I used to begin about a
week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart.
week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart.
Twain - Speeches
This seems to be the only great line in the world that
takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention
of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk,
so to speak.
On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is
waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in London. Nothing could
be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a
lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but
that is not the case. The journey is from the city of New York to the
city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one,
nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. And when the passenger
lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in
the provinces. As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head
quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch),
"When we land a passenger on the American side there's nothing betwix
him and his hotel but hell and the hackman. "
I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. She is
another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty
fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten what it is to
fly its flag to sea. I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named
for. Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the
head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath. But it is
not important. No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and
godspeed.
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
AT THE METROPOLITAN CLUB, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1902
Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel
Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.
I think I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to, for the
reason that I have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind,
for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for
this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to
disembowel my skull for a year--close the mouth in that portrait for
a year. I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this
innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as
I consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like
this. That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. Under that old
custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner
at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but
compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down
and left that man to get up and talk without a text. You cannot talk on
compliments; that is not a text. No modest person, and I was born one,
can talk on compliments. A man gets up and is filled to the eyes with
happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in
the condition of Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained
it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when you have drunk all
the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla. " He said, "Yes,
but when I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say sarsaparilla. "
And so I think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the
testimony and pleadings are all in. Otherwise he is dumb--he is at the
sarsaparilla stage.
Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested
I do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are
doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value. I see
around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished
men; there are more than fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of
them well. I could probably borrow money from--from the others, anyway.
It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company
gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign
prince to be feted--when you have come here not to do honor to hereditary
privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral
excellence and elemental veracity-and, dear me, how old it seems to make
me! I look around me and I see three or four persons I have known so
many, many years. I have known Mr. Secretary Hay--John Hay, as the nation
and the rest of his friends love to call him--I have known John Hay and
Tom Reed and the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years. Close
upon thirty-six years I have known those venerable men. I have known Mr.
Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew before
he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth.
Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and
beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. Tom
Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. Well,
suppose that that is true. What's the use of telling the truth all the
time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect,
truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he
has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed
was invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation
or Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what
it was--advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal
indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but
by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our
way we can all be bigamists. You perceive his limitations. Anything he
has in his mind he states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true,
but that was no place to say it--so they fired him out.
A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held
grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out
by the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. Even Wayne
MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I
saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's,
and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a
word in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is
started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his
five. I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell
and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was
a remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream
recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a
train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through
ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he
had his ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Archbishop of
Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against
him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object--he
wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped
at the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but
there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one
with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were
expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise
a shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were
disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the
Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and
I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German
tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was
no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole
place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man? Who is
that man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with him, that long,
lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that? " "Well, now,"
Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep
quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to
talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you. " I said, "I have
been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left. "
He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and
inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an
onion, a clever man can always peel it again. '" Well, I reflected and
I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no
discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit
in all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell lately. That's the
kind of man he is.
Mr. Howells--that poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a
person. Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people,
and he has always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has never written
anything about me that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is
always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of
me than any one in this world, and published it in the North American
Review. He did me the justice to say that my intentions--he italicized
that--that my intentions were always good, that I wounded people's
conventions rather than their convictions. Now, I wouldn't want anything
handsomer than that said of me. I would rather wait, with anything harsh
I might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. Bangs has
traced me all the way down. He can't find that honest man, but I will
look for him in the looking-glass when I get home. It was intimated by
the Colonel that it is New England that makes New York and builds up
this country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a
lot of people here who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from away
out West, and Howells from Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me
