Wild Nights! Read online

  How I wish that I had been able to meet with you in the Secret Place, in June; but there was much confusion in our household at that time, as there is now.

  I have kept the beautiful Angelfish pin to place beneath my pillow, & to kiss recalling your kindness & how you seemed to love me then. It is Pudd’nhead Wilson, I have been reading lately, who speaks in a strange jeering voice in my head

  ”How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

  Hoping that you will write to me soon, & we may meet again in the Secret Place when this summer is over, I am the little girl who loves you,

  “Maddy”

  223 Oceanview Road

  Bayhead, New Jersey

  July 27, 1906

  Dearest Mr. Clemens,

  Forgive me this page is splotched with tears & spray from the surf. I am writing to you in my Secret Place here, where nobody comes for the sand is coarse & the jutting rocks ugly & it is too far for them to hike, so they leave me alone. My dearest friend now is Pudd’nhead Wilson you once told me, so strangely dear Mr. Clemens, was but a machine.

  Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

  Thinking of you, my dear, “oldest” Pen-Pal, I am the little girl who loves you,

  “Maddy”

  223 Oceanview Road

  Bayhead, New Jersey

  August 1, 1906

  Dear “Grandpa” Clemens,

  In a dream last night you spoke to me, & I heard your voice so clearly!—though I could not see your face, all was blurred. “I am not well, dear Maddy. I am waiting for you here.” This is what I heard, & woke excited & trembling! Oh I wish Monadnock was close by here—I would walk to see my oldest & dearest friend—I would bring you bouquets of the most beautiful wild roses & marsh grasses that grow here, I believe you would like for you had many times said, you adore Beauty.

  As Love is not visible

  So Love is not divisible

  Love is framed in Time

  Yet Love is of No Time

  Love twixt thee & me

  Is a promise of Eternity

  I promise I will not eat, dear Grandpa! To keep myself from growing. I am very disgusted with myself, to look into the mirror is a horror. Yet I would nibble the magical cakes, like Alice to become smaller. Very secretly & cuddly then to hide in Grandpa’s armpit, for I am the little girl who loves you, please will you forgive me?

  “Maddy”

  223 Oceanview

  Road August 19, 1906

  Dearest Mr. Clemens,

  This long time I have been waiting to receive a letter from you but none has come, it is a shamful thing to confess Momma did not wish anyone to know Father does not live with us now. When I was so happy with you at the Plaza Hotel, & Momma scolded me for being so excitable, this was a time of worry for us, for Father had only just left us, & there was talk of Father returning. But Momma is always saying this, & weeks & months have gone by, & no one in the family (here at Bayhead, where I am so lonely) will tell me about him. But I know that it is a shamful thing. Sometimes I believe I see Father at a distance on the beach & he is with strangers but it is never Father really. And sometimes it is you, dear Mr. Clemens. But it is never Father, and it is never you.

  Still I am hoping you will forgive me. Momma says I am very childish for one reputed to be “smart” & I cry too often yet Momma does not know, my deepest tears are hidden from her.

  Sending my dear “Admiral-Grandpa” love & blots from this little girl who loves him for Eternity.

  “Maddy”

  1088 Park Avenue

  August 24, 1906

  Dear Samuel Clemens,

  Excuse me for writing to you! For I have become quite desperate.

  I hope that you will remember me from happier times, I am Muriel Avery, Madelyn’s mother. Once you were so kind to invite my daughter and me to Swan Lake, and to the Plaza Hotel afterward; and to a memorable “Evening with Mark Twain” at the Emporium Theatre.

