TWAIN’S END (2015)
By Lynn Cullen
Gallery Books, 368 pages
★★★★
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain, is perhaps the most-heralded American writer of all time. He was also an in-demand public speaker known for his humor and grasp of vernacular language. Millions have visited his home of 17 years in Hartford, Connecticut. Those who dig into biography are often astonished to learn that like many so-called “funny men,” Sam Clemens was not as jolly as his public persona. By the early 20th century, it would be appropriate to say that he was an imperious, depressed crank who had begun to disappear into his fictional identity. His life had been marked by one misfortune after another.
That famed Hartford home was closed in 1891, as the family was deeply in debt, courtesy of Sam having squandered the equivalent of $10 million on failed inventions. They left to live in Europe, which in those days was cheaper. Sam further embarked on a world speaking tour to raise money. In late 1900, Clemens retired his debt courtesy of his earnings, a robber baron friend who secured his copyrights, and the management of Ralph Ashcroft. Yet Sam was not a happy man. His favorite child Susie died in 1896 at age 24, and his sickly wife Livy (Olivia) was bedridden by the time they moved to New York. Sam hired Isabel Lyon to be Livy’s personal secretary/nurse, but he commanded more of her time than Livy. When Livy died in 1902, a morose Samuel Clemens began to disappear into Mark Twain.
Novelist Lynn Cullen picks up the narrative in 1909, when he was about to move into a large Tuscan-style villa dubbed “Stormfield”* in Redding, CT. Though named for a Twain character, the remainder of Twain’s life were indeed stormy. Cullen’s Twain’s End puts forth some debatable history; but it’s based upon a diary kept by Lyon. In March of 1909, Twain blessed the marriage of Isabel Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft. One month later, he fired them both and penned a 429-page screed in which he accused Isabel of swindling his money, treachery, and being a “salacious slut.” At least that’s Twain’s story.
Cullen pieces threads to give credence to a different tale. Did Isabel marry Ralph because Twain would not marry her? Cullen lays out the possibility that Twain’s flirtations and Isabel’s ambitious mother led Isabel into a coquettish role that blinded her to thing such as Sam’s increasingly eccentric behavior, his cruelty toward surviving daughters Jane (aka/Jean) and Clara, and the enormous difference in their ages. In 1909, Isabel would have been 46 and Sam an over-ripe 74. The last point raises the question of whether Twain and Lyon had ever been intimate. That’s unlikely when Livy was alive, but Cullen is willing to consider that Isabel may have engaged in dangerous flirting, such as giving Sam massages and dropping hints that she would be open to sexual intimacies that he allegedly rebuffed. After the public blowup, Twain even repossessed Isabel’s cottage On Christmas Eve of 1909, Jean died of an epileptic seizure in her bath. Any ounce of sympathy Sam had left went down the plughole with Jean’s life. Cullen casts Jean in a pragmatic peacekeeper role, as opposed to her younger sister Clara (1874-1962), who was (if possible) more vain, cruel, and irresponsible than her father. She hated Isabel and saw her as a gold digger, though she might have been protecting her own anticipated fortune.
Barring more evidence, there is no way to resolve these clashing narratives. Twain’s End could be close to the truth, or merely a fanciful work of imagination. You can, however, learn a lot about the vanities of fading Gilded Age elites from Cullen’s novel. Did Helen Keller engage in a love triangle with Annie Sullivan’s husband John Macy? There’s more evidence for this than of Twain being intimate with Isabel, but Twain’s parlor room rudeness toward Lyon during Keller’s visit to Stormfield would been in keeping with class deference expectations. Not to mention Sam’s vanity in building a mansion at a time in which he expected to die. He always predicted that since he was born in 1835 when Haley’s Comet was in the sky, he would “go out with Haley’s Comet.” Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, when the comet was visible. Isabel and Ralph never sued the estate, but what does this tell us? Draw your own conclusions. Guess who got Sam’s money.
Rob Weir
* The original Stormfield burned in 1923. It was rebuilt but is a private home not on public view.
Posts
