46 This kind of talk so bedazzled Lyon that she decided to open up and tell Ashcroft more about her own desires and fears. At some point, she shared with him one of her most closely held secrets about Twain"s household. In the days when she and Clara had been on closer terms, she had learned that Clara"s friendship with her accompanist, Charles Wark, had turned intimate. They were not only in love, but were hoping to marry. The purpose of Clara"s summer tour of Europe wasn"t merely to advance her career. It was also a way to give her almost four months with Wark in places far removed from the prying eyes of the American press.
As soon as they left England and began to move around the Continent, the couple lived almost like husband and wife. To pay their way, they relied on Lyon to send money each month from Twain"s checkbook. The secretary rarely sent enough, however, so it became Wark"s job to write flattering notes asking for more.
Ashcroft could have guessed all this. But the big secret Lyon revealed to him was that Wark was a married man. Clara was doing her best to hide that fact. Even her tour manager-R. E. Johnston-was kept in the dark about it, as he later acknowledged. Yet the truth wouldn"t have required too much sleuthing to uncover. On October 10, 1903, Dr. R. Heber Newton-a well-known liberal clergyman in Manhattan-had married Charles E. Wark and Edith Cullis in the chantry of Grace Church, only a few blocks from 21 Fifth Avenue. The New York Times carried the announcement.47 Why the married couple had grown apart in just a few years isn"t clear. They didn"t divorce until 1912, but in the summer of 1908 Clara seemed to believe that the wife would agree to end the marriage in a year or two. Meanwhile, she shared her secret with only a few close friends, looking to them for support and lamenting the need for subterfuge. Even after her disagreements with Lyon in the spring, she continued to confide in her. From Europe, she wrote in June: "Dear old W. is more wonderful all the time but I can"t bear the many many months still that separate us from freedom and frank expression of the truth."48 The affair had begun in earnest during the previous summer, when Clara and Wark spent several weeks together in Boston. The secrecy that surrounded the relationship helps to explain why Clara was often so tense during this period, and also why she worried so much about a scandal in the family, projecting onto her father the fears she must have harbored about herself. If Twain suspected that the relationship between his daughter and her accompanist was romantic, he kept quiet about it. But n.o.body bothered to tell him the young man was married. If he had known that, he would have found himself in a real quandary.
On the one hand, as he had confided to Elinor Glyn, he didn"t consider adultery a sin and believed lovers of any type couldn"t be blamed for following their natural impulses. On the other hand, he knew only too well that his liberal sympathies wouldn"t do him or Clara much good if a scandal erupted and society turned against them. The great irony is that while he had been worrying earlier in the year about Elinor Glyn dragging his name into the controversy over Three Weeks, his own daughter was engaged in an affair that had the potential to cause him much more grief. Clara was taking the chance that her father would wake up one day and read in the papers that his daughter, the well-known contralto, was seeing a married man. The risk of bad publicity was enormous, given the amount of press attention lavished on Twain and his circle. In 1908 it was the kind of thing that could sink careers and family reputations.
In fact, only two days before the singer returned home from Europe, someone did attempt to stir up a scandal. On Monday, September 7, a compromising rumor was planted in an otherwise innocuous newspaper report about Twain"s decision to give up his old residence on Fifth Avenue. The article appeared that morning on page one of the New York World, and by evening it was also on the front page of the Washington Times under the t.i.tle "Mark Twain Quits Gay Old New York." After noting that the only objects remaining in the house were a few chairs, a small table, and some pictures, the article said that Clara and Charles Wark would soon arrive in New York after "some months" in Europe, and that Clara would be giving a party at No. 21: With these scant furnishings, however, Miss Clemens will give a reception in her old home on Sat.u.r.day to her many friends. It is expected that at the reception her engagement to Mr. Wark will be announced. After his daughter"s marriage, a friend of Mr. Clemens said yesterday, the novelist will be virtually alone; and this, it was said, influenced him strongly in deciding to make Redding his home throughout the year.