  Dear Mr. Clemens, I think that you would be concerned to know that my daughter Madelyn has become, over the past several weeks, deeply unhappy and distraught and refuses to eat so that she has become shockingly thin, like a living skeleton it was a terrible discovery I made helping her to bed, to feel her poor sharp bones through her clothing. Her skin is so pale, her wrist bones like a sparrow’s bones, I have tried to seek help for Madelyn but it is very hard to force her to eat and if you become angry with her, she will turn her face to the wall as if to die. Madelyn is a shy girl, lonely and confused about her father (who has left his family and is seeking a divorce, against all reasonable decent behavior). We have returned to the city in this sweltering heat so Madelyn can receive hospital care. I am afraid her condition will worsen quickly. Mr. Clemens I am sick with worry over my daughter, she has told me you stopped writing to her. At the ocean Madelyn would walk along the beach for miles, we did not know where she was often and feared she might wade out into the surf and drown. She is so thin, Mr. Clemens you would not recognize her. I am not begging you, Mr. Clemens, but appealing to you out of the kindness of your heart if you could simply write a brief letter to the child as you had done before, if you could explain to her that you are not “angry” with her—not “disgusted”—for Madelyn has got it into her head that this is so. You have had daughters, you said, & so you know how emotional they can be at Madelyn’s age. Any kindness you could do for Madelyn, I think it would help very much.

  To save my daughter’s life I am writing like this to a famous man, please do not be angry with me. I am not a very good writer I know. Madelyn has said you appear in her dreams but your face is turned from her now, she is heartbroken! Please Mr. Clemens tell this poor child who adores you that you do not hate her.

  Thanking you beforehand for your kindness, I am,

  Sincerely yours,

  (Mrs.) Muriel Avery

  1088 Park Avenue

  August 28, 1906

  Dear Samuel Clemens,

  It has been some days and I have received no reply from you on an urgent matter regarding the well-being of my daughter Madelyn Avery.

  Mr. Clemens, please know that yesterday evening Madelyn was admitted to Grace Episcopal Hospital on Lexington Avenue for her weight has dropt terribly, the doctor says she more resembles an eleven-year-old than a girl of sixteen. She is very quiet and depressed in spirit not seeming to care if she lives or dies, not any of us in her family can appeal to her. The doctor has warned that her young heart will be damaged and her kidneys will suffer a “shock” soon if she does not nourish herself with liquids at least. Oh I have prayed to God, all the family has prayed, and our minister, Madelyn’s father has been to visit with her but Madelyn shuts her eyes and will not hear.

  Still I think, dear Mr. Clemens, a letter or a card, still more a visit (but I would not hope to wish for this!) would make all the difference to Madelyn. If you could find it in your heart, dear Mr. Clemens, I would be so very grateful.

  Thanking you beforehand for your kindness, I am,

  Sincerely yours,

  (Mrs.) Muriel Avery

  1088 Park Avenue

  August 30, 1906

  Dear Samuel Clemens,

  Mr. Clemens, I have discovered your numerous letters to my daughter that Madelyn had hidden in her room. I am so very upset. Such talk of “Grandpa”—“Angelfish”—the “Secret Place”—“love”—which has come to light, has made me ill. In the hospital, Madelyn will not speak of this, & nobody wishes to frighten her. Unless I hear from you by return post, Mr. Clemens, I will turn these letters over to my attorney & we will see, if a “lawsuit” might not ensue!

