Late American author and humorist Mark Twain has in his memoirs revealed his obsession with his secretary, who he called a “filthy-minded and salacious slut”.
The memoirs are being published 100 years after Twain’s death as he had decreed that his full manuscript should not be published for a century so that he would be “dead, and unaware, and indifferent” and could speak his “whole frank mind”.
His feelings for Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who was his secretary, are laid bare in the unedited 5,000-page book, which shows him as a man with petty rages and uncomplimentary views of contemporaries. The “comely” brunette was hired in 1902 to manage Twain’s correspondence.