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.