  Sincerely yours,

  (Mrs.) Muriel Avery

  I am saying these vain things in this frank way because I am a dead man speaking from the grave, I think we never become really & genuinely our entire & honest selves until we are dead yet waking to d
iscover himself short of breath stumbling in the tall marsh grass at Monadnock, the girls had run ahead, Angelfish leading their Admiral on a giddy moth hunt by moonlight each of the girls with butterfly nets and handkerchiefs soaked in chloroform (the most merciful means of death, Mr. Clemens was given a small bottle of chloroform by his physician), ah! the smell was sweetly sickening yet strangely pleasant, Mr. Clemens called after the impatient girls to wait for him, please wait for him, but the girls were hiding, were they?—laughing? Mr. Clemens! Grandpa! Sharp cruel cries he felt like pain stabbing inside the bony armor of his chest, laughter like shattering glass, the great glaring white eye of the moon overhead unblinking and pitiless in judgment as Mr. Clemens staggered, slipped to one (gout-stricken) knee in the marshy soil, was it possible that one of the ravishing Angelfish had tripped him?—had snatched away his cane?—another was tormenting him with her butterfly net striking at his shoulders and bowed head, and yet another—the beguiling little witch Molly Pope?—swiping at his face with her chloroform-soaked handkerchief for by dusk of this long late-summer day the Angelfish had grown bored with such childish games as hearts, charades, Chinese checkers, only a moth hunt by moonlight would satisfy them, wildly swinging little nets and their moth-prey trapped and quickly “put to sleep” and tossed into a bag, running into the marsh grass, Clara had strongly disapproved of the Angelfish’s shrieking careless play but Clara had hardly dared to pursue them, Mr. Clemens had hardly dared to “rein them in” for fear of provoking their vexation, poor Mr. Clemens in grass-stained white clothing, the elderly man uncertain as a giant moth that has been wounded, his white hair floating upward as you’d expect a ghost’s hair to float, no wonder the girls shrieked with laughter at the doddering old Admiral who could not keep up with them, could not turn quickly enough to defend himself against their sly pokes and jabs and the fiercest of the attacks came from—could it be sweet, grave little Helena Wallace?—by moonlight transformed into a demon, legs like flashing scimitars and eyes like smoldering coals. Mr. Clem-mens! Grand-pa! Over here! Teasing, or tormenting, for the elderly man had fallen behind in the hunt, clumsily he’d swung at moths and missed, the most beautiful silvery-phosphorescent of moths, dusky-veined moths, moths with the most intricately imbricated wings, this long day he’d been distracted by harmful thoughts, a succession of telephone calls, hateful calls from Mr. Clemens’ attorney in Manhattan, harried consultations about an urgent matter not to be revealed even to Clara (at least, not until there was no alternative except revealing it) for it was a very delicate matter, a matter of absolute privacy, for what if such a scandal spilled out into the newspapers, Mr. Clemens was a gentleman of the utmost integrity and reputation, an emblem of purity in an age of the impure, observe how Mr. Clemens never appears in public except in radiant white, the sole living American male so pure of heart and motive he might clad himself in spotless white, it must not be allowed that a conniving blackmailing female might destroy Mr. Clemens’ reptutation and so Mr. Clemens’ attorney would see to it, cash payments would be made in secret, promises of confidentiality would be extracted, legal documents signed, a young lady’s hospital and medical expenses paid in full, perhaps an extended stay in an upstate sanitarium might be arranged, purely by coincidence the very same sanitarium in which Mr. Clemens’ miserably unhappy invalid-daughter Jean resided. Ah, this day! this troubled day! this day when the Admiral had been feeling most vulnerable and needy of kisses, Angelfish on his knees, surprisingly long-legged and robust Angelfish, hot-skinned Angelfish, giddy, reckless, taking advantage of an old man’s weakened state, winking at one another behind the old man’s back, cheating at hearts and Chinese checkers and even at billiards which was Mr. Clemens’ sacred game, that sly little witch Molly Pope had won five hundred copper pennies from him, he’d managed to laugh as if the loss had not irked him, had not angered him, he’d been hurt, too, by the capricious behavior of Violet Blankenship all but laughing in his face, Violet’s soft young breasts poking against her white middy-blouse that was damp with perspiration, and her eyes!—Violet’s eyes!—unnerving as the eyes of a giant cat. Stumbling now in the tall damp spiky-sharp marsh grasses behind the summerhouse, his swollen feet throbbing with pain, and pain in his chest stabbing and fierce leaving him panting, who has taken Grandpa’s cane?—for Grandpa cannot walk without his cane, poor Grandpa is forced to crawl. Up at the house where a light was burning Clara called to him in a pleading voice Papa come here! Papa this is very wrong! Papa you will injure yourself! Papa you must send these girls home! You must send your houseguests home! To save yourself, Papa! Oh Papa why aren’t we enough for each other, I am your daughter, Papa! Sudden as demon-quail the girls flew up at Grandpa out of the tall grasses poking at him with their moth-nets, swiping at his nose with chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs, how pitiless their young laughter, how cruel their taunts, Grandpa Clemens has slipped and fallen flailing his arms to regain his balance managing with difficulty to right himself, despite the terrible pain in his legs, reaching out for his Angelfish, yearning to embrace his Angelfish, his heart kicking and pounding in his chest and so he knows I am still alive—am I?—still alive?—is this life?

