March 18 Thursday - Ralph W. Ashcroft and Isabel V. Lyon married [MTHHR 662n1]. The New York Times ran a squib on the marriage on p. 5:
Mark Twain’s Secretary to Wed.
Miss Isabel Van Kleeck Lyon, private secretary to Mark Twain, will be married tonight to Ralph Ashcroft, manager, of 24 Stone Street. They obtained a license at the City Clerk’s office yesterday. Mr. Ashcroft is a widower.
The Times ran a follow up squib on Mar. 19:
Mark Twain’s Secretary a Bride
Miss Isabel V. Lyon, Mark ‘Twain’s social and literary secretary, was married yesterday to Ralph Ashcroft, who is a close friend of Mr. Clemens and his business adviser. Mr. Clemens was present at the ceremony, which was performed by the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant at the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street.
Hill provides us with a bit more detail:
On March 18, 1909, the Reverend Percy Grant married Ashcroft and Miss Lyon in New York City with, as Clemens put it, nine persons present if God was there. Clemens himself was there, anyhow, and the couple, strangely morose and distant according to Clemens’ testimony, made the trip back to Redding in complete silence. Clemens also noted that the newlyweds chose to occupy separate bedrooms at Stormfield the night of the wedding [222]. Note: years later Lyon maintained the marriage was one of convenience,
Sam gave a house (“the Lobster Pot”) with sixteen acres adjoining Stormfield to Isabel Lyon as a wedding gift. It would soon become a tug of war between Clemens and the Ashcrofts, as On June 18, Sam would have a writ of attachement placed on her property after discovering “irregularities” in the books.
Sam noted in his after Sept. 25, 1909 letter that on this day, “The thieves frightened into marrying.” Clemens felt that the marriage was a way they might escape testifying against each other. In the Lyon-Ashcroft MS Clemens describes the wedding scene, colored, of course, by his later enmity toward the pair:
The church was cold & clammy, which was quite proper. Miss Lyon’s mother was there, some Ashcrofts were there, the two Freemans were there, I was there. Also Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, and God. If he was there. Reverend Percy Grant intimated that he was; even said he was. Nine in all.
Miss Lyon acted the happy young bride to admiration, She almost made it look real, The reality itself could hardly have been more sweetly and gushing by & artfully artlessly girlish. And when she knelt on a priedien & bowed her head reverently, with her bridal veil flowing about it & Percy Grant stood grandly up in his consecrated livery, with hands & chin uplifted, & prayed over her—well, it was stunningly impressive & rotten, & I was glad I was there to see.
There was no bridal trip. Mr. & Mrs. R.W. Lyon-Ashcroft came back home & took up night-quarters at their house & day quarters at mine.
In these days, we had guests in the house all the time, & the new bride was in great form as salaried Social Secretary & Ornament. She was the liveliest of the lively, the joyest of the joy. Clara was now in command, as housekeeper. The Ashcrofts & I were soon friendly & sociable again, & I hoped & believed these conditions would continue. Clara hoped the opposite.
Minnie R. Dwight for Holyoke Daily Transcript (Mass.) wrote to ask Sam for a short story for children for the Holyoke Fair [MTP].