Connecting The Dots: Isabel Lyon's Invisible Trail

 Isabel Lyon

“The telephone was dead.” Those were the ominous words of Clara Clemens in her nostalgic book about her father, Mark Twain. But these words were about an emergency concerning her mother, a little explored incident in 1904 during Olivia Clemens' dying days while supposedly convalescing in Italy. And these words naively introduced a mystery, that during Olivia Clemens' death throes, the family discovered that their telephone lines had been cut. It could have been the inspiration for any number of television murder mysteries. But it was real. And as poor Olivia suffered another of her deadly heart attacks, the family struggled through the Italian village where they were staying to get word to a doctor to come immediately.

And still the doctor never came.

Later they discovered that someone had inexplainably locked the entry gate to their compound on the outskirts of Florence. The doctor who finally answered their desperate pleas could not enter their villa to give assistance and after waiting some time he eventually gave up and left. Olivia barely survived, and the incident led to her decline and death a few months later. And the Clemens soon returned to America to bury her and gladly forget the string of dysfunctions and tragedy they left behind.

But it seemed to me, as I read Clara's account, that someone wanted Olivia to exit the stage, sooner than later, and did everything they could to assist her demise. What followed after their return to America was enough suspicious activity to launch a Hitchcock movie.

 Clara Clemens in Austria with her piano teacher, Leschetitzky. 

They found her hands were too small- she switched to Voice.

Sweet, devoted Clara mentioned this terrifying series of deadly coincidences as an aside in her book, which was intended to add some color to their tragic misadventure, but strangely, trustingly, she never really tried to connect the dots of these and other Twain family mysteries. At least not publicly. Caught up in the glow of Mark Twain's worldwide aura, Clara had spent a lifetime alternately testing and adoring her father, and was content now to launch his legacy higher onto the Olympus of mankind's greatest achievers. And that would require more than a little willful ignorance. Making sense of the “Twain mysteries” as I call them, would have been counter-productive to her grander purpose, and in fact no writers of Twainiana have ever been so inclined. Nobody has ever wanted to connect those ominous dots.

So that is why you are here now, as I propose to do just that. I have no claim to know what happened... but I do know what was summarily ignored for over one hundred years. And some useful facts have emerged since then which make the Twain narrative twist and contort into a much darker saga, punctuated with mismanagement, bankruptcy, premature deaths of two of his children, sabotage of Olivia's health, a staff who surgically embezzled him, and an unethical biographer who embalmed Twain's image as he squeezed every drop of blood from it.

And then there was the great-granddaughter who was adopted out and almost never knew she was a descended from “the Lincoln of American Literature.” The true Clemens family legacy falls way below the majestic literary Olympus which was constructed for posterity.

These and other sad facts are the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey might have said, and may be the very best example of how public images of prominent figures have always been manufactured. And this is no great cultural revelation. But MARK TWAIN? Really?

Yes, and we have Albert Bigelow Paine to thank for our delusions.

This will be no short essay. I have read dozens of books and studied this subject from the viewpoints of several first hand witnesses. And I do not believe in coincidences. At least not strands of them that light up like a Christmas tree, with no apparent source. Everybody loves or at least knows of Mark Twain. Or they think they do. But actually nobody does. Maybe his family, and his biographer, but then the rest of us were limited in understanding due to insufficient data.

Also to be considered, when the general public has decided that it will worship, it willfully, blindly ignores all distractions, including reality. Modern politics proves that point. Mark Twain was a prophet of modern Agnostic philosophy. His religion and vision of America became a moral substitute among the learned, and he became the magnetic demi-god of the New Age; The Everyman's conscience of Western culture. He was and still is largely untouchable.

So here I dare...

 Sam without his hair. Below is a cartoon illustrating

 that he was known to cut it off when abroad.

His actual name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and in many ways he paralleled another huge historical figure who has also stood the test of time. Like Jesus, of whom he was patently dubious, he is most-often remembered by a name he was not born with. He was most famous for non-conformity and being disrespectful of the status-quo and the authorities who imposed it. His words upset as many people as he ingratiated, and yet he made a worldwide impact with them. His real life story has several versions, and has been obscured by well-meaning handlers, and he has been elevated and argued over ever since.

