Mark Twain Had A Seeming Obsession With Young Girls That Would Land A Modern Figure In Hot Water

Twain began “collecting” young girls in 1907, at the age of 72. He had recently suffered the loss of his wife and daughters, and he desperately wanted grandchildren. He started calling his surrogate granddaughters “angelfish” in 1908 after becoming enamored with the species on a visit to Bermuda. He went on to nickname his group of girls the “Aquarium Club” and even required members to wear angelfish pins. Twain’s secretary Isabel Lyon often chaperoned and arranged visits between Twain and the young women. On one trip to Bermuda with Twain in April 1908, she recorded in her journal, “He has his aquarium of little girls, and they are all angelfish... He wears a flying fish scarf pin, though he says he is a shad. Off he goes with a flash when he sees a new pair of slim little legs appear... If the little girl wears butterfly bows of ribbon on the back of her head, then his delirium is complete.”

During the last two decades of Twain’s life, he saw the death of his first and favorite daughter Susy, his wife Olivia, and his third daughter Jean. Unsurprisingly, the deaths of three family members sent Twain into a deep depression. The loss encouraged his obsession with innocence, young girls, and being a grandfather. Four years after his wife’s death, Twain wrote: I had reached the grandpapa stage of life; and what I lacked and what I needed was grandchildren. My heart... is a treasure-place of little people whom I worship, and whose degraded and willing slave I am. In grandchildren I am the richest man that lives to-day: for I select my grandchildren, whereas all other grandfathers have to take them as they come, good, bad, and indifferent. Twain valued the children for their innocence and lack of exposure to the hardships of adult life. He called himself a "collector" of young girls: I suppose we are all collectors… As for me, I collect pets: young girls - girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent - dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears.

Twain called his group of angelfish the Aquarium Club. He drafted a constitution that laid out rules for his exclusive club called "The Aquarium, Issued By The Admiral Redding." The constitution required the girls to "wear their badge and their head ribbons" and noted that "none above school age is permitted" in the club. He hung photos of the angelfish in the Billiard Room of his Redding, Connecticut, home, and he specified in the constitution that "portraits of non-members are not permitted." Twain referred to himself as the "Admiral," and required the girls to write to him once every three months at the very minimum. If the girls didn't write often enough, Twain demoted them from active members to "Honorary Members with reproaches."

The book Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens Angelfish Correspondence records Twain’s plans to build a room in his Redding, Connecticut home specifically for his "angelfish": The billiard-room will have the legend "The Aquarium" over its door... I have good photographs of all my fishes, and these will be framed and hung around the walls. There is an angel-fish bedroom—double-bedded—and I will expect to have a fish and her mother in it as often as Providence will permit. Twain moved into his Connecticut home on June 18, 1908. He chose to call the house “Innocence at Home” because he hoped to host many young girls.

Twain's autobiography includes descriptions of the members of his Aquarium Club. He describes them as "graciously and enchantingly beautiful as ever any flower was" and the epitome of "the kingdom of Heaven." Twain wrote to angelfish Dorothy Harvey in honor of her 14th birthday. In his letter he said, “I wish I could have those free-gratis-for-nothing-voyages-&-nothing-to-do-but-look-at-you every day.” After a visit from 11-year-old Dorothy Quick, he wrote, “I went to bed as soon as you departed, there being nothing left to live for after that, & all the sunshine gone. How do you suppose I am going to get along without you?” To Hellen Martin, who Twain described as "a slim and bright and sweet little creature," he said, "'I miss you, dear Hellen. I miss Bermuda too, but not as much as I miss you; for you were rare and occasional and select and limited."

Most of the girls were from prominent, wealthy families. They traveled in the same social circles as the highly regarded author. To the girls' parents, it was an honor that Twain took such an interest in their children. He met many of the girls traveling on ships to England or Bermuda. Twain met 12-year-old Helen Allen on one of his trips to Bermuda. The Allen family were old friends of his, and Twain stayed in their home during his visits to the island. Twain said that Helen Allen was “perfect in character, lovely in disposition, and a captivator at sight.”

By the end of 1908, Twain had admitted 12 members and one honorary member into the Aquarium Club. He lists the girls by order of appointment and age in his constitution. All of the girls are between 10 and 16 years old. Twain wrote, “All the... school-girls in the above list are my angel-fishes, and constitute my Club, whose name is ‘The Aquarium’... The Bermudian angel-fish, with its splendid blue decorations, is easily the most beautiful fish that swims... The club’s badge is the angel-fish’s splendors reproduced in enamels and mounted for service as a lapel pin - at least that is where the girls wear it.”

Twain was an avid letter writer, and he kept in contact with the members of his Aquarium Club. In September 1908, however, Twain’s daughter Clara returned from Europe. She didn't entirely approve of the private club, eventually changing the name of the house from “Innocence at Home” to "Stormfield." Twain stop saving letters from the angelfish, and records of their correspondence ceased shortly after her arrival in the United States. Though they may have been entirely innocent, Clara Clemens objected to her father’s letters to and from teenage girls. John Cooley published all the saved letters in his book, Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence.

Earlier, before 1902, Mark Twain established The Juggernaut Club, another organization of exclusively female pen pals. According to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, the club sounded similar to the Aquarium Club. The major difference was that its primary members weren't teenage girls: He... formed a curious society, whose members were young girls—one in each country of the earth. They were supposed to write to him at intervals on some subject likely to be of mutual interest, to which letters he agreed to reply. He furnished each member with a typewritten copy of the constitution and by-laws of the Juggernaut Club. The identities of The Juggernaut Club are largely unknown, but the club's demographic appears very different than Tain's Aquarium Club. The only Juggernaut membership records in existence are those of Helene Picard. Nineteen letters from Picard to Twain are today collected Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley. Picard was not a young girl; it's clear in her letters she was a 29-year-old single woman with writing aspirations of her own.

No incidents of abuse were ever reported, but some of Twain's writing has raised eyebrows over the years. He wrote about young women and sex in Letters from the Earth, a mostly sarcastic piece critiquing religion and morality published posthumously. He said: During twenty-three days in every month (in absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also she wants that candle - yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.

Twain was quick to shut down any relationships with young girls who became flirtatious. He and 15-year-old Gertrude Natkin exchanged letters, but he soon saw that she was expressing romantic affection for him. Twain became concerned and ceased writing to her. Twain had his collection of angelfish, but he also spent time and corresponded with women who were somewhat more age-appropriate. At nineteen years old, Mary Madden was too old to be an angelfish, but she and Twain took a five-day trip to Bermuda. He was also said to be romantically involved with Charlotte Teller, a writer and neighbor in New York. Their flirtation made Twain's secretary, Isabel Lyon, jealous to the extent that she deliberately drove a wedge in the pair's friendship. The author was also interested in Ethel Barrymore, Drew Barrymore's great-aunt.

Twain's involvement and interest in the club dipped in the the final years before his death by heart attack in 1910. His surviving letters indicate a change in tone starting in 1908, as he complained the girls were growing up too fast, and he was not particularly keen on hearing about their boyfriends.