from Missouri, and we are doing what we can to build up New York a
little-elevate it. Why, when I was living in that village of Hannibal,
Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of
Warsaw, also on the banks of the Mississippi River it is an emotional
bit of the Mississippi, and when it is low water you have to climb up
to it on a ladder, and when it floods you have to hunt for it; with a
deep-sea lead--but it is a great and beautiful country. In that old time
it was a paradise for simplicity--it was a simple, simple life, cheap but
comfortable, and full of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage
of modern civilization there at all. It was a delectable land. I went
out there last June, and I met in that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of
mine, John Briggs, whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. I tell
you, that was a meeting! That pal whom I had known as a little boy long
ago, and knew now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet
and browned by exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that
old place again. We spent a whole afternoon going about here and there
and yonder, and hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which
we had committed so long ago. It was a heartbreaking delight, full of
pathos, laughter, and tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll
of the boys and girls that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many
years ago, and there were hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest
were in their graves; and we went up there on the summit of that hill,
a treasured place in my memory, the summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked
out again over that magnificent panorama of the Mississippi River,
sweeping along league after league, a level green paradise on one side,
and retreating capes and promontories as far as you could see on the
other, fading away in the soft, rich lights of the remote distance. I
recognized then that I was seeing now the most enchanting river view
the planet could furnish. I never knew it when I was a boy; it took an
educated eye that had travelled over the globe to know and appreciate
it; and John said, "Can you point out the place where Bear Creek used to
be before the railroad came? " I said, "Yes, it ran along yonder. " "And
can you point out the swimming-hole? " "Yes, out there. " And he said,
"Can you point out the place where we stole the skiff? " Well, I didn't
know which one he meant. Such a wilderness of events had intervened
since that day, more than fifty years ago, it took me more than five
minutes to call back that little incident, and then I did call it back;
it was a white skiff, and we painted it red to allay suspicion. And the
saddest, saddest man came along--a stranger he was--and he looked that red
skiff over so pathetically, and he said: "Well, if it weren't for the
complexion I'd know whose skiff that was. " He said it in that pleading
way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and suggestion; we were full of
sympathy for him, but we weren't in any condition to offer suggestions.
I can see him yet as he turned away with that same sad look on his face
and vanished out of history forever. I wonder what became of that man.
I know what became of the skiff. Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely
life. There was no crime. Merely little things like pillaging orchards
and watermelon-patches and breaking the Sabbath--we didn't break the
Sabbath often enough to signify--once a week perhaps. But we were good
boys, good Presbyterian boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and
all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was
doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.
Look at John Hay and me. There we were in obscurity, and look where
we are now. Consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious
vocations he has served--and vocations is the right word; he has in all
those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his
country and to the mother that bore him. Scholar, soldier, diplomat,
poet, historian--now, see where we are. He is Secretary of State and I am
a gentleman. It could not happen in any other country. Our institutions
give men the positions that of right belong to them through merit;
all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by family
influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God gave you
at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the country
to live in.
Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part of me is present; the
larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife,
and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't
distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to
be confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous
prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very
well--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew
her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay
and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been the
best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she
has reared me--she and Twichell together--and what I am I owe to them.
Twichell--why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For
five-and-twenty years I was under the Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I
was in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due
reverence. That man is full of all the graces that go to make a person
companionable and beloved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a church
the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up
all around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try
to get Twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and
wherever you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence,
feeling sure that there will be a double price for you before very long.
I am not saying this to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and
many a time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought
up all the pews on a margin--and it would have been better for me
spiritually and financially if I had stayed under his wing.
I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many
different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now,
there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time
I have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if
he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those
ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account.
Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches and the poetry, too.
I liked Doctor Van Dyke's poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper
measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings
to pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is
true; and Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and put things
into my mouth that I never said, never thought of at all.
And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you our deepest
and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday.
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB IN HONOR OF
MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, JUNE 20, 1899
The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr.
Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. The members are
representative of literary and journalistic London. The toast
of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the
Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous
remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the
"Friars," as the members of the club style themselves.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE VOW--in whatever the vow is; for
although I have been a member of this club for five-and twenty years, I
don't know any more about what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to. But
what ever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have made a thousand
vows.
There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of
one who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and
appreciate you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the
vow.
There is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside
and break the vow. A vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for
the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's, and
generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own
morals.
Hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while
you are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you
feel you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this
world until--you get outside and take a drink.
I had forgotten that I was a member of this club--it is so long ago. But
now I remember that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I was
then at a dinner of the Whitefriars Club, and it was in those old days
when you had just made two great finds. All London was talking about
nothing else than that they had found Livingstone, and that the lost Sir
Roger Tichborne had been found--and they were trying him for it.
And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know who he was)--failed to come
to time. The gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary
compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know
what they were.
