Part 10 (1/2)

”It cuts me to the heart, now,” he confesses in the& beseeching appeal to et my ear, that I, who should have been her best friend, forsook her in her trouble to listen to this designing hypocrite who in the place which should have been occupied by my forsaken child”

Twain's account of the Ashcroft-Lyon debacle is not a ”literary curiosity,” as one critic has called it, but a powerful, often gut-wrenching effort by a great writer to speak directly to readers about his s With its preface addressed ”To the Unborn Reader,” the manuscript is Twain's last effort to explain hies is not that of a petty or mean-spirited man, but of one ears his passions on his sleeve, and who cares too much about the truth to let it be obscured by half-truths and lies29 It is not the work of a broken-doriter or a bitter one Froency, as if the author can't wait to share his story And it isn't lacking in huust with the Ashcrofts, he is often his old playful self, e descriptions with the kind of exuberance Isabel ood cohtful co about her that invites to inti touch-& she was always finding excuses to apply it-arch girly-girly pats on the back of my hand & playful little spats on my cheek with her fan-& these affectionate attentions alwaysjumps down my bosom

A COUPLE OF YEARS after Twain's death, his sister-in-law, Susan Crane, addressed the Ashcroft-Lyon controversy by observing of Isabel, ”How she hastened the goodthat the controversy took its toll on Twain's health In June, during a brief visit to Baltielfish Frances Nunnally, he felt a sharp pain in his chest while he was resting at his hotel His biographer, as acco him on the trip, asked if he needed help

”It's a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain,” the author said

”Where is it, exactly, Mr Clemens?”

He pointed to the center of his breast ”It is here, and it is very peculiar indeed”

Thinking that hehim a hot water bottle, and that seemed to help But when the trouble returned a little while later, the biographer suspected it was angina and urged him to see a doctor when they returned to New York It was the first sign of what Dr Quintard would later diagnose as ”tobacco heart” For Twain, the worst part of it would”only 4 times a day instead of 40”31 But it can't be entirely coincidental that his heart trouble surfaced at the height of his feud with the Ashcrofts Indeed, it grew progressively worse over the su ”barrels of boiling water to keep the pain quiet,” as he explained in an effort to joke about one of his ho, as his biographer observed repeatedly ”I have seen it cru at his breast; but he never complained, he never bewailed, and at billiards he would persist in going on and playing in his turn, even while he was boith the anguish of the attack”

He would also insist on taking long walks, and wouldn't turn back if the angina flared up Occasionally, when he was feeling better, he liked to pretend that nothing rong with hiestion” As Paine recalled, ”There would coht when he was apparently perfectly well, and at such tiht of any heart elfish, Twain suppressed any concern about his chest pains during his trip to Maryland and took part in the graduation ceremony at St Timothy's School for Girls, on the outskirts of Balti discorounds and found hiirls,” as the local paper called the author declared, ”and would go a long way to be in their co co Pana to the other speakers offer uplifting words of wisdom and advice The last person to speak before hihter was one of the graduates

”I don't knohat to tell you girls to do,” said Then his turn caht to do, and now I irls, don't s 73 of them But I never sar at a time

”Second, don't drink-that is, to excess

”Third, don't hed and were full of co the cere her for inviting hie & sex I would go there and take a term or two”34 nobody at the school seee In fact, heone of the Balti now as I was forty years ago Why, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't live another hundred years”35 Thanks to Thomas Edison's filenerations to see how easily Tas able to give conte and healthy Shortly after his return fro to shoot a few scenes of the author at hohts to make a short er-Horace Plie of the author He wanted the public to know that Twain had approved the fil circular for the production boasted, ”Mr Cleave his full authority for the production of his celebrated story in motion pictures, and we believe it is the first time a writer of international fae of silent film Twain couldn't entertain vieith humorous anecdotes and droll remarks, so he put on his usual white unifore is the only surviving exa in all directions, he parades in front of his house and blows cigar sorous strides, he doesn't look at all like a ina

The ca tea outdoors with Clara and Jean At one point the butler Claude (whom Clara had recently persuaded to return to Storain) appears in the scene and hands Clara a hat, which she puts on just before getting up to lead the others inside The footage ends with a ghostly fra white like her father Her thin suathered at the waist, and the sleeves are pushed up, as if she has coht from her work at the farm

In the fall, when Tas offered the chance to view the fil that he had always been curious to see what he was ”really like to others” Afterward, ain a ” What his voice sounded like, weon a wax cylinder, the original was apparently destroyed and no duplicates have yet to surface37