Of course, Clara couldn"t announce her engagement to a married man, and it is unimaginable that such a proud woman would consider holding a reception of any kind in a vacant house. Whoever planted this bogus information was attempting to throw into question the whole nature of her relationship with Wark. It was an open invitation to others to come forward and to correct the record by pointing out the damaging fact that Clara had spent the summer abroad with another woman"s husband.
Who was this anonymous "friend of Mr. Clemens" willing to pa.s.s along inflammatory rumors to a newspaper? Only a small number of friends knew that Twain was giving up the townhouse, and most of those didn"t know that it was now practically empty. In fact, only Ashcroft and Lyon, the Littletons, and perhaps one or two others were in a position to know both facts. When the article appeared, Lyon was at 21 Fifth Avenue collecting the last of the family"s belongings. The first person to alert her to the story was Ashcroft, who knew exactly where to reach her. "There is a report in the paper today that Santa is engaged," she noted in her journal on September 7. "Benares telephoned to me the paragraph in the World about Santa."49 Lyon seemed genuinely surprised by the story and was quick to refute it when reporters showed up later in the day seeking comment. Indeed, it is unlikely that she was the anonymous source. She was not yet so alienated from Clara that she would have wanted to harm the young woman"s reputation, not to mention Twain"s.
Ashcroft, on the other hand, felt nothing but contempt for Clara. He detested her "prima donna" att.i.tude and thought her summer abroad was an enormous extravagance. When he had been busy earlier in the year helping to safeguard Twain"s money in the Knickerbocker Trust, she had shown little interest in her father"s financial affairs and had continued to spend lavishly on herself and her friends. Ashcroft resented that he was expected to manage Twain"s money wisely, while Clara was rarely subject to any financial discipline. Her spendthrift ways were forgiven by her father, who believed that she was "like all the artist breed, & like myself-foggy in matters pecuniary."50 But now, having won the confidence of Lyon, Ashcroft was in possession of a secret that could ruin Clara. After months of lurking in the background of Twain"s life, he finally had an opportunity to create an advantage for himself, and he seized it by planting the false story in the press. If he could diminish Clara"s power and influence at home, he had a good chance of securing his future as Mark Twain"s trusted friend and business partner. It was an audacious ploy, but he knew from experience how easily the press could be used to spread almost any story a.s.sociated with Twain. The author himself would later become convinced that Ashcroft had planted several false stories about him in the press, including one that Isabel Lyon was going to become the next Mrs. Clemens.
When the article about Clara and Wark appeared in the World, no one suggested that Ashcroft was the source. But Lyon must have realized it soon enough. And, at first, she was reluctant to play along. The weight of the evidence suggests that she was only gradually drawn into Ashcroft"s schemes and didn"t understand the extent of his deviousness until it was too late. She proved as much when she stood at the doorstep of No. 21 and gave such a forceful denial of the engagement story that the reporters went away convinced it was untrue. Thanks largely to her efforts, the story died quickly and Ashcroft"s hopes for more revelations were suddenly dashed. "Miss Clemens," one paper said after interviewing Lyon, "had no thought of marriage. Instead it is possible that she may become a grand opera star. Her voice is a contralto of great power and has gained much praise in her concert tour in Europe."51 Ashcroft may have been hoping that Lyon would be coy in her denials and leave an opening for the scandal to catch on, but neither her words nor her manner gave the necessary hint. No investigation ensued, and no word of protest came from Mrs. Wark or her friends. After publishing a brief summary of the World"s original report, the New York Times didn"t even bother to check its own archives and question how Charles Wark could wed Clara when he was already married to the former Edith Cullis, whom the paper had meticulously described on her wedding day five years earlier as wearing "a gown of white crepe de chine and a long tulle veil" and carrying "a cl.u.s.ter of white anemones."52 In due time Ashcroft would make another effort at spreading rumors about Clara and Wark. He was a cunning man with big plans and was just getting started in his effort to make his friendship with Twain pay rich dividends. But because the initial story failed to catch on, Clara was spared an embarra.s.sing interrogation by the press when she arrived in New York on September 9.
Instead of being ambushed by scandal, she was greeted warmly by admiring reporters. They were intrigued by a message Twain had sent ahead from Redding to be handed to Clara when her ship docked. They watched as she read it with a perplexed look, then waited for her comment.
