Twain's Secrets Coming to Light

In the last year of his life, writing from his bed at his Redding mansion "Stormfield," Mark Twain furiously penned a raw 427-page manuscript full of fiery accusations and a bitter character assassination of Isabel V. Lyon, his social secretary.  He dearly hoped it would never see the light of day.

This year, on the 100th anniversary of the celebrated author's death in Redding at the age of 74, Mark Twain's worst nightmare is coming true: his "Ashcroft-Lyon" manuscript is being published for the whole world to see, according to Laura Skandera Trombley.

Trombley, who spoke at the Fairfield Public Library on Tuesday,  is the author of "Mark Twain's Other Woman," a 267-page expose just published by Knopf that dissects the intended-to-remain private papers. It reveals a scandal, family intrigue, deceptions and interventions of nasty lawyers that will come as a surprise to fans of the author of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and many other classics.

With the dual publications of his last manuscript and Trombley's book, Mark Twain's carefully constructed public persona is about to be forever shaken.

"He wouldn't be happy with me," Trombley said with a smile at the beginning of her talk.

Trombley, president of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, as well as a Mark Twain scholar and author of "Mark Twain in the Company of Women," took 16 years to research the last six years of Twain's life.

"I do not work fast but I am dogged," she said drolly.

While other Twain scholars have known for years of the "Ashcroft-Lyon" manuscript ("Ashcroft" refers to Ralph Ashcroft, a business adviser to Twain), "They didn't know what to make of it," she said.

Trombley has made hay with it: Lyon is the "other woman" in Twain's life who takes center stage in Trombley's book.

A cultivated and comely woman, Lyon served as Twain's social secretary from the time Twain resided in a townhouse at 21 Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1904 until 1908, when Twain was living in Redding at his Italianate villa Stormfield. Lyon accompanied the family on a trip to Florence, Italy, in the spring of 1904; weeks later, Twain's beloved wife Olivia died of heart disease at age 58.

"That's when the action starts," Trombley said.

Lyon assumed Olivia's wifely chores, ran the Twain households, supervised the servants, planned Twain's social schedule and took his dictations. He trusted her so thoroughly that he gave her power of attorney over his affairs. She saw to it as well, Trombley writes, that Twain was constantly entertained by visitors and diversions and that his public image was maintained.

In those years, Twain had taken to wearing expensive hand-tailored white silk suits with red silk socks, pleased with the moniker, "The Belle of New York." His lavish lifestyle was supported by sales in the millions of his books.

Twain put Lyon in charge of the construction and elegant furnishing of Stormfield, his final home. As a token of his appreciation, Twain deeded Lyon a farmhouse on 22 acres of adjoining property and paid for repairs and upgrades.

Twain, thrilled with his new home, installed Lyon in a second-floor bedroom down the hall from his instead of her little farmhouse.

In addition to all the usual things a social secretary might do, Trombley writes, Lyon cut Twain's hair, kept it fluffed to suit his wont and administered iodine baths to his feet when he was ill.

Trombley writes of, and provides footnotes for, the occasions when Twain would cavort in the hallway in his nightclothes in Lyon's presence.

Did their familiarity become intimate in a sexual sense?

Trombley's book stops short of making such a direct claim.

"I can't prove it," she said.

She said Twain's "genius and narcissism" provide a case study in how to preserve one's legacy. It also is a case study in how to turn a legacy on its head.

"Toward the end of his life he was the most famous man on earth," Trombley said. "He was obsessed with his legacy and wanted to be known as the best father and most devoted spouse."

But it fell to Lyon to look after Clara, Twain's difficult middle daughter, as she launched a singing career, as well as Jean, the youngest daughter who suffered from severe epilepsy.

Lyon paid the bills, including outlays to promote Clara's career.

Some of the payments were for costs incurred by Clara's accompanist, Charles E. Wark, a married man with two young children.

On occasion, Twain's funds were applied to pay for Wark's overnight stays at the grand Brevoort Hotel, just a door away from the Twain household at 11 Fifth Avenue, Trombley discovered.

In addition to her daily journal, the devoted Lyon had kept detailed financial records, which gave Trombley a foothold for her breakthrough discovery: Clara Clemons was trysting with Wark at the Brevoort and the very proper and upstanding Mark Twain was supporting their sexual liaisons with his own money, although he didn't know it at the time.

Trombley's coup was to uncover Clara's romantic liaison with Wark. That forbidden relationship, and Twain's ferocious drive to keep it hidden from the public, ultimately drove him to fire Lyon, revoke his power of attorney and send his lawyers to Lyon's door to threaten her with ruin if she did not vacate the house that Twain had given her.

Significantly, it drove him to write the "Ashcroft-Lyon" manuscript – what Trombley calls the "blackmail manuscript" – as a device to be used in an emergency to silence Lyon should she be inclined to blow the lid on the intimate family goings-on.

When he had completed the "Ashcroft-Lyon" manuscript, he entrusted it to Clara to use after his death to silence Lyon if necessary. It accuses Lyon and Ashcroft of embezzling his money; it insults Lyon as a "thief," a "humbug," a "slut" and as "always pining for seduction, poor thing."

By then, Twain was "written out," Trombley said. Twain sailed to Bermuda to recuperate from the travails, returning to Stormfield to die on April 21, 1910.

During her long remaining lifetime (she died in 1958 at age 95), Lyon kept a public silence but made arrangements to leave her journals – with key dates torn out – to the Mark Twain Papers collection at the University of California at Berkeley. It took Trombley six years to transcribe this researcher's goldmine.

Trombley's book debunks Twain's rants about Lyon; it is Lyon's vindication.

When she spoke about her book at the Mark Twain House in Hartford earlier in the week, Trombley said Lyon's great nephew and his daughter were there and were "delighted, happy and relieved" that the burden the family had carried for 100 years from the hand of Mark Twain had finally been lifted.