DR QUINTARD WARNED TWAIN repeatedly that he needed to take better care of hi fro as he was able to keep the pain in his chest fro too much, Twain didn't want to talk about his health problems or make much of an effort to follow his doctor's orders, especially with regard to s ”It is the pains that persuade you to behave yourself,” he said ”Nothing else could do it”

One problem, he joked, was that Quintard couldn't tell him whether his disease was ”the kind that carries aand suffering for twenty years or so” He wanted to figure out whether it orth planning ahead or not ”I was in hopes that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any ive me any schedule”

And then one day that su himself with books on astronomy, and his own amateur efforts to calculate the distances between stars-he announced to Paine that if he couldn't -tero that promised a reasonably quick, and suitably spectacular, exit ”I caain next year, and I expect to go out with it It will be the greatest disappointo out with Halley's cohty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they ca forward to that”38 All his life Twain had been fascinated by the fact that at his birth the skies had blazed with the light of a fa Earth every seventy-five years, the comet takes it name from the British astronomer Edmond Halley, who first spotted it in 1682 In 1835, it reached perihelion-its closest approach to the sun-on Noveht was still visible from Earth when Tas born on the 30th

”Thetopic of interest,” said the New York Tribune in a June 1909 article on astronomy, ”has been the expected return of Halley's comet” But, as the paper went on to report, astronomers orried So far their telescopes had not picked up any sign of the co in size,” the article speculated, ”and ination has pictured it”39 Twain didn't seeht on time, and that it would look as splendid as ever Only a few years before rapher, he had described a feeling of mystical connection with comets in a manuscript note for his short work No 44, the Mysterious Stranger: ”How do you knohen a comet has swum into your system? Merely by your eye or your telescope-but I, I hear a brilliant far strea across the firer is there without looking” Such a feeling was probably picked up at hisand took the name for her oldest son, Orion, fro track of the latest discoveries in astrono of 1909, when the Harvard Observatory announced that ”perturbations in the orbital ht indicate the presence of a new planetary body, he offered his own interpretation of the discovery Writing in the Harper's Weekly of January 30, he said that he was an old expert on perturbations, having learned all about the watermelon patches

These recent perturbations are considered reh three seconds of arc, but really that is nothingThere isn't any Neptune that can outperturbate a dogYou let a dog jump out at you all of a sudden in the dark of thethree seconds of arc is: the shudder that goes through you then would open the seaurehead to rudder-post, and you would drop that melon the same as if you had never had any but just a casual interest in it41 One day that su that had come from outer space While on a short visit to New York, Twain and his biographer stopped by the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side to admire the collection ofthe three fahito or ”The Tent,” and ”The Dog” and ”The Woman”-all of which had been transported to New York by the Arctic explorer Robert Peary in the 1890s

Weighing hito was then the heaviest and largest meteorite known to scientists ”Never,” said Peary, ”have I had the terrificof the words 'ht ho this mountain of iron” When it was shi+pped to New York, the massive load of iron caused the vessel's co it from the docks to theline of twenty-eight horses”

It isn't surprising that Tas in awe of this exhibit, and also of the one in the Hall of Dinosaurs ”To his in the world He contemplated the e andthe far reaches of time and space whence they had coreat questions of eternity and mortality, a friend of the family lay seriously ill at a hospital on the Upper East Side of New York The patient was Ossip Gabrilowitsch, who had entered the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in the first week of July for an operation to treat a severe case of iven the last of his New York perfor to return to Europe when he had suddenly fallen ill His on-again, off-again relationshi+p with Clara had entered another low period, and they had not seen much of each other in the last feeeks She are that he was going to have an operation, but didn't know that complications had arisen, and that his doctors orried he ht not survive

One day at Stormfield a visitor who didn't know of her relationshi+p with the pianist

”What a sha!” the visitor said of Gabrilowitsch ”Such a fine fellow, they say!”