According to the New York Tribune, "As soon as the gangplank was made fast, Miss Clemens received a letter from [Twain], in which he explained that he was bilious and, as his doctor had advised that he stay in Connecticut until the first frost, he thought it advisable not to go to the steamer to meet her.
"Miss Clemens said that, although her father may have known the meaning of what he wrote, she certainly did not know."53 Such a remark was typical of Clara"s irreverent att.i.tude toward her father"s fame. At that moment, however, she had no idea that she had narrowly escaped from a trap that could have tarnished her name and his.
Dutifully, Lyon and Ashcroft were waiting at the Cunard pier to welcome Clara home and to escort her straight to Redding. Paine also showed up for the occasion, but seemed upset about something. It is possible that he suspected either Lyon or Ashcroft of gossiping to the newspapers. "Paine came in pale," Lyon noted in her journal, "and I begged him not to quarrel there. He had no intention of that though."54 Whatever was troubling him, he was reluctant to make a scene in public or in front of Clara. As he would later admit to Twain, he was beginning to feel that Lyon"s influence in the household was so great he couldn"t argue with her or complain about her. He thought that Twain had come to rely so much on Lyon and Ashcroft that any criticism of them would be ignored. And he was right, as Twain would later acknowledge.
"I would not have allowed any one to say a word in criticism of those worshiped pets of mine," Twain said of Lyon and Ashcroft a year later, sadder but wiser. "To every man & woman in this region they were a pair of transparent rascals, but to me they were worthy of the kingdom of heaven."55 After surviving the burglary at his home, Twain demonstrates what he intends to do if another burglar shows up.
FIFTEEN.
Breaking and Entering.
Anybody can hit a relative, but a Gatling gun won"t get a burglar.
Mark Twain.
ALL THE PUBLICITY surrounding Mark Twain"s new life in Redding created interest of a kind the author and his circle didn"t expect. The press reports caught the attention of an ex-convict in New York who was on the lookout for promising places to burglarize. A young man with a long criminal history, Henry Williams considered himself an accomplished thief. According to his own account, he had spent several years behind bars-most recently, at the Wisconsin State Prison, where he had been punished at hard labor for stealing from a mansion in Milwaukee.
After studying a picture of Twain"s villa in a Sunday supplement, Williams decided that the tall windows on the ground floor would be easy to pry open. He was also attracted by a description of the house as "isolated," and by Twain"s boast to the press that the villa now contained all his "earthly possessions." As Williams later acknowledged, "My interest and curiosity were aroused, not so much by the description of the beautiful home as by that of the portable "earthly possessions." They appealed to me very strongly."2 A smooth talker who had acquired a little learning in the prison library, Williams was well aware that his intended victim was the most famous author in America. He had read at least one of Mark Twain"s books and liked it. But the literary charm of the work served merely to remind him that the author was a successful man who could afford to live in a grand showplace. The burglar couldn"t resist the temptation to make a quick profit from an unsuspecting rich man who was old and living on a remote hillside. Even the fanciful name of the house-Innocence at Home-seemed to confirm Twain"s vulnerability.
For the past year Williams and his partner in crime-Charles Hoffman-had been sneaking out to the New York suburbs at night and burglarizing the new homes of wealthy commuters. They looked for places far from the main roads and waited outside until the residents went to bed. Once they were satisfied that the house wasn"t protected by an alarm or a guard dog, they usually entered by forcing open a window on the ground floor. Because they couldn"t afford an automobile, they carried their loot away in a large leather satchel and returned to the city on the morning train. They stole cash, silverware, and jewelry, but would occasionally come home with an expensive fur or a painting torn from its frame and rolled up. What they liked best was silverware, especially if it had the Tiffany mark. It was easy to fence and brought a good price.
Tougher and more confident than his partner, Williams seemed to enjoy the dangerous thrill of breaking into occupied houses in the dead of night. He wasn"t a big man, but was fearless and sc.r.a.ppy, and in the dark his close-cropped black mustache gave him a menacing look. The police didn"t worry him as much as the homeowners. The local forces tended to be small and poorly trained, and were ill-equipped to chase burglars. The outraged victims posed the greater threat, especially when they happened to have a shotgun close at hand. In fact, so many people had taken shots at him in the dark that he always went armed on a job and was prepared to fire back. Whatever the cost, he was determined to avoid another prison sentence.