But Mark Twain was no Jesus, perhaps his antithesis. Yes, he was a sort of “anti-Christ.” He struggled with his Faith and sported many misgivings about God all of his life, and wrote rather freely about them. His amazing, wonderful wife protected him, by protecting the public from his most heretical tirades. “Mark Twain” may have been his most prolific and creative when launching his irreverent attacks, chapter and verse, challenging religious convention, literally speaking for the Devil in the first person, becoming... the Devil's advocate. Of course, not believing in God, he did not believe in the devil either. Religion and hyperbole were inseparable.

Letters from Earth, a collection of his most daring blasphemies, was categorically censored by everyone who consulted him, and probably exacerbated dear Olivia's heart troubles. Scandal and controversy within the family over this and other later writings led to more than a domestic dispute. So upset had Livy become, with his very appearance, that towards the end of her battle for life, Sam was forbidden by her doctor to even enter her bedroom, and had to communicate through a medium. And that was usually daughter Clara; the middle child, the trusted messenger between her parents, and a resourceful liar when necessary. Clara protected Olivia and probably extended her life by some months. And Clara became our contact with the real Clemens behind the “Paine” curtain.

Livy had been warned of Sam's apostasy long before the children came, and had suspended her qualms about them. In fact when he courted her, her parents had not approved, and had turned down his proposals. Even Olivia was not receptive at first, and yet Clemens would not give up and wore them all down. The third time had been the charm, as Sam Clemens more deftly camouflaged his unconventional theories, and learned to talk about “God” in a more general sense. He was a master of hyperbole. Like many women in love, no doubt Livy assumed he would change with time. And Sam had no idea that he had met his match.

Olivia Langdon was the daughter of devout Quakers who had been active in the famous “Underground Railroad” before the Civil War. She was courageous and knew what it was like to put her faith on the line, even break the law for a higher Law... to obey God rather than the traditions of men; to risk her own freedom as she helped others to gain theirs. Sam and all of his friends and associates lifted Olivia up as a near saint, a bastion of integrity, and Samuel Clemens' most valuable friend and asset.

In contrast to Livy's strength of character, Sam had enlisted in the Confederate militia in Missouri and then abandoned his company after the first skirmishes with Grant's troops. (Later he found serendipity in this when he spoke before then President Grant) He fled the war with his older brother who had been appointed as secretary of the Nevada Territory... by Abraham Lincoln. When North fought South, Sam went West. Clearly Sam was conflicted by the war to his inner core... as any thinking person would have been, and found refuge by exotic travels. This would become a habit of a lifetime.

Accompanying his stalwart brother Orion, he was to serve as the secretary to the secretary. But soon he was camping in the mountains and panning for gold, between writing scandalous editorials for local newspapers. That was when he discovered his alter-ego and gave it a name; Mark Twain. Sam would coin the words, Mark would suffer the consequences.

By the time Livy met him, he had been all over America, even to Hawaii, Europe and the Holy Land. He had braved the seas and the Rocky Mountain wilderness, mined for gold, written to entertain a national audience, learned how to charm people and miraculously to make a living with his gift of sarcasm and wit. And he was sure beautiful Olivia could not resist him. Unfortunately for her inner peace, he was right. And noble, long suffering Olivia took on a lifetime project which ended (for her) in frustration and confusion in a foreign land.

And perhaps her end was assisted by an unseen hand. The pure light of Olivia Clemens- darkened by the cryptic mysteries within the family have become an irresistible fascination for me.

 Olivia Clemens, from a detail in a tintype of

 her with daughter Clara and her boyfriend.

Sam had played along with Olivia's unorthodox Christianity... and they coexisted amiably with their irreconcilable opinions, and each was allowed his own self-styled Faith. But as they raised their three daughters, the differences eked out. Clara wrote of how she and her sisters, even as children, spent long conversations reasoning with their father, who argued freely with them... as an equal. You might say his was a childlike disbelief. Everyone, his wife, his best friend, his daughters, all eventually docked in his harbor of deep and inconsolable doubts. Clemens shouldered psychological wounds from the loss of his younger brother in a tragic steamboat accident. THAT was when he knew “God” made mistakes. He had seen great poverty and injustice in the world, and had no confidence in mankind and even less in any god. He often castigated the “damned human race,” as he claimed that he could do a better job running the Universe. “Free Will” made absolutely no sense, if “God” was all powerful. Sam created monuments in his mind to his colossal questions, and loved dancing around them with his family and friends. In their darkest moments, neither really knew what they believed.

