Some measure of relief from Twain’s increasing bitterness was granted Isabel when he waxed nostalgic about his youthful romances with two Missouri women, Laura Wright and Laura Hawkins. The reminiscing had been brought on when he picked up a newspaper and read the date, May 26, 1906, whereupon he announced that this was the anniversary of when “48 years ago I said goodbye to my little sweet-heart”—proving, Isabel hoped, that he was a sentimentalist at heart. Romance, however, did not appear to be on Twain’s agenda when it came to the woman he was living with. Isabel’s awareness of this lack of interest on his part took a heavy physical and mental toll. In September she wrote and then crossed out, “My soul is not moored to anything. I can’t keep it up where it ought to be—& so I cry & cry.”
While Isabel’s spirits were fading and Jean’s health was eroding, Twain appeared to be flourishing. Amused by the scarlet stockings that Isabel had purchased for him and Witter Bynner to wear while dressed as Siamese twins at a party, Twain told her that he wanted to wear them all the time as an accent with his white suits. He proclaimed that he loved “gaudy things—In fact he’d ‘like to dress like a nigger.’” Continuing in the same vein while speaking of the supposed proliferation of the Jewish people, Twain, waving his hands expansively, pronounced: “The jews are increasing so, & increasing so, that soon there’ll be enough of an audience for another crucifixion.” Whether Isabel found this last statement amusing is left unrecorded in her journal. Less than two weeks before his return to the city, Twain decided that he would defy “Conventionalities” and wear “his Suitable white clothes all winter, so he has bidden me order 5 new suits from his tailor; the suits to be ready against the time we arrive in N.Y.” One can only imagine his tailor’s panic at the sudden order.
Adding to her growing portfolio of duties, Isabel had become Twain’s personal valet and was responsible for maintaining his eccentric haberdashery. On one occasion she pointed out that he had forgotten to button his pants. “Darlingly he cocked his head at me & said ‘I don’t, always; but since you are so particular I’ll do it this time,’” a bit of overtly sexualized repartee. In response to Twain’s inquiry as to why he could not have a cloak like Richard Gilder’s, Isabel assured him that he could and ordered one. In return, he expected her to constantly hold his new black velvet cape at the ready in the event that he might need it spread “on a mossy bank or a stone—or to throw around him.” Twain also thought that a white velvet cape would look striking with his white suits and asked Isabel why he could not have one of those. She again responded in the affirmative, and he ordered two. By the fall of 1906, Twain owned seventeen white suits and would insist upon taking six of them with him when he went to visit Henry Rogers (the total number of white suits would increase to twenty-four by June 1909). According to Isabel, he “often went off on R[oger]’s boat & he couldn’t stand a spot on his clothes.” As his personal life became increasingly messy, Twain became obsessed with eliminating the dirt and grime on his clothes.
Mark Twain with his white velvet cape in Tuxedo Park, New York, 1907
Such was his confidence in Isabel that he entrusted to her care the physical asset of which he was most proud—his hair. He anointed her his personal stylist:
I’ve just been cutting the King’s hair; he sitting up in his sunshiney room, & teaching me how to use the flat shears that clip the back of his neck. And it was a successful cutting too. He has just come down to say that I’d beaten the barber at his own trade. How much of happiness that means.
Always particular about his hair, Twain relied upon Katherine, one of the house servants, whom he had nicknamed the Librarian, to rub his head dry after his bath. Whenever Katherine was unavailable to perform her styling responsibility, Isabel took her place “& rubbed his damp hair into a glory of a white & beautiful fluff.”
6
One glimmer of hope for Isabel amid all this fluffing and fussing came with the possibility of acquiring a home of her own. In March 1906, Albert Bigelow Paine had casually mentioned to Isabel that he knew of a parcel of land for sale, seventy-five acres total, with an old farmhouse on it, near where he had recently purchased a place in Redding, Connecticut. Isabel told Twain about the conversation, and he impulsively gave Paine $100 as a down payment on the property (Twain eventually purchased approximately 248 acres). Isabel expressed a surprising measure of resentment about Twain’s willingness to purchase:
[Crossed out: I didn’t think he would want it—because I couldn’t think he would want anything that I want—with an aching heart I reached out for that farm for I dont ever want to go back to Farmington again. I want & want & want to sell Choisy [her mother’s home] & so be able to settle where there is more room—you can see for 20 miles—Life is such a tiny bubble—that why we reach out for material things I don’t know; but we do it—& that old beamed farm-house on top of the hill held out its arms to me.]
