News About Mark Twain
I have long been in
absolute awe of Mark Twain. Funny, wise, trustworthy, entertaining,
enlightening, and — just occasionally — fallible. If I were asked to choose
three people to have dinner with, I would start with …. Mark Twain. (I‘m still
working on the other two.)
I’ve just read a
perfectly delightful and exaustively researched book about his last years — “Mark
Twain: The Man in White” (2010) — by Michael Shelden, and I recommend it
unreservedly.
Things I never
knew about Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorn Clemens):
+ Among his
female friends: the actresses Ethel Barrymore and Billie Burke (the Good Witch
in the film “The Wizard of Oz”).
+ While
he inveighed against Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science fame (“a shameless
old swindler”), he was somewhat supportive of the notion of treating illness
through spiritual powers.
+ His daughter, Clara, married a famous
pianist and conductor, Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Someone said the man suffered from
“delirium Clemens.”
+ Receiving an honorary degree from Oxford,
Twain agreed to answer a few questions from students. But first he had to ask
his own question: “Where is the nearest urinal?”
+ He regarded the notion of an afterlife as
“childish” — yet admitted that “I am strongly inclined to expect one.”
+ He met and befriended so many famous people!
Winston Churchill, Bernard Shaw, Rudyad Kipling, Helen Keller (it was Twain who
came up with the phrase, “miracle worker,” to describe Annie Sullivan), J.M.
Barrie (creator of Peter Pan), who was too shy to chat with him), Woodrow
Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, William Dean Howells,
Andrew Carnegie, novelist Elinor Glyn,* and so forth.
+ His taste in literature was … somewhat disappointing.
He didn’t care for Jane Austen. And he wrote, “I can’t stand George Eliot, & Hawthorne & those people; I see
what they are at, a hundred years before they get to it, & they just tire
me to death.” But he apparently loved “Alice in Wonderland,” referring to “the
immortal Alice.” (And, of course, he loathed James Fenimore Cooper.)
+ In his old age, after his wife and second
daughter died, along with his very close friend, Henry Rogers, Twain would
sometimes become deeply depressed. He wrote: “3 a.m., Apl. 21/09…[In 1866] I
put the pistol to my head but wasn’t man enough to pull the trigger. Many times
I have been sorry I didn’t succeed, but I was never ashamed of having tried.
Suicide is the only really sane thing the young or old ever do in this life….”
+ Woodrow Wilson wrote of Twain, whom he
played billiards and socialized with in Bermuda, “He is certainly one of the
most human of men. I can easily understand how men like [President] Cleveland …
learned to love him.”
+ One of
Twain’s long-time servants, Isabel Lyon, proved to be loyal but … not totally
resistent to financial temptation. Twain fired her and vilified her. In 1958,
Hal Holbrook — who went on to play Twain in celebrated one-man shows — visited
her, and said that “the image of Mark Twain which she gave to me is one of the
strongest one I have and, I believe, the truest one.”
*****
Twain worried about his children.
He wanted the copyright laws extended to ensure that his heirs had money from
his publications to live on. It was for nought. Daughter Jean died at 29, while
Twain was alive; daughter Clara married a pathological gambler after her
husband Gabrilowitsch died, and wound up living in a motel in San Diego, where
she died at age 88.
Mark Twain’s last direct descendant, Nina,
the daughter of Ossip and Clara, died at age 55, in a motel in Hollywood, her
body surrounded by bottles of pills and alcohol. Her death was ruled a suicide.
One of her lawyers said she suffered because she felt she didn’t measure up to
her ancestors.
*****
*Someone had penned a poem:
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger-skin?
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?
Only known film of Mark Twain and daughters:
Ossip Gabrilowitsch plays