But as smart as he thought he was, Clemens continuously made stupid, costly judgments. Terminally hapless at business, most of his attempts at investment, and there were many, had ended in failure and left him near bankruptcy. He had been forced to drag his family all over the world, partly on a laborious lecture circuit, partly running from mounting debts back home, but mostly running from accountability as always from publishers, and his adoring public. For a dozen years Livy held their little band together in various refuges in Europe, while Sam went back and forth, playing cat and mouse with his American financial quagmire. Meanwhile the transplanted family was inevitably, strongly influenced by the more liberal European style of Christianity.

At the same time, Sam Clemens wove a roguish network of American artists and writers, intellectuals and inventors, who followed the more bohemian philosophies of Walt Whitman and company. Concepts of religion in this free society were individualized and vastly subjective and self-suiting. Sam's irreverence found fertile ground and his doubts evolved into revolutionary spiritual assertions. And everything became toxic with his family and his public once he put these ideas down in a manuscript. The spiritual lines were drawn.

As the Clemens daughters grew up, they found compromise between their parents in a new denomination, Christian Scientism... and similar attempts to repackage religious faith. Mark Twain became more and more outspoken in his unbelief, and even wrote scathing attacks on Christian Science, after oldest daughter Susy embraced it. Thou shalt have no other gods before me...

But for the girls these unresolved questions only made Sam Clemens a more adorable project for the entire family. And their efforts were not in vain. He always seemed to find the most plausibility for hope in mankind and Eternal things when around them. But when his oldest daughter Susy perished prematurely in 1896, from spinal meningitis, at just twenty-four years old, neither marrying nor bearing children, Sam abandoned any pretense of faith with a vengeance.

 Albert Bigelow Paine traced Clemens' relentless

 cynicism back to the death of his beloved Susy.

The family was in transit at the time, returning in groups after a world tour. They had left Susy behind in the States, and learned while returning that she was ill. Olivia and Clara were aboard ship and were too late, but on their way. Sam had to console himself back in England, and did a poor job of it... writing profusely of his regrets and failures as a father.

“My remorse does not deceive me. I know that if she were back I should soon be neglectful of her as I was before- it is our way.”

I feel sure that he was trying to comfort himself by the use of “our,” when the girls would have said for him to speak for himself. The self-absorption was HIS way. What had started with the cynicism of a world traveler, became militant anger towards mankind and the god who made it, and himself of course. And as his family fell apart, Sam Clemens' soul was exposed, with no stable personalities to guide his drifting raft.

After realizing what a soul-grinder he was putting his grieving wife through, Sam had a temporary change of heart, as he often would do. Never quite positive about his most outrageous postulates, Sam would often, if only momentarily, reverse himself. He often spoke and wrote of “Providence” and eternal damnation, and quoted the Bible. As much as he tried, he could never successfully expunge his own personal Judeo-Christian paradigm.

While in Florence, one of his love notes during the medical restraining order illustrates his vacillations: “I do love you so my darling, and it grieves me so to remember that I am the cause of your being where you are. I WISH- I WISH- but it is too late. I drove you to sorrow and to heart-break just to hear myself talk. If I ever do it again when you get well I hope the punishment will fall upon me the guilty, not upon you the innocent.”

One of Clemens' pet peeves was how God allowed bad things to happen to good people. To Clemens, the only kind of God worth believing in was one who gave you favor in this life. Especially if you were anyone who actually tried to live a good life. There should have been rewards for persons like Livy, for good behavior. As he lived on, he became convinced that Earth was all the hell this universe needed. Of course that is what every unbeliever is counting on.