Isabel sensed a potential ally in the twice-married Albert Bigelow Paine and initially trusted him. Over the course of the summer, the two took frequent walks during which they talked endlessly about Twain and shared intimate details of their lives. Paine presented himself as a sensitive man, deeply moved by poetry and prose, and the emotional Isabel was an appreciative audience. In September, she described how Paine had been brought to tears during one of their country tête-à-têtes:
But in the afternoon AB [Paine] came out & found me near the quivering white birch trees—& after a good talk he read aloud to me from Madame Butterfly—the darlingest saddest movingest little story in the world. Dear ABs voice shook & broke & stopped & he wept. How sweet it is to see a man weep—
At this stage in their relationship, Paine and Isabel probably believed that there was enough of Twain to satisfy both of them, and the two forged an unspoken alliance. Another possibility gleaned from reading Isabel’s journal entries is that, if necessity demanded, she figured she would be able to outmaneuver Paine. If so, she greatly underestimated her convivial hiking partner. At the end of a June 1906 daily reminder entry exclaiming upon how wonderful she found Paine’s life story, Isabel years later added a caustic editorial note: “Old Fraud.”
Later in August, the two walked to the upper pasture in Dublin, speaking again of the King’s virtues: “That is our ritual” and together they began measuring off rooms for the new house Twain wanted built in Redding. Isabel ecstatically recorded, “if I am good—very good—I am to have a Strip of land in Redding to build me there a little house—AB. will let me use the strip from his own property. Oh I must be good—monotonously good.” Paine’s generous offer bought him Isabel’s confidence for a time.
In August, Isabel traveled from Dublin to New York City, where she met Clara, and together they dined with William Dean Howells’s son, John Mead Howells, an architect. The three discussed plans for the new Redding house and the next day they took the train to Connecticut. After an eight-mile carriage ride, Twain’s land lay before them. Isabel thought the location beautiful, albeit remote, with an excellent building site for Twain’s new residence. She placed her confidence in John Howells, whom she described as “the most polished of young creatures,” remarking that it was “a pity he is so small. & with a face like a Greek mask.” In the distance she could see the chimney of an old shingled farmhouse. At that moment Isabel believed she had glimpsed her future, a vision of a safe haven that would belong only to her. The planning for Twain’s new house would proceed throughout the winter and spring of the coming year.
The cost of the new dwelling quickly became an issue, as did the family’s overall spending. According to Twain, after 1906 the amount of royalties he would be paid would be substantially reduced. An annual payment of $25,000 from Harper’s would end, and the coming year would see a 60 percent decrease in the previous year’s royalties. This meant that Clara and Jean would have to make do with a mere $25,000 for living expenses during the coming year—an economy neither one would tolerate well. This sum must have represented an unbelievable luxury t
o Isabel, whose annual salary totaled $523, $77 more than the average American’s annual income in 1900.
Twain set a budget of $25,000 for construction (the final cost was $60,000). Financing would come from his $30,000 agreement with the North American Review to publish chapters from his autobiography in serial format in twenty-five issues from September 7, 1906, to December 1907. Once the decision to move forward with his new home had been made, Twain wanted nothing to do with its actual planning and construction. This was a repeat of his behavior when Olivia had taken charge of completing their Hartford home a few years after their marriage. When friends came to visit and inquired about his new Redding home, Twain refused to discuss it. Isabel marveled: “He won’t allow himself to be informed or Consulted; he will pay the bills & that’s all he will do—but when the house is finished then he will go to it. It astounds his questioning friends to hear him answer ‘I don’t know.’ To Every question they ask about the house or property. He doesn’t want to see it—or hear anything about it.” Once Clara approved the plans, Twain turned the details of the construction over to Isabel. With building proceeding apace, Isabel had reason to believe that while her efforts to secure Twain as her husband might come to naught, she would be successful in obtaining a home of her own with a healthy income—but only if she continued her “monotonously good” behavior. She was still counting on the future royalties that she would earn from the publication of Twain’s letters. There were other people, however, who had also become interested in Twain’s future earnings.