Clara dropped everything and raced to catch the next train to New York When she arrived at the hospital, she found Ossip in the grip of a high fever and too weak to sit up ”He cannot possibly live,” she was told43 She stayed at his side day and night, and summoned Dr Quintard to see if he could help On July 9, one day after the New York Tierously ill,” the fever abated, and Clara was cautiously optih ”Gabrilowitsch seems a little better today,” she wrote her father on the 9th, ”& the doctors think that they are getting control of the fever at last”44 His recovery was slow but sure, and Clara believed that it was her prayers and constant presence that had helped to save hiht drift away froain after he ell, she ”hinted” that the ordeal of his illness had permanently affected their relationshi+p, and that she was ready to think of e

”Do you mean it?” he asked

”Yes,” she said, ”Iin New York after his release from the hospital, Gabrilowitsch went to Storuest rooms For more than a month he remained in a weakened state, and stayed in bed much of the time, attended by Clara and Katy Leary As Paine would recall of that period, the pianist ”rarely appeared, even atfro anyone at Stor back hoe But on Wednesday, July 14, when the liner Car in style on one of the ant shi+ps in the Cunard fleet, and her husband-ould follow her teeks later-had alerted the newspapers to her arrival Reporters and photographers aiting as she caplank One newspaper little woman, the kind you expect to wear a folded kerchief over her shoulders and dove-colored frocks”46 After a month abroad, the Ashcrofts seemed to have concluded that one of them should return and try toin the first place, Isabel told the press that she and her husband had gone on their honeye had forced her to coh the honeymoon excuse was a neist in the story, it made sense to the newspapers, one of which ran a headline the next day saying, ”Mrs Ashcroft Hurries Back from Her Honeymoon Abroad to Find Out About 4,000 Suit”47 With a convincing air of innocence, Isabel insisted that she couldn't understand ould have taken action against her ”I loved hihter loves a father,” she said ”For seven years I relieved hiested, could be traced either to a hter or to hly artistic temperament,” she said of Clara, ”which is apt to lead her very far afield And yet I don't think that she would do this of her own accord either Therebehind her-somebody who doesn't like oing toto see Twain and resolve the matter face-to-face ”The whole case will be settled, but the shame of it is that I should have been placed in an ihtaway to Redding, but couldn't surounds of Store and waited for Twain to come to her He didn't take the bait, but sent Charles Lark to say that if she deeded the house back to hiainst her would be dropped and no further action would be taken As a witness, Lark brought along Jean, who sat quietly during the visit, never once saying anything to rebuke the woman who had done so much to undernored Jean and tried not to look at her Though she supposedly believed that Jean was unstable and prone to violent outbursts, she didn't seem in the least bit worried about her safety

Lark was a persuasive advocate and didn't haveback the house Ralph Ashcrofta softer approach, but in the end she siestion, she was given six weeks to vacate the property When Ashcroft learned of this develop to New York at the end of July, he i ”threats and intie50 The feud took a turn for the worse on August 4 when the New York Tiainst Twain's fae of the paper After a feords of introduction by the editors, the article simply quoted Ashcroft's written account of his side of the dispute Running to about 1,200 words, his statee and part of another on page two Knowing that the public wouldn't be sympathetic to criticisms of Twain himself, Ashcroft directed most of his fire at Clara, but also took a few shots at Jean

He tried to depict both women as troubleuetheir mental stability ”For two years or irls were in sanitaria hter has been under the care of nerve specialists ever since Under these circumstances, Miss Lyon naturally becahters, however, became jealous of her, were afraid that Mark Tould marry her, and often endeavored to destroy his confidence in her”

Obviously, Ashcroft had no interest in establishi+ng the truth In his anger over the loss of the cottage, he simply wanted to stir up a scandal and force Twain to buy hienerous settle to shters In Jean's case, he played on a cruel stereotype of epileptics by hinting that she was an emotional wreck In Clara's case, he used some hard truths to hit her where she washer father while spending money on a career of dubious worth and a male friend of questionable character She wasted her ahtful experience of paying for the hire of concert halls destined to be filled with 'snow' or 'paper,' for the maintenance of her accompanist, Charles E Wark, and to defray other cash expenditures that an embryonic Tetrazzini is naturally called upon to make”

To rub in the fact that Clara's talents couldn't est and best-paid opera stars-Ashcroft observed sarcastically, ”One's vocal ambitionssometimes exceed one's capabilitiesand the bitter realization of this has, in this instance, caused the baiting of a woman who has earned and kept the adusted by the sheer nastiness of Ashcroft's statement, Twain refused to speak to the Times when the paper called the house to ask for a response Though Ashcroft was now desperate enough to go after Clara with so criticism, and to do it in such an influential paper, the attack failed to win him any sympathy from the public, and it didn't intimidate anyone in the family Instead it made him look petty and vindictive Nevertheless, for Twain and his fa public exposure that Livy had always dreaded, and that, ironically, Isabel had worked so hard to guard against during her tiust, Ashcroft tried in vain to win concessions froes that he claimed were owed to him for previous services, and for expenses incurred by Isabel He dee and promise not to file anyto cancel his employment contract with the Mark Twain Company His lawyer and Twain's hotly debated whether the audit of the household expenses proved conclusively thatThe question is one that scholars still debate But Tas convinced that thefts had occurred, and his opinion was reinforced by the behavior of both Ashcrofts in the aftermath of Isabel's dismissal They had acted like scoundrels, he believed, and therefore they must be scoundrels