But tormented with doubt and grief, he capitulated and wrote Livy that he had been wrong, that he would never question God or the concept of heaven again, that he was grateful to know Susy's final destination, which they would all someday share. Well, most of them. But then shortly he would revert to that destination being mere dust, a mere wishful fantasy. A human contrivance. Still the comfort of it was irresistible. Sam could never resist any heart-warming pleasure. He loved to hate and punish and he loved more to forgive and indulge.

In the end, Clemens' unresolved anger, depression, and written blasphemies pushed Olivia away into a heartbreaking relational crisis. For her loving soul there was the horrifying realization that Sam was probably never going to share her eternal Heaven. Meanwhile they had raised their precious, but fragile daughters in this sieve of religious confusion. Conversely she must have been reminded of the mental security of the Faith of her childhood, and the lifetime of refuge it had provided. What slippery slope had she leaped down into? What had she done? It was too much. Her heart began to fail. And her bedroom became her only refuge from him and his relentless, godless rebellion. The doctor had forbidden him to even talk through the door. This was no way to sustain a marriage, or a life. I contend that she died of a broken heart.

And among them already there may have been an “agent provocateur” who was planting seeds of mayhem, and even gently manipulating events towards a tragic end. Grief-stricken herself, Clara would not have imagined the complex struggle going on in the household, but years later, if she had any powers of analysis, with hindsight she would have seen it clearly. But her own book never connected the dots. Why she never did is another mystery. 

 Isabel Lyon, Sam Clemens, and his daughter Jean.

The Clemens had hired a new member for the Twain entourage around 1902, over a year before they left for Italy. Clever and attractive, Isabel Lyon had been a neighborhood friend who Sam had found to be an excellent game-partner at parties. The picture above appears to have been taken early in their friendship and probably before her employment, perhaps around 1900. When they realized that extra assistance would be necessary to fulfill Olivia's routine roles in the function of their family, which included serving as her and Sam's personal secretary, Isabel was ready and available and a welcome addition. She came highly recommended by friends. But later on Lyon was unveiled to be cunningly manipulative, instinctively Machiavellian, ruthlessly ambitious, and worshipful if not in love with Mark Twain.

Knowing that in Sam Clemens' last days, Lyon would be sued as a conspirator in a stunning embezzlement scheme, and that the Clemenses grew to believe she was an evil influence on the Twain enterprise, all while she built herself a lavish lifestyle at Clemens' expense, makes one think again about those mysterious severed telephone lines. That inopportune locked gate; Life-saving first aid blocked for Mark Twain's dying wife.

After Olivia's death, Isabel's largely unseen hand relocated Clemens, created and furnished a new mansion called Stormfield to her tastes, as well as a wonderful smaller cottage for herself. Calling him “the King” she surrounded him with parasites, took over his public image and most importantly, created a joint bank account. And quietly, carefully she conspired with a doctor to send Jean, Sam's youngest, away to an institution because of her epilepsy, “for his protection.”

During Isabel Lyons' term of service, Mark Twain's life became that of a glamorous yet dependent puppet, where all of Clemens' self-indulgent tendencies became his undoing. Looking back on this unfortunate time from our perspective, it is hard not to condemn all of the people involved. In fact they all did, at least blame one another, with Samuel Clemens himself taking the blame and shame of it all in his old age.

Always given to fast company, Clemens had taken on an unsavory professional clique and a superficial social circle to fill his life. What followed should have been a national scandal, except that Clemens had employed the most able of publicists, his biographer and ultimate trustee, Albert Bigelow Paine. Paine was cunningly able to seal the lid on all things Twain, and protect that legacy to this very day. That is another story of deception and intrigue.

Albert Bigelow Paine entered Sam Clemens' life as if called by Providence. A talented man himself, Paine was ambitious where Clemens was phlegmatic, cautious where the great author was reckless, in effect the common sense and business mind that the legendary bard had always lacked. Paine had just successfully written and marketed the biography of Thomas Nast, the most famous and influential political cartoonist in the world. When Mark Twain sent his compliments, he moved in for the kill. Charming and ambitious, he swiftly proposed and sealed a deal to write Twain's biography. Partnering with Samuel Clemens was just the beginning of a long series of beneficial encounters, and served to attract similar publishing contracts with the creme of Clemens' associates, the leaders of various high profile professions; the most famous actress, the most famous Texas Ranger, even his own award-winning version of Joan of Arc, all while tailoring, pressing and riding Twain's coattails.