Only a week after Clara"s return from Europe, Williams met with his partner and told him of the easy pickings waiting for them in Redding. Hoffman liked the sound of it, and they agreed to do the job the next day. On Thursday, September 17, they boarded a late-afternoon train and arrived just after dark. It was a mild evening, with a clear sky, and the road from the station to the town was quiet. As they approached Diamond Hill, they had no trouble spotting the villa. With its bright acetylene lights in full use at dinnertime, it stood out like a beacon. (Twain once said that when there was a light in every window the house looked "like a factory that"s running over-time to fill rush-orders.")3 Taking cover behind some thick shrubbery, the men watched the house and waited for the residents to turn in. Around midnight, when everything was dark, they emerged from their hiding place and crept toward the villa. Getting inside turned out to be even easier than they thought. Someone had carelessly left a kitchen window unsecured, and it opened with barely a sound.
The burglars headed for the dining room and went straight to the sideboard to steal the family silver. When they found that a locked drawer couldn"t be opened without making too much noise, the men picked up the heavy oak sideboard and carried it outside. At a safe distance from the house, they broke open the lock. Discovering about $500 worth of fancy silverware in the drawer, they emptied it into their satchel. Each piece was engraved in Italian script with Livy"s maiden name. Of all the "portable earthly possessions" in the house, the burglars couldn"t have chosen anything that had more sentimental value to the owner.
Deciding to clean out the rest of the sideboard later, Williams and Hoffman went back inside to search for more loot. They moved boldly from room to room, apparently thinking they could afford to take risks in a house where all the residents seemed deep in slumber. But then Hoffman made a mistake. In the darkness he tripped over a bra.s.s bowl. It made a terrible racket and brought a swift response.
"I was awakened by the crash in the dining room," Isabel Lyon recalled in the morning. "I thought at first it was a swinging shutter, but it was followed by a second noise, as if something had tumbled off a table, and I decided that something was wrong.
"I hurried from my apartment, which is just over the dining room, and ran downstairs. ... The French windows which lead out onto the terrace were open. I crossed the room and looked out onto the lawn. A short distance from the house, almost at the front gate, in fact, I saw the flicker of a small pocket electric light and two figures moving about and rifling the sideboard.
"I screamed for help."4 Her cry woke everyone in the house. Lights were switched on, and the butler came running to the front hall with a raised pistol. Stepping onto the porch, Claude pointed his gun in the general direction of the front gate and fired several shots. Fortunately, there was no return fire. The burglars had heard Lyon call out "h.e.l.lo" from the top of the stairs and had escaped through the open French windows before she could come down to investigate. After pausing near the drive to finish loading their satchel, they had left the grounds as fast as they could, the stolen silverware jangling as they raced to the bottom of the hill.
Though Twain was awakened by Isabel"s cry, he didn"t come downstairs right away. In his drowsy state he imagined that all the noise was coming from a late-night party. As he explained the next day, the gunshots sounded to him like popping corks, and he a.s.sumed that his daughter must be entertaining a few friends. "Father didn"t get downstairs until ages after it was all over," Clara later informed the press. "And then he came sauntering down at 2 o"clock in the morning, mind you, in a bathrobe, smoking a pipe and asking what all the commotion was about."5 His response to the intrusion was more serious than Clara wanted to admit. He couldn"t have ignored the gravity of the situation. The family"s treasured sideboard lay in shambles on the lawn, Livy"s silverware was gone, and everyone in the house was in shock-not least because of the gunfire.