And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was
about to go without compliments altogether. And that man was a gifted
man. They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit
down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous
speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast
as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The
rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable
speech was that, an impromptu speech, and--an impromptu speech is a
seldom thing, and he did it so well.
He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it
entirely new to me. He filled it with episodes and incidents that
Washington never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although
I knew none of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any
history but Sala's.
I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up
and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You sit
and wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going
to introduce you. You know that if he says something severe, that if he
will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will
furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against
that.
Anybody can get up and straighten out his character. But when a
gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do?
Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so many texts that I will have
to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you
do not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech
without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone
on with the schooling with which I began. I see here a gentleman on my
left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years
ago.
When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long
way back. An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career
as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by
another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator. But those
were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory.
My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two
gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.
You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side
of the water. It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the
Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in
England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to
go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail,
and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through
that ship sixteen times.
They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and
a lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that
Mr. Depew is descended.
On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who
landed on a bitter night in December. Every year those people used
to meet at a great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in
oratory had to make speeches. It was Doctor Depew's business to get up
there and apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later
and explain the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we
used to have.
It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars
again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others
showing a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this
time, I find one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the
list.
And here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another,
and you will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing
tranquillity in America--a building up of public confidence. We are doing
the best we can for our country. I think we have spent our lives in
serving our country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than
when we get out of it.
But impromptu speaking--that is what I was trying to learn. That is a
difficult thing. I used to do it in this way.
I used to begin about a
week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart. Then
I brought it to the New England dinner printed on a piece of paper in my
pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried,
and in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to
indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. I put them all in it.
And then you want the applause in the right places.
When I got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in
I did not care, but I had it marked in the paper. And these masters of
mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the
first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis.
I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand speech), and do it well,
and make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and
make that audience believe it is an impromptu speech--that is art.
I was frightened out of it at last by an experience of Doctor Hayes. He
was a sort of Nansen of that day. He had been to the North Pole, and it
made him celebrated. He had even seen the polar bear climb the pole.
He had made one of those magnificent voyages such as Nansen made, and in
those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for
the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about
it.
Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature like Nansen, superbly
built. He was to appear in Boston. He wrote his lecture out, and it was
his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded
that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather
handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and
deliver as if it were the thought of the moment.
He had not had my experience, and could not do that. He came on the
platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of
oratory. He spoke something like this:
"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture
of nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the
horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up
their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun--"
Here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and
said: "One minute. " And then to the audience:
"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house? Her husband has slipped on the ice and
broken his leg. "
And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up everywhere and drift out
of the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes began
again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture--" The janitor
came in again and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith! It is Mrs. John
Jones! "
Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left. Once more the speaker started,
and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again,
and the result was that the lecture was not delivered. But the lecturer
interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the
fragments of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful. "
Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with
so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really
no better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am
a person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you
better than when you came here.
I should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which
you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who
are not able to get away.
And this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a
difficulty and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and
uncertainty has come to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe
it as I do day and night.
I always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy
from me, and it is "When in doubt, tell the truth. "
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
The news of Mr. Clemens's arrival in England in June, 1907, was
announced in the papers with big headlines. Immediately
following the announcement was the news--also with big
headlines--that the Ascot Gold Cup had been stolen the same
day. The combination, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES-ASCOT CUP STOLEN,
amused the public. The Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at
the Mansion House in honor of Mr. Clemens.
I do assure you that I am not so dishonest as I look. I have been so
busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have
had no time to prepare a speech.
I was not so honest in former days as I am now, but I have always
been reasonably honest. Well, you know how a man is influenced by his
surroundings. Once upon a time I went to a public meeting where the
oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common
with others, I would have dropped something substantial in the hat--if it
had come round at that moment.
The speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one. We
were all affected. That was the moment for the hat. I would have put
two hundred dollars in. Before he had finished I could have put in
four hundred dollars. I felt I could have filled up a blank check--with
somebody else's name--and dropped it in.
Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my
spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm
went away. When at last the hat came round I dropped in ten cents--and
took out twenty-five.