Albert Bigelow Paine is really the central figure in this story, and was probably the collector if not photographer of many of the images on this website. Although he wrote volumes about others, and children's books and novels and poetry, little was written about him. In fact there were good reasons for this. A bigamist and forger, his personal life would have inspired an American comedy scandal, but instead he has become a forgotten phantom. Few Twain writers have ever really been curious about him, and those who were chose to shrug him off as the black sheep of an elite American cabal. But it was Paine who gave us the Mark Twain we think we know. The Clemenses trusted him completely, never aware of his character issues, and left him in custody of the Twain legacy. Paine was the proverbial “fox in the hen house.”

And Albert Paine often found himself in league with Isabel Lyons. But he played the field, giving special attention to Clara and later to Jean Clemens, who came to depend on him greatly. Eventually Lyon and Paine accused one another of all kinds of mischief, their final assessment being of mutual contempt and distrust. They were both right. But Paine played his hand more effectively, and ended up not only the trustee of Mark Twain's literary legacy, but he was given the highest tribute by Clara Clemens in her book.

Clara dedicated her insightful book titled My Father Mark Twain to him, and she wrote “affectionately” that he “ ...understood my father and faithfully demonstrated his love for him...” Paine's complete hijacking of Twain thus became the sanctioned spin on Samuel Clemens for way over one hundred years. It took that long for scholars to detect what may have been the most successful and misleading handling of a major literary force in American history.

Paine and Twain lived next door to one another, traveled together. Entertained together... Encouraged by Isabel Lyon, Mark Twain was going everywhere, winter and summer, in his trademark whites, establishing the iconic Twain image we all recognize. He often took along charming young girls, adolescents, to ride in his buggy and add sweetness and innocence to his personal and public space. His daughters had been his angels in the flesh, and after they were grown he adopted new ones, called “Angelfish,” to keep his breaking, lost soul refreshed. Sam depended on the tangible innocence in these girls to represent true goodness and purity, things he almost refused to believe in. Strangely, little girls became his objects of worship, his gods. Just like his idol, Joan of Arc, in Clemens' “Angelfish” he found persons whom he could admire and trust, give the benefit of the doubt, and place his faith in. 

 Twain proudly escorted his "Angelfish" like

 they were his grandchildren. He never lived to

 enjoy any of his own.

Finally Clara began to realize that Isabel was evolving from Goldilocks into the Big Bad Wolf. Over time she began to be suspicious of poor Jean's three year banishment, her father's supposed detachment, and Isabel's obvious control over the whole Clemens household. Twice she initiated an investigation, and twice her father stopped it and protected his trusted secretary. Meanwhile Lyon had attached herself to Ralph Ashcroft, a much younger man who had recently taken the job as Clemens' financial manger, but who had all the charm of a boa constrictor. They were soon to be engaged, and in short order Ashcroft had designed a three-way partnership between Clemens and Isabel and himself. Amazingly, each shared an equal percentage of the ownership, making Ashcroft and Lyon an overwhelming majority. Clemens not only signed on to this egregious incorporation, but also gave them complete power of attorney to all of his assets. Strangely, this man of disbelief placed his complete faith and trust in these two scoundrels.

But Albert Paine was watching the new partnership with sharp concern, and eventually Clara also began to wonder, more forcefully, where all of her father's money was going... And after a surprise audit it became clear that Ashcroft and Lyons had routed an excessive amount of money into his business interests and her own house and clothes and lifestyle. In lieu of more accountable financial compensations, such as royalties or commissions, they arranged a steady flow of cash “gifts,” while sometimes refusing funds to Sam and the family.

Quickly the two were fired and sued, and eventually publicly chastised for their malfeasance. Clever as ever, they soon got married, so as to prevent either from having to testify against the other.