  THE MASTER AT ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL, 1914–1916

  1.

  It was to be the crucial test of his life.

  He will remember: arriving at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital by taxi and in a haze of apprehension ascending the broad stone steps and entering the foyer that even at this early hour was shockingly crowded. Medical workers, men in military uniform, civilians like himself looking lost—“Excuse me? If you could please direct me?”—but his gentlemanly manner was not forcible enough to make an impression, his cultured voice was too hesitant. Hospital personnel passed him by without a glance. St. Bartholomew’s was a great London hospital in a time of national crisis and its atmosphere of urgency and excitement was a rebuke to him, a solitary civilian figure of a certain age. His large deep-set blinking eyes took in the dismaying fact, as so often they did in recent years, that he was by far the oldest individual in sight. He lacked a uniform of any kind: neither medical, or military. Though surely he knew better, with a kind of childlike vanity he had halfway expected that someone might be awaiting him in the foyer, the eagerly obliging, friendly chairwoman of the volunteers’ committee to whom he’d given his name, perhaps. But no one resembling this woman was anywhere to be seen. And no one resembling Henry himself was anywhere to be seen. Perplexed, on the edge of being alarmed, he saw that the foyer was oval in shape and that corridors led off it like spokes in a wheel. There were signs posted on the walls, he must approach to read with his weak eyes. He noted that the floor was made of marble that, very worn and grimy now, must have been impressive at one time; high overhead was a vaulted ceiling that gave the foyer the air of a cathedral. Directly above his head was a large dome that yielded a wan, sullen light and trapped against the inside of the dome were several small tittering birds. Poor trapped sparrows, in such a place!

  He caught sight of a harried porter making his way through the crowd and dared to pluck at the man’s sleeve to ask where volunteers to aid the wounded were to report, but the porter passed by without seeming to have heard. He asked a harried young nurse where he might find Nurse Supervisor Edwards but the young woman muttered something scarcely audible in passing. Keenly he felt the insult, he had not been addressed as sir. He was being jostled by impatient strangers, without apology. Medical workers, hospital employees. Men in military uniform. It seemed that new admissions were being brought into the hospital for emergency medical treatment, newly arrived soldiers shipped to London from the besieged French front. Was there a smell of—blood? Bodies? Human anguish? In another part of the hospital, what scenes of suffering were being enacted? Henry was concerned that he might become faint, this was so alien a setting for a man of such inwardness: the Master, as he was fondly, perhaps ironically called, for the finely nuanced artistry of his mature prose style, that rebuked all simplicity, that is to say all that
was raw and unformed, in what he knew to be the Byzantine complexity of the human heart. Now, in this bedlam of a foyer, his breath came short. Since boyhood he’d had a dread of noise, something of a phobia, fearing that his thoughts might be rendered helpless by noise, his soul would be extinguished within it. For our souls are speech, and mere noise cannot be speech. He felt a constriction in his chest, that tinge of pain that precedes an angina attack, and was resolved to ignore it. Sternly he told himself You will not succumb! You have come here for a purpose.

  “Sir!”

  His sleeve was plucked, somewhat impatiently. It appeared that a woman had been speaking to him, he had not heard amid the noise and confusion. She was an attractive woman of youthful middle age in a dark serge dress suggestive of a uniform, though she did not wear a starched white cap as nurses did, nor was she wearing rubber-soled shoes. She asked if Henry had come to be a volunteer in the “wounded ward” and quickly he said yes, and was led away along one of the corridors. “How grateful I am, that you discovered me! I was feeling quite…” His heart beat quickly now at the prospect, at last, of adventure; even as his sensitive nostrils pinched at the acidulous odor of disinfectant, that grew stronger. He was having some difficulty keeping up with the woman in dark serge, who seemed to assume that he was capable of following her at a rapid clip though clearly he was not young, and walked with a cane, favoring his left knee. In both legs he suffered from gout-pain and edema; he was a large, portly gentleman who carried himself with a kind of pinched caution, like Humpty Dumpty fearing a sudden spill.