After he learned that no one had been harmed, and that the burglars had fled, he wondered whether there was any way to get the silverware back. Realizing that the burglars would probably try to fence it in New York, he decided to send a personal plea for help to his friend Police Commissioner Bingham. Despite the early hour, he sat down and wrote a description of the stolen items so they could be identified in a search. He couldn"t bear the idea of losing the silverware, he wrote Bingham, explaining that it "has great value for me, because of its a.s.sociations."6 Meanwhile, Isabel Lyon had telephoned the builder Harry Lounsbury-who lived nearby-and had frantically pleaded for help. In her nervous state she overstated the loss, telling him, "Burglars have been here and stolen the furniture."7 A short time later Lounsbury showed up with the local deputy sheriff, a "big red-faced man" named George Banks. Lantern in hand, Banks searched the grounds, spotted a distinctive shoe print in the flower bed under the kitchen window, and was able to follow the burglars" tracks down the drive and along the country lane leading north to Danbury. Lounsbury went with him, as did another man whose name would later surface in a couple of newspaper stories about the chase. He was Charles Wark, the only guest at the house that night. Perhaps because the press had made no further comment on their "engagement," Clara had a.s.sumed it was safe to invite her accompanist to stay overnight in one of the spare rooms. It was bad timing.8 The three men followed the tracks for a mile or two and then split up. Convinced that the suspects would try to make their getaway by train, Deputy Banks instructed Lounsbury and Wark to watch the station at Bethel-a little town on the outskirts of Danbury-while he guarded the platform at Redding. In fact, the burglars were already hiding in the woods next to the Bethel station, nervously awaiting the morning train. When it arrived at six, they rushed to the window to buy tickets.
With their large satchel and scruffy appearance, they immediately attracted attention, and were followed onto the train by Lounsbury and Wark. "There weren"t many people on it," Williams was to recall of the train ride, "and we were a little conspicuous, I guess. You know how all those trains are-everybody knows everybody else, or pretty close to it. But we were strangers."9 During the seven-mile journey to Redding, Lounsbury bravely approached Williams and asked, "Haven"t I met you somewhere?" The burglar answered no and made it clear that he had nothing else to say, but after getting a close look at him, Lounsbury knew he had his man. As the train pulled into Redding station, he and Wark got off and alerted Deputy Banks on the platform, describing the suspects and pointing to the car where they were sitting.10 What happened next was a fierce gun battle that must have left the mild-mannered suburban commuters wondering whether their train had been invaded by bandits from out West. Backed up by a couple of railway workers carrying clubs, Banks entered the car and made his way down the aisle toward the burglars. When Hoffman saw the men approaching, he ran to the rear of the car. Banks drew his revolver and came after him, but the burglar jumped from the moving train and ran toward a small bridge.
Taking aim, the deputy fired once and hit Hoffman in the leg. He watched as the man stumbled and collapsed under the bridge. Thinking he had finished off the first suspect, he turned and walked back to confront the second, whose escape from the car was blocked by the railway workers.
With a pair of handcuffs in one hand and his smoking revolver in the other, he loomed over Williams and said, "I want you." Then, noticing the satchel, he added, "And I"ve got you with the goods, too."11 Williams later insisted that an angry posse of a dozen men had gathered in the car to help Banks, and that he had felt compelled to shoot his way out. "I was commanded to surrender," he recalled. "Instead of obeying the command, I pulled out my own revolver and began to blaze away at the ceiling of the car to cause a panic if possible. I did not want to kill any one." But this was a story invented afterward to avoid a charge of attempted murder. There was no posse, and neither Banks nor the frightened pa.s.sengers who ran for cover thought Williams was simply firing harmlessly into the air. In fact, his first two shots were aimed at Banks, and the second tore into the deputy"s right thigh. Williams continued to "blaze away" as he backed toward the rear door, and the wounded Banks did his best to return fire. Bullets seemed to be whizzing everywhere as the shots ricocheted in the car.12 At this point, according to the New York Evening World, "The scared pa.s.sengers were huddled like sheep in the combination smoker and baggage car forward. Somebody jerked the emergency cord and the train came to a sudden stop."
Thrown to the floor, Williams looked up to see the two railway workers coming toward him with their clubs. He raised his revolver, but when he realized the cylinder was empty, he dropped the gun and lashed out with his fists. The men stood over him and beat him with all their might. "With blood streaming from his battered head," the Evening World wrote of Williams, "he fought like a wildcat. ... At last, after he had been battered till his face was almost unrecognizable, he shouted, "Let up, for G.o.d"s sake. I"m all in." "13 The workers relented and the deputy limped forward to handcuff his a.s.sailant. Meanwhile, back at the bridge near the station, Hoffman had been captured by half a dozen local farmers, but only after firing several shots at them. He didn"t hit anyone and meekly surrendered when his bullets ran out. Though he was bleeding, he wasn"t seriously injured. The deputy"s first shot had inflicted only a flesh wound.