7
Isabel returned with Jean and Twain to 21 Fifth Avenue in the chilly October of 1906, with the demon of Calamity by her side. Try as she might, she had been unable to entirely dismiss Miss Hyde’s dreadful prophecy, and it seemed as though much that had happened in the Twain family during the summer only confirmed her prediction of doom. Isabel’s best hope for her future income lay in keeping Clara appeased, an unenviable task for anyone. In the fall of 1906, the restless Clara had decided to restart her singing career. Her voice was deemed strong enough for the rigors of touring and she embarked upon a series of concerts. Her “début” as a concert singer took place on September 22 in Norfolk, Connecticut, in the Norfolk Gymnasium, and served to underscore the difficult dynamics of her relationship with her father. Twain wanted to attend, but Clara rebuffed him, fearing that he would steal her spotlight. She finally agreed that he could be present, although he was not allowed to lead her out and had to agree to sit quietly in the third row.
Twain, aware only of his need for attention and not his daughter’s desires, sprang to his feet at the concert’s conclusion, gained the stage and proceeded to make a twenty-minute speech. The next day The New York Times’s article proclaimed, “Miss Clemens in Concert. Mark Twain Makes a Speech at His Daughter’s Debut.” The Times reported that Clara “is the possessor of a rich contralto voice” and was “enthusiastically received” by her large delegation of New York friends. Clara’s success was somewhat mitigated when a newspaper article appearing two days later in the New York Sun covered Twain’s performance and mentioned Clara’s singing only in closing. Clara’s manager, knowing what the public wanted, encouraged Clara to be photographed with her father for publicity shots. She refused. After playing several dates in October and November, she canceled the remaining performances and fled the city for a two-month rest in the country.
One of Clara’s singing dates happened to coincide with one of the most difficult moments of Jean’s life—her departure to Hillbourne Farms, an expensive, well-appointed sanitarium for patients with what was politely called at the time “nervous disorders.” The facility was located approximately an hour north of New York City by rail, in the hamlet of Katonah within the township of Bedford in Westchester County, New York. After her awful country summer, marked by the worsening of her disease and the sting of unrequited love, Jean had returned to New York City in an ill humor because Gerry Brush had not come to see her off at the train station in Dublin. Desperate for a cure, upon Peterson’s recommendation Jean had begun to consider the possibility of treatment at Hillbourne Farms. Jean was well aware of her family’s complicated emotional dynamics and knew that Dr. Peterson, with his strong opinions about placing her in an epileptic sanitarium, must have appeared as a godsend to her sister and father. To Jean’s utter astonishment, Katy informed her that when Clara had heard of her “Katonah plan,” she became upset in “the same way as [at] Mother’s death” and had taken to her bed for three days. Jean had assumed that Clara was indifferent to her fate because of her preoccupation with her singing career. Shortly after returning to the city from New Hampshire, Jean and Isabel had paid a visit to Hillbourne Farms.
While the trip north was brief, a distressed and anxious Jean had still managed to count seven cemeteries along the way. Hillbourne Farms was located half a mile east of the Katonah train station and village, at the top of a hill, occupying forty acres, with beautiful wooded groves and fields dotted with dairy cows. A published pamphlet used for advertising purposes described Hillbourne as “a private Health Resort where Exercise and Occupation are employed as a therapeutic agent in treatment of functional nervous disorders.” Hillbourne promised that “no expense has been spared,” and the first building Jean and Isabel glimpsed was proof positive of that statement. The Club House, located at the bottom of the hill just inside the stone entrance gate, boasted a sitting room with a fireplace, a piano and pianola, a solarium, bowling alleys, a squash court, a billiard room, a well-outfitted carpenter shop (of particular interest to Jean, as she intended to continue her carving), an arts-and-crafts shop, a greenhouse, and seven living rooms.