I came over here to get the honorary degree from Oxford, and I would
have encompassed the seven seas for an honor like that--the greatest
honor that has ever fallen to my share. I am grateful to Oxford for
conferring that honor upon me, and I am sure my country appreciates it,
because first and foremost it is an honor to my country.
And now I am going home again across the sea. I am in spirit young but
in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when I go away I shall
ever see England again. But I shall go with the recollection of the
generous and kindly welcome I have had.
I suppose I must say "Good-bye. " I say it not with my lips only, but
from the heart.
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the
club attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907,
and in submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J.
Scott Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor
Clemens's works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last
illness.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,--I am very glad indeed to have that
portrait. I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and there
have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. I have sat to
photographers twenty-two times to-day. Those sittings added to those
that have preceded them since I have been in Europe--if we average at
that rate--must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out
of all those there ought to be some good photographs. This is the best I
have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it. I did not know
Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and
nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead
a man to honor another man and to love him. I consider that it is a
misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if
any book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier
for him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that. I call
to mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known
in her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in
every possible way. In a little biographical sketch of her I found that
her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she
was no longer able to read. That has always remained in my mind, and
I have always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. I had
read what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done.
Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa,
and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there
in the wilds of Africa--because on his previous journeys he never carried
anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not know of
that circumstance. I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.
I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. I knew
Stanley very well in those old days. Stanley was the first man who ever
reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When I was down
there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them
something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. I met Stanley here
when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with
the finding of Livingstone. You remember how he would break out at the
meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people
said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain
them. They had to come out or break him up--and so he would go round and
address geographical societies. He was always on the warpath in
those days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their
geography for them and improving it. But he always came back and sat
drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was
then one of the most civilized human beings that ever was.
I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which
appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer
said that I characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at the
Pilgrims' Club as "bully. " Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang
to an interviewer or anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said
about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as good English as
anybody uses. If I could not describe Mr. Birrell's delightful speech
without using slang I would not describe it at all. I would close my
mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.
Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an
altogether wrong way to interview him. It is entirely wrong because none
of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man--could listen to a man
talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in
the first person. It can't be done. What results is merely that the
interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own
language and puts it in your mouth. It will always be either better
language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.
I have a great respect for the English language. I am one of its
supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I don't degrade it. A slip of
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.
Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I
would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had
white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.
In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black
that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I
wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out
in the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention.
I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I
may be more conspicuous than anybody else.
If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with
blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay
clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when
I go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the
men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These
are two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find
myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know
I possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are
never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you
can't see.
Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or
it is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your
hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill
gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you
need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as
well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast. I
only want to make you understand that you are not clean.
As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not
clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with
me as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.
Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is
very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now
sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would
not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here
to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time
when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is
a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends,
as I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly
blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own
kind and my own feelings.
I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very
likely that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to
come across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps
me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem
to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it
higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came
ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome--a
good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the
world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them
that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me
with a "Hurrah! " that went to my heart. They are the men that build
civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came
first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the
Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The
toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high
tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was
dear to the hearts of all Americans.
It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments
from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to.
When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says
pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what
he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,
the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.
I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other
worm--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date
when I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.
One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can,
and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember
one detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are
these:
I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.
But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3
at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The
Lord will provide. "
I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He offered
me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I
refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The General carried
the dog to his room.
Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.
"Did you lose a dog? " I asked. He said he had.
takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention
of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk,
so to speak.
On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is
waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in London. Nothing could
be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a
lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but
that is not the case. The journey is from the city of New York to the
city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one,
nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. And when the passenger
lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in
the provinces. As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head
quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch),
"When we land a passenger on the American side there's nothing betwix
him and his hotel but hell and the hackman. "
I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. She is
another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty
fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten what it is to
fly its flag to sea. I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named
for. Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the
head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath. But it is
not important. No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and
godspeed.
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
AT THE METROPOLITAN CLUB, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1902
Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel
Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.
I think I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to, for the
reason that I have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind,
for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for
this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to
disembowel my skull for a year--close the mouth in that portrait for
a year. I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this
innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as
I consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like
this. That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. Under that old
custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner
at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but
compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down
and left that man to get up and talk without a text. You cannot talk on
compliments; that is not a text. No modest person, and I was born one,
can talk on compliments. A man gets up and is filled to the eyes with
happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in
the condition of Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained
it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when you have drunk all
the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla. " He said, "Yes,
but when I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say sarsaparilla. "
And so I think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the
testimony and pleadings are all in. Otherwise he is dumb--he is at the
sarsaparilla stage.
Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested
I do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are
doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value. I see
around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished
men; there are more than fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of
them well. I could probably borrow money from--from the others, anyway.
It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company
gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign
prince to be feted--when you have come here not to do honor to hereditary
privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral
excellence and elemental veracity-and, dear me, how old it seems to make
me! I look around me and I see three or four persons I have known so
many, many years. I have known Mr. Secretary Hay--John Hay, as the nation
and the rest of his friends love to call him--I have known John Hay and
Tom Reed and the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years. Close
upon thirty-six years I have known those venerable men. I have known Mr.
Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew before
he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth.
Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and
beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. Tom
Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. Well,
suppose that that is true. What's the use of telling the truth all the
time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect,
truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he
has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed
was invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation
or Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what
it was--advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal
indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but
by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our
way we can all be bigamists. You perceive his limitations. Anything he
has in his mind he states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true,
but that was no place to say it--so they fired him out.
A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held
grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out
by the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. Even Wayne
MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I
saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's,
and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a
word in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is
started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his
five. I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell
and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was
a remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream
recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a
train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through
ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he
had his ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Archbishop of
Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against
him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object--he
wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped
at the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but
there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one
with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were
expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise
a shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were
disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the
Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and
I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German
tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was
no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole
place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man? Who is
that man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with him, that long,
lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that? " "Well, now,"
Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep
quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to
talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you. " I said, "I have
been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left. "
He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and
inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an
onion, a clever man can always peel it again. '" Well, I reflected and
I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no
discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit
in all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell lately. That's the
kind of man he is.
Mr. Howells--that poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a
person. Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people,
and he has always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has never written
anything about me that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is
always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of
me than any one in this world, and published it in the North American
Review. He did me the justice to say that my intentions--he italicized
that--that my intentions were always good, that I wounded people's
conventions rather than their convictions. Now, I wouldn't want anything
handsomer than that said of me. I would rather wait, with anything harsh
I might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. Bangs has
traced me all the way down. He can't find that honest man, but I will
look for him in the looking-glass when I get home. It was intimated by
the Colonel that it is New England that makes New York and builds up
this country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a
lot of people here who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from away
out West, and Howells from Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me
from Missouri, and we are doing what we can to build up New York a
little-elevate it. Why, when I was living in that village of Hannibal,
Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of
Warsaw, also on the banks of the Mississippi River it is an emotional
bit of the Mississippi, and when it is low water you have to climb up
to it on a ladder, and when it floods you have to hunt for it; with a
deep-sea lead--but it is a great and beautiful country. In that old time
it was a paradise for simplicity--it was a simple, simple life, cheap but
comfortable, and full of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage
of modern civilization there at all. It was a delectable land. I went
out there last June, and I met in that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of
mine, John Briggs, whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. I tell
you, that was a meeting! That pal whom I had known as a little boy long
ago, and knew now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet
and browned by exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that
old place again. We spent a whole afternoon going about here and there
and yonder, and hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which
we had committed so long ago. It was a heartbreaking delight, full of
pathos, laughter, and tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll
of the boys and girls that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many
years ago, and there were hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest
were in their graves; and we went up there on the summit of that hill,
a treasured place in my memory, the summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked
out again over that magnificent panorama of the Mississippi River,
sweeping along league after league, a level green paradise on one side,
and retreating capes and promontories as far as you could see on the
other, fading away in the soft, rich lights of the remote distance. I
recognized then that I was seeing now the most enchanting river view
the planet could furnish. I never knew it when I was a boy; it took an
educated eye that had travelled over the globe to know and appreciate
it; and John said, "Can you point out the place where Bear Creek used to
be before the railroad came? " I said, "Yes, it ran along yonder. " "And
can you point out the swimming-hole? " "Yes, out there. " And he said,
"Can you point out the place where we stole the skiff? " Well, I didn't
know which one he meant. Such a wilderness of events had intervened
since that day, more than fifty years ago, it took me more than five
minutes to call back that little incident, and then I did call it back;
it was a white skiff, and we painted it red to allay suspicion. And the
saddest, saddest man came along--a stranger he was--and he looked that red
skiff over so pathetically, and he said: "Well, if it weren't for the
complexion I'd know whose skiff that was. " He said it in that pleading
way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and suggestion; we were full of
sympathy for him, but we weren't in any condition to offer suggestions.