Isabel Lyon had convinced everyone interested that Jean's exile was absolutely necessary, due to her dangerous epileptic fits, more for the peace and happiness of Sam Clemens than for Jean. Letters to and from Jean had been intercepted, removing her from the dialogue, while “Angelfish” were recruited and used to fill his emotional void. Clemens was being handled like a fragile emperor, and with Lyon's management, nothing and no one would threaten his utopia. After a good deal of discussion and consternation, the Clemenses finally decided that Jean should be brought home. But her doctor was adamant to adhere to Lyon's program. Finally Sam managed to wrestle her away and bring her home “temporarily.” Jean quickly adjusted, working a garden, riding her horse, thankful to have her life back and having a great time. She was finally home and she never went back.

 Jean only enjoyed a few months of home with her 

family, after years of separation due to her epilepsy.

But Lyon became furious. Her plan, her authority, her control was suddenly in jeopardy. Even today, knowing what we know, we do not know what it was that caused Isabel to persecute Jean so. But it was obvious from her reaction that the two could not share Sam Clemens, could not be in the same organization. What had transpired between them? What did Jean know that made Isabel so uncomfortable? Surely Jean's seizures would not have frightened her so much. Whatever it was, it was not long before Isabel was packing her belongings, filling suspicious trunks full of undocumented contents, as she spent a mysterious time rummaging upstairs in the Clemens attic. At the same time treasured Clemens heirlooms disappeared, including a string of carnelian beads, confirming that she was indeed a thief. And since she had her own cottage, why the upheaval? It appears that she had been living in the Clemens home, and was moving out because Jean was moving in...

Watchful Clara got a key to one of Isabel's trunks and was insisting that it be checked, and once again Sam protected Lyon from embarrassment. The pattern of outrage and then indulgence on Clemens' part must have been as infuriating as Lyon's brazen predation. Perhaps Clemens had given her things... family things, that he did not want Clara to see. It was a mess, and it is possible that Clara wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing then, understanding that her father's bark was much more cutting than his bite, and detecting a basic lack of conviction of his drastic accusations. By now he had characterized the duo as a “criminal couple,” calling Lyon a “liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded and salacious slut...” It was hard to tell whether his name-calling was the reaction to a personal betrayal or the rantings of an old man angry with himself. It was probably both.

Ashcroft soon married Lyon, for reasons of convenience and legal protection, and they planned to immediately leave for England on a honeymoon. They were warned not to leave the country, but they could not be stopped and sailed across the pond for refuge, where they found none. When they arrived in London, they had to face Jean's publicized telephone conversation, where she said flatly that Isabel Lyon had stolen money from her father and diverted it into her own house. This international humiliation had to sting, especially coming from someone considered crazy by the indignant newlyweds. It had to be a hollow vacation, with so much awaiting back home. So there was nothing to do but return and face the consequences. The newspapers followed every new development.

Then it got ugly, as only wealthy and powerful and artistic persons can get. Sam sent his lawyer Charles Lark and Jean, now a functioning adult and trusted family member, to confront Isabel Lyon. One can only imagine the fire in Jean's eye, as she was assigned to negotiate Lyon's eviction. Clemens had decided that he would renege on his gift of the cottage, and the attached acreage. He refused their request that he soften his accusations of theft and deception. The Ashcrofts did not savor becoming the goats of Mark Twain's pasture. There would be no place to hide, no way to save their reputations.

Lark tried to handle the conversation, and Jean was intended to serve only as a witness. Clemens was offering a generous cash deal, $4000 to get rid of her forever. Lyon fought to stay and keep her home. Lark threatened that her obstinateness would only further anger Mr. Clemens and result in criminal prosecution for her and her husband. She pleaded innocence, but finally she apologized and committed to repay anything she owed and even agreed to sign the deed of her cottage over.

When they returned with the paperwork, Lyon fell apart and became an emotional wreck. She begged Lark for sufficient time to relocate... at least two months, and he agreed. When Lark stepped outside and told Jean, she objected and they reduced the time to just six weeks. This may have been Jean's spitefulness taking over after all the misery Lyon had caused her, but any satisfaction it gave her was short lived. Literally.

Jean had publicly accused and humiliated the Ashcrofts, from America to England, and then personally made the terms of Lyon's eviction as hard as possible. If Isabel Lyon ever had a roaring nemesis, it was Jean Clemens.