By half past seven, a doctor was busy treating the injuries of the burglars and the deputy, and by nine o"clock Justice John Nickerson-who was also Redding"s town clerk-was ready to preside over the arraignment of both suspects at the Town Hall. Bandaged and pale, the intrepid Banks escorted his dazed prisoners to the hearing and stood watch over them, despite having-as he said in his old-fashioned way-"a boot-full of blood, begob."14 ...
NEWS OF THE BURGLARY spread fast, and a small crowd gathered outside the Town Hall to exchange gossip and to take a hard look at the thieves. Dan Beard was allowed inside before the hearing started, and he stared in amazement at the spectacle of two desperate gunmen being held by authorities in a community where crime of any kind was rare. With the eye of an accomplished ill.u.s.trator, he studied the scene as though it belonged in a novel.
"At the south end of the room there was, on this occasion, a small table, at which the two prisoners, with the gyves upon their wrists, sat waiting their fate. One of them had his head swathed in bandages, and the back of his coat [was] stiff with his own gore. The other, with an insolent smile, was smoking a cigarette. Some kind neighbor had supplied them with sandwiches and coffee. ... The officials were in the clothes they wore at their farm work, and the doors were crowded with rustics."
As if on cue, the owner of Innocence at Home entered this scene wearing his white suit and approached the thieves. Standing over them, he glared at their surprised faces. Then he made a remark so perfect that he must have been rehearsing it on the way: "So you"re the two young men who called at my house last night and forgot to put your names in my guest-book?"15 In the New York papers, Twain was front-page news after two armed burglars invaded his mansion in Redding one night in September 1908.
Taken aback, they stared at him in silence. They had misjudged the old man. He was not a pushover nor was he as innocent as they had a.s.sumed. Then, as Williams recalled, Twain "turned upon me and delivered a scathing verbal castigation and lecture on morality, ending by denouncing me as a "disgrace to the human race." "16 Dan Beard was not the only one in the room who saw this unfolding drama as a series of memorable vignettes. A reporter for the Danbury paper wrote, "The contrast between the white-haired ... gentleman against whom the men were accused of committing a grave crime, and the coa.r.s.ely dressed and b.l.o.o.d.y burglar who sat nearest him would have made an ideal study for an artist."17 After administering his tongue-lashing, the author felt better, and his sense of humor returned. "Don"t you see where you"re drifting to?" he asked. "They"ll send you from here down to Bridgeport jail, and the next thing you know, you"ll be in the United States Senate. There"s no other future left open to you."18 This little touch of wit was not lost on Williams, who hoped that Twain"s anger would give way to pity. But if he expected a show of mercy, he soon realized that he wouldn"t get it. At first, Twain "manifested much interest in the court proceedings," but he quickly became bored with all the legal maneuvering and "asked the justice if he might be excused from the courtroom." Permission was granted, and he left well before both suspects were officially charged with "breaking and entering" and the theft of "goods and chattels of the value of Five hundred dollars." In addition, Williams was charged with the more serious offenses of felonious a.s.sault and carrying a concealed weapon. If convicted, he faced the possibility of spending the next thirty years in the state prison at Wethersfield. His bond was set at $2,000, twice that of Hoffman"s.19 That afternoon, while the burglars were being transported to the county jail in Bridgeport, Twain entertained reporters at his house and made every effort to minimize the seriousness of the crime. He pa.s.sed around a handwritten statement he was intending to post at the front door for any future intruders. He wrote at the top, "Notice. To the Next Burglar." Below that was a comical sketch of a masked bandit and these words: There is nothing but plated ware in this house, now and henceforth. You will find it in that bra.s.s thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you want the basket, put the kittens in the bra.s.s thing. Do not make a noise-it disturbs the family. You will find rubbers in the front h