It soon beca to work On alround and refused tofor Isabel to vacate the cottage, she realized that it was tih to understand that her husband couldn't e once he had made up his mind And, no doubt, Ashcroft was disappointed by his failure to gain any advantage fro the nareat ust, Isabelher husband at his home in Brooklyn

Twain relished the news ”That rotten-hearted pair of professional thieves, liars & forgers have cleared out& are not likely to return,” he told Elizabeth Wallace, who had been quick to take his side in the dispute and to end her friendshi+p with Isabel ”I feel nearer to the Lord than I ever was before,” he continued ”I feel as He feels of a Saturday night when the weekly report is in & He has had a satisfactory clean-up of the human race”52 About teeks later, he noted proudly that Ashcroft had resigned fro thrown out” As a condition of his resignation, he had asked that Twain send hiret,” but the request was refused In the end Ashcroft's scheh the dispute cost Twain hundreds of dollars in legal fees, the author consoled hi three ways in which the Ashcrofts were now much worse off as a result of their chicanery: They are married; They live in Brooklyn; She adores Society-& she ain't in it any ht he had heard the last of the troubleso the family An opportunity would soon arise for him to deliver one last nasty shock

After a couple of broken engagements, Clara and Ossip finally ain?” ain's response when Clara brought hiement to the pianist

TWENTY

Letters froret it

Mark Twain

BY THE MIDDLE OF SEPTEMBER the htened considerably The weather was good, Jean was busy with her new life, Gabrilowitsch was feeling better and was allad to be rid of Isabel, and Triting the final parts of his h he had finally awakened fron of going away, he was learning to live with it ”I guess it's all right,” he wrote Dorothy Quick in response to a question about his health ”Infire”2 He elfish visit hith to keep up with them, and didn't want to be dull company For the first tihters were living under his roof, and he was happy to see so reed that a celebration was in order, and it was decided that a concert would be given at Stor Clara and Ossip Invitations were quickly sent out to a large nuhbors, ere asked to pay a s Library A well-known opera singer in New York, the distinguished-looking baritone David Bispharaladly accepted A crowd of two hundred or so was expected, but more than twice that number of tickets were sold

All the excitement of the concert-which took place on Tuesday, Septehly enjoyed the event ”If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the performance,” he later wrote, ”we should have been swamped We jammed 160 into the library (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining-room, the hall, clear into the billiard-roo-rooan, David Bispham visited Twain in his roo a pipe and looking as though he had no plans to go anywhere But when the crowd began to fill up the house, the author appeared right on schedule in his white suit to host the event ”He was in great fettle,” recalled Bisphahter when Twain introduced hi much of the fact that both Bispham and Gabrilowitsch were international stars, Twain said, ”My daughter is not as faentle”

After the concert, there was a dance, and the festive at the family and their close friends that the Ashcroft ordeal was over As Paine recalled, Jean looked especially happy and healthy She ”danced down that great living-room as care-free as if there was no shadow upon her life”4 Meanwhile, out on the lawn in the war the stars and talking about their future Now that he was alain, it was tiile health could bear it But he wasn't going to leave Clara behind, and made it clear that he would need her help While they stood together on the lawn, he asked if she would ain?” ain's response when Clara brought hied and said, ”Well, anyway, any girl would be proud to eh, Tas understandably reluctant to believe this one would hold until the wedding day But the couple decided not toto find out Clara announced that the wedding would be a small one at home and would take place in teeks5 On Sunday the 26th she wrote Reverend Twichell asking him to come to Stormfield and marry her on October 6 To explain the haste, she said that Ossip needed to sail for Europe on October 12 ”Because of concerts which he can not cancel,” she wrote, ”we have to be et married without you” Of course, he replied at once that he would coe of her father and e part, it was her experience of nursing Ossip through his long illness that had swayed Clara in the direction ofthe attacks of the New Yorkof the Ashcrofts in the summer, she seemed to welcome the chance to escape fro as a fa a fahter She had already scheduled another concert tour of her own in the autu Ossip at the lastthe tour and etaway from her past With Jean at home, and the Ashcrofts banished, it ood time to bolt