Mark Twain's Other Woman

December 14, 2009
In this book on Twain’s last decade and his complicated relationship with his secretary, Isabel Lyon, Trombley is often too much the professor—quoting overlong passages when summary and interpretation would be better. An otherwise informative epilogue rambles. But when Trombley hits her stride, we learn quite a lot of the Twain household’s secrets. Lyon wormed her way into Twain’s life in the late 1880s as his favorite whist partner. Upon realizing the worth of Twain’s letters, she obtained full power of attorney. She feuded with his hot-tempered daughter Clara over who would be “in charge” of his affairs. But the manipulative Lyon also truly loved “the King,” and in his loneliness after his wife’s death, he was responsive. Twain’s ultimate falling out with Lyon, including Twain’s charges that she made unwanted sexual advances to him, make for painful reading and will be controversial. 43 photos.

January 1, 2010
A valiant attempt to untangle the complications of Mark Twain's later years, but ultimately it raises as many questions as it answers.

The"other woman" in the title of this exhaustively researched study by Pitzer College president Trombley (Mark Twain in the Company of Women, 1994) is Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who served the author she called"the King" as his private secretary and so much more—though how much more remains open to debate. There was gossip of an affair and perhaps even a possible engagement, though Trombley never claims the former and Twain shot down any possibility of the latter:"I have not known, and I shall never know…any one who could fill the place of the wife I have lost," he wrote to the New York Herald, after it had reported on an impending marriage."I shall never marry again." Thus he didn't, likely to the disappointment of Lyon, who filled the vacuum of responsibility left by the death of Twain's beloved wife, serving as his nurse, groomer, sounding board, card partner, decorator, editor and cheerleader. In the process, she alienated Twain's two daughters, who are disparaged throughout this account in comparison with Lyon. Not that the book necessarily provides a convincing defense of Lyon, who was beset by depression, alcohol, pain medication, ambition and romantic inclinations toward unlikely partners—not just Twain, some 30 years her senior, but a priest with whom she was infatuated and a business advisor to Twain, 12 years younger than she, whom she married but perhaps never loved. What remains at issue is the degree of her intimacy with Twain, characterized at one point as"multilayered" but later dismissed by its lack—Twain's candor with her"did not seem to increase their personal intimacy." The aging author ultimately sided with daughter Clara in accusations that Lyon had swindled him, and he vehemently turned against her.

On this spring's centennial of Twain's death, the scholarly speculation serves as a long, inconclusive footnote.

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February 1, 2010
Trombley ("Mark Twain in the Company of Women") reveals the hitherto unknown story of Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became Twain's secretary and companion during the last years of the author's life (he died in 1910). By now, the events of Twain's final years are well known: the tragic deaths of his wife and two of his daughters as well as his troubled relationship with his surviving child, his financial reverses and worries about the expiration of his copyrights, and the gradual decline of his health and writings. Trombley views these events and themes through the eyes of Isabel, who was close to the writer for a number of years before he turned viciously against her (thanks mainly through the campaign against her from Twain's daughter Clara and his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine). Trombley quotes extensively from the journals and letters of Isabel herself as well as writings from Twain and others in his immediate circle. VERDICT This is an extensively researched portrait of a famous author who often acted capriciously and a revealing biography of a woman who was left in the shadows of literary history. Twain scholars are the obvious audience. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/1/09.]Morris Hounion, NYC Coll. of Technology Lib., CUNY

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February 15, 2010
In his Mark Twain, Man in White (2009), Michael Sheldon follows a great author as he forges a luminous public image. In this provocative study, Trombley illuminates a womanIsabel Van Kleek Lyonwhom Twain deliberately shoves into the shadows to protect his image. For six years his personal secretary, Lyon helps Twain with various professional concerns and with a family life complicated by one daughters epilepsy and by another daughters tempestuous amours. But readers see how bitter intrafamily conflict exposes Lyon to the wrath of Twains oldest surviving daughter, who views Lyon and her ambitious husband as threats, and how Twains carefully selected official biographer outmaneuvers her as a guardian of literary papers. Though not all readers will go as far as Trombley in crediting Lyons version of events, readers will confront considerable evidence that Twain cares more about shielding himself from negative publicity than about truth or fairness when he dismisses Lyon and subsequently heaps abuse upon her name. A strong challenge to the iconic image of an iconoclast.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)