Later it was the more stable Clara who went with Lark to Lyon's home, to consummate a six-week lease contract, to start the countdown for Lyon's imminent expulsion. Lyon's mother handled the meeting, claiming Isabel was ill. Armed with insufficient facts, she valiantly defended her daughter, until Clara was forced to burst out that Isabel was guilty, and there would be no grace given. Insults were exchanged, threats flew, but little satisfaction was ever extracted from Isabel Lyon for the years of sabotage she had waged on Sam Clemens and his family and estate. The beads were mysteriously returned.

What followed was a public scandal which played out in the newspapers, where Ralph Ashcroft wrote scathing public announcements smearing Clemens as incompetent and his daughters as frivolous and neglectful. Ashcroft especially attacked Clara Clemens as a free-spending, irresponsible, musical farce. When he discovered that Twain would not respond to a public format, he wrote and defended himself and his wife with abandon.

All of this unpleasantness, the emotional meltdowns, the breakdowns in trust and friendship, the public humiliations, the disintegration of the Twain reputation, the exposure of Sam Clemens as a fool and a narcissist, must have been a terrible assault on Jean, who had gratefully returned to the Clemens home with the highest of hopes, after years of isolation. She distracted herself with decorating the house, putting up a Christmas tree, buying gifts for the family. She must have missed her mother very much.

Then, on Christmas Eve, 1909, the family's longtime servant Katy Leary found Jean dead in her bath tub. The family supposed that she had died from a seizure, perhaps drowning, perhaps a heart attack. Jean was only twenty-nine. It could have been a routine head injury in the tub, a sip of eggnog, or a mountain of stress which triggered another seizure. And it might have been something much more evil. But she would never challenge or frustrate or embarrass Lyon again. And Lyon's greatest threat and possible adversary had been silenced. 

 

I cannot help but “string the beads”... the cut telephone wires, the closed gate, the banishment of Jean, the embezzlement, the theft of Clemens family treasures... and wonder if the death of Jean Clemens was not an act of rage or revenge by someone who had almost pulled off the commandeering of the Mark Twain household, and the considerable wealth that went with it.

Strangely, everyone accepted this sudden death as a blessing, since Sam had worried about who might look after Jean after his passing. Everything in the Clemens family orbited around Sam as the sun, so that it seemed fitting if their deaths should happen according to his time-table. No one ever connected the dots.

Within a short time, the legal battles with the Ashcrofts were over, and they were already separated, soon to be divorced. Clara was in Germany with the love of her life, finally married to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the famous Russian pianist. They would move around the globe and eventually have a daughter who could not cope with the swirling Clemens creativity and rootlessness, and she died almost destitute in California, quite young, probably of a drug overdose. And not before having a child out of wedlock and giving her up for adoption. An innocent little angelfish, perhaps saved from tragedy and godless searching. She would be mature and distant from it all when she would discover that she had been born into American royalty, albeit decadent. Grandmother Clara might have done her a great favor, finding her a safe refuge from the dark legacies of Stormfield.
 

Samuel Clemens was left alone with his thoughts. If there were dots to connect, Clara would have been the only one to do it. And she was thousands of miles away. Albert Bigelow Paine handled what little was left, to pal around with the Lincoln of American Literature. To play pool all night, smoke expensive cigars, and entertain the Who's Who of the world as they worshiped an American legend too important to even get out of bed. Paine did understand Samuel Clemens better than anyone, and perhaps he really did love him. And maybe Clara had been right, saluting the real “mysterious stranger” in their midst. Someone who was satisfied to serve and protect the beloved old storyteller, to tidy up his behemoth, garbled archive, and secure his legacy for generations. Someone who dared not attract attention to himself, who would subvert his own story as much as he would broadcast others.

 This likeness is sort of symbolic... an usual view of 

a "no frills" Sam Clemens... shorn if you will and kind

of naked to the world.

Strangely, Albert Paine was who and what Sam Clemens needed and deserved. After all the mystery and intrigue, and story telling and story stifling, and generations of enjoyment for millions... they served each other well. 

 For doubters- a comparison graphic showing known images 

of the individuals purported to be in this bizarre tintype.