As the two women continued on their way up the hill, standing on a knoll was the grand main building, a three-story wooden structure with twenty-four rooms, including “a large solarium, reception rooms, dining rooms, medical office, clinical laboratory, hydrotherapeutic and electro-therapeutic equipment.” Two separate living residences were located on the property, the Iris and Wisteria Bungalow and the Orchard Lodge, for patients who desired more private accommodations; and Jean would occupy one of these bungalows during her stay.
All this luxury and privacy came at a premium. The minimum cost for a week’s stay was $50.00, the equivalent of what Isabel earned in a month. Jean’s average expenses at Hillbourne would be much higher than the published rates: from March 1907 to January 22, 1908, her Hillbourne bills would average $274.00 per month, with her personal spending an average of $51.00 per month over the same period. All together Twain would be supporting his ill daughter to the tune of $325.00 per month. By comparison, the mean daily pay for a male worker in the building trades in 1906 (such as the bricklayers, carpenters, laborers, lathers, painters, paperhangers, plasterers, and plumbers who were building Twain’s Redding house) was $2.06, for a mean monthly pay of $41.20.
The wood shop at Hillbourne Farms, Katonah, New York
Dr. Edward A. Sharp, originally from New York City, had founded the Hillbourne Farms in 1905, purchasing the property in 1904 and expanding it in 1905. After their tour, Jean decided that the place was acceptable and remarked on the beautiful trees growing on the grounds. The two women returned to the city that evening. The next day Isabel helped Jean pack her things, with her departure planned for October 24, but Jean was delayed by a day due to a seizure cluster. On October 25, 1906, when Jean was twenty-six years old, she left home:
It was desperately hard to leave Father and Clara in order to come out to a totally strange place. I tried my hardest not to cry before them, but as the time of departure began to approach I found it growing more and more difficult to restrain myself, especially when Clara began to cry, too, then it was really hopeless. Poor little Father seemed to feel badly, too, and the whole business was perfectly horrible to me. I wanted to cry hard whenever I spoke to anyone and yet at the same time I wanted to refrain from showing my feelings too plainly.
Isabel accompanied a weeping, despondent Jean to the train stat
ion, and with Jean’s personal maid, Anna Sterritt, in tow, secured their luggage and saw them off safely on the 11:40 a.m. train. The sadness of the scene deeply affected Isabel, who called it “heart stretching to have her so & to see her go.” Father and sister did not accompany Jean and Isabel to the station, choosing instead to remain at home. Despite her hysterics before Jean’s departure and her tears that afternoon, Clara quickly recovered and performed that evening for an audience in Irvington, New York. Her little sister would be a resident at Hillbourne Farms for fifteen months.
Encouraged by Clara’s visit two days after her arrival, Jean entered the sanitarium with the best of intentions, determined to be a good patient. For the first time in years, she finally had hope: “I began this morning by obeying carefully every one of Dr. Hunt’s instructions, namely to stay out of my room half an hour before going to work and of taking a bath & cold shower. The latter he wants me to take every day instead of every-other-day as I have been doing. I walked half an hour in the bright, cold air & I am sure it is good.” Yet the routine quickly became stultifying: “Today nothing of importance has occurred—Life wanders on its way pretty regularly up here.” A highly intelligent, formal, and assertive woman, Jean chafed at the leaden pace and close supervision she was forced to endure. Coming from an indulgent life, she found the adjustment to the strict regime nearly impossible. Every morsel of food and exchange with other patients was scrutinized and required approval by her doctors. Doctors considered diet to have a direct connection with epilepsy, and they debated the dangers of Jean’s eating fish in the evening and encouraged her to eat milk toast and cereal instead of eggs. Lard was feared and salt entirely banned.
Mark Twain's Other Woman Page 14