Mark Twain

Invited to receive an honorary doctor of letters at Oxford, 71-year-old Twain sailed for England in June 1907. Onboard he befriended 17-year-old Carlotta Welles, the latest “angelfish.” He then captured London with bath-robe strolls, packed press conferences, royal garden parties, and a triumphant Oxford procession in scarlet gown and mortarboard. He lunched with George Bernard Shaw, collected new admirers such as 16-year-old Frances Nunnally, and basked in adulation that healed decades-old slights about his lack of schooling. 

Rumors in New York that he would marry Isabel Lyon prompted Twain to make public denials. While heading home on the Minne­tonka, he adopted 10-year-old Dorothy Quick as another “angelfish,” returning to the US amid delighted reporters and renewed family anxieties.

Twain decamped to an elite rental at Tuxedo Park while his Redding house was being finished, wrapping Isabel Lyon ever more tightly into familial, financial, and construction duties. Isabel juggled Clara’s deficit-ridden concert tour, Jean’s sanitarium care, and stacks of Twain’s autobiography while marriage rumors swirled. 

Twain, meanwhile, lavished time on new “angelfish” Dorothy Quick, provoking Clara’s sarcasm and Jean’s hurt. His friend and banker Henry Rogers suffered a stroke; the Knickerbocker Trust panic trapped Twain’s $51,000; and his Plasmon venture collapsed. As losses mounted, Twain leaned on newcomer Ralph Ashcroft for business counsel, deepening household tensions.

After returning to New York, Twain threw himself into charitable appearances for the Hebrew Technical School, the Actors’ Fund, and the Children’s Educational Theatre, but his creative drive flagged and he shelved further autobiography dictation. 

During this time, strains within the household worsened: Isabel Lyon now controlled the family’s money, Clara’s concert tour drained cash, and Jean—shifted from Katonah to a cottage in Greenwich—felt imprisoned and sidelined by Isabel’s gate-keeping. Twain’s financial affairs also continued to worsen. 

Nevertheless, declaring he had earned “a holiday,” Twain retreated to billiards, Scotch, and an ever-growing “Aquarium Club” of adolescent “angelfish,” indulging others with affection that distanced him still further from his troubled daughters.

Twain refused to inspect construction of his Redding, Connecticut, estate, trusting Isabel Lyon and architect John Howells to deliver a fully appointed villa. Arriving in June 1908, he was dazzled by the house, soon rechristened “Stormfield” for outsiders but privately called “Innocence at Home,” intended as headquarters for his ever-growing “Aquarium” of teenage devotees. 

While Twain amused himself, his daughters became more restless and resentful. Clara resented Lyon’s authority; Jean, still under doctors’ orders and living with unstable companions, begged to return but was kept away when Lyon convinced Twain to reverse his promise. Twain’s willful detachment left household power—and Jean’s fate—in Lyon’s hands.

Settled at Stormfield, Twain abandoned sustained writing, preferring billiards, scenery, and the company of teenaged “angelfish.” Isabel Lyon and architect John Howells furnished the house, while Jean, still under Dr. Peterson’s orders, was shunted among caretakers and longed to return home. 

Twain’s health wavered after a nephew’s drowning and a heat-exhaustion episode. In response, his doctors advised constant supervision, deepening Lyon’s control. A nighttime burglary panicked residents, drove off staff, and heightened tensions. Clara’s secret affair with accompanist Charles Wark surfaced amid financial disputes. Twain, craving peace, let Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft manage household, money, and access to him, further isolating his daughters.

In autumn 1908, Twain deepened roots at Stormfield. He helped found the Mark Twain Library, hosted Hannibal friend Laura Hawkins (“Becky Thatcher”), and publicly lamented the dog-killing of his beloved cat Tammany. 

Behind the good humor, household politics darkened. Clara continued to clash with Isabel Lyon over servant control and future publishing rights, while Isabel and biographer Albert Paine waged a covert war for Twain’s correspondence. Isabel was now romantically linked to business-minded Ralph Ashcroft, and persuaded the aging author to sign an all-embracing power of attorney and to create the Mark Twain Company, cementing her and Ashcroft’s authority. Twain, distracted by visitors and even a stuffed-elephant Christmas prank, remained largely oblivious.

After Jean’s unsatisfactory German treatment, Isabel hurriedly installed her in a series of supervised lodgings, prompting family discord and Clara’s demand that Jean be allowed to come home. Meanwhile, Isabel secretly married Ralph Ashcroft. Twain deemed the match “an insane idea” (651), yet, craving their help, signed four contracts that vastly expanded their authority and salaries. 

Clara pressed for a financial audit, and tensions exploded. Twain ultimately dismissed Isabel while revoking a sweeping power-of-attorney he had granted the couple. Amid the turmoil, Jean’s return to Stormfield was finally approved, while Henry H. Rogers’s sudden death deprived Twain of his most trusted adviser.

Stormfield’s winter quiet was broken when Twain plunged into Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909). Fired by new Baconian “cipher” books gifted by Helen Keller’s party, he spent January through March expanding a long-held conviction that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Ignoring pleas from Paine and Isabel, he rush-printed the tract in April, drawing a brief plagiarism flap with scholar George Greenwood. 

A Baltimore trip to Francesca Nunnally’s graduation triggered Twain’s first crippling angina attack, forcing the imposition of sharp limits on travel, cigarettes, and billiards. Recovering at Stormfield, he resumed dictation, welcoming Jean permanently home and publishing the long-gestating satire Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven—his final book released in his lifetime.

Stormfield’s bustle resumed as Clara jettisoned her fading concert career. She nursed pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch through surgery, and then married Ossip in a hurried, 32-guest ceremony at the house on October 6, 1909. Twain, suffering from frequent angina, played only a token role in the frenzy while Jean, now happily installed nearby, staged a triumphant fund-raiser for the new Mark Twain Library. 

As the household settled, Twain channeled his darkest religious skepticism into Letters from the Earth, a blistering, unpublished-in-his-lifetime satire that ridiculed biblical lore, human vanity, and a Creator who permits ceaseless suffering.

Stormfield’s fragile calm shattered in late 1909. Twain, increasingly house-bound by angina, sustained his “angelfishes” correspondence but escaped to Bermuda, lodging with the Allen family and doting on 15-year-old Helen. He returned for the first family Christmas in years: Clara and new husband Ossip had sailed for Europe, leaving Jean—lately thriving as her father’s secretary—to oversee holiday preparations at Stormfield. 

On Christmas Eve morning, Jean suffered a seizure and died in her bath, plunging Twain into stunned grief. He forwent the burial, wrote the elegiac “The Death of Jean,” and confronted regret over past neglect while also blaming Isabel Lyon.

In early 1910, wracked by angina and Jean’s recent death, Twain retreated to Bermuda, lodging with the Allen family and trying to recreate domestic comfort with teenage “angelfish” Helen as his secretary. Physical decline, morphine injections, and waves of bitterness toward Isabel Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft punctuated Twain’s quiet days of reading and valedictory humor. He composed “Etiquette for the Afterlife,” predicted Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, and insisted on outlasting Halley’s Comet’s April return. 

After his return to Stormfield, Twain greeted Clara and Ossip—with Clara now pregnant—then slipped into final unconsciousness. Twain died peacefully on April 21, 1910, the night after the comet’s closest approach, with his public and literary immortality immediately affirmed.