I can see him yet as he turned away with that same sad look on his face
and vanished out of history forever. I wonder what became of that man.
I know what became of the skiff. Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely
life. There was no crime. Merely little things like pillaging orchards
and watermelon-patches and breaking the Sabbath--we didn't break the
Sabbath often enough to signify--once a week perhaps. But we were good
boys, good Presbyterian boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and
all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was
doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.
Look at John Hay and me. There we were in obscurity, and look where
we are now. Consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious
vocations he has served--and vocations is the right word; he has in all
those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his
country and to the mother that bore him. Scholar, soldier, diplomat,
poet, historian--now, see where we are. He is Secretary of State and I am
a gentleman. It could not happen in any other country. Our institutions
give men the positions that of right belong to them through merit;
all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by family
influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God gave you
at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the country
to live in.
Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part of me is present; the
larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife,
and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't
distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to
be confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous
prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very
well--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew
her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay
and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been the
best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she
has reared me--she and Twichell together--and what I am I owe to them.
Twichell--why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For
five-and-twenty years I was under the Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I
was in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due
reverence. That man is full of all the graces that go to make a person
companionable and beloved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a church
the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up
all around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try
to get Twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and
wherever you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence,
feeling sure that there will be a double price for you before very long.
I am not saying this to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and
many a time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought
up all the pews on a margin--and it would have been better for me
spiritually and financially if I had stayed under his wing.
I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many
different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now,
there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time
I have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if
he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those
ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account.
Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches and the poetry, too.
I liked Doctor Van Dyke's poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper
measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings
to pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is
true; and Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and put things
into my mouth that I never said, never thought of at all.
And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you our deepest
and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday.
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB IN HONOR OF
MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, JUNE 20, 1899
The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr.
Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. The members are
representative of literary and journalistic London. The toast
of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the
Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous
remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the
"Friars," as the members of the club style themselves.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE VOW--in whatever the vow is; for
although I have been a member of this club for five-and twenty years, I
don't know any more about what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to. But
what ever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have made a thousand
vows.
There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of
one who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and
appreciate you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the
vow.
There is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside
and break the vow. A vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for
the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's, and
generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own
morals.
Hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while
you are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you
feel you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this
world until--you get outside and take a drink.
I had forgotten that I was a member of this club--it is so long ago. But
now I remember that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I was
then at a dinner of the Whitefriars Club, and it was in those old days
when you had just made two great finds. All London was talking about
nothing else than that they had found Livingstone, and that the lost Sir
Roger Tichborne had been found--and they were trying him for it.
And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know who he was)--failed to come
to time. The gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary
compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know
what they were.
And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was
about to go without compliments altogether. And that man was a gifted
man. They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit
down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous
speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast
as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The
rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable
speech was that, an impromptu speech, and--an impromptu speech is a
seldom thing, and he did it so well.
He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it
entirely new to me. He filled it with episodes and incidents that
Washington never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although
I knew none of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any
history but Sala's.
I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up
and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You sit
and wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going
to introduce you. You know that if he says something severe, that if he
will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will
furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against
that.
Anybody can get up and straighten out his character. But when a
gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do?
Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so many texts that I will have
to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you
do not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech
without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone
on with the schooling with which I began. I see here a gentleman on my
left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years
ago.
When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long
way back. An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career
as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by
another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator. But those
were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory.
My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two
gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.
You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side
of the water. It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the
Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in
England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to
go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail,
and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through
that ship sixteen times.
They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and
a lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that
Mr. Depew is descended.
On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who
landed on a bitter night in December. Every year those people used
to meet at a great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in
oratory had to make speeches. It was Doctor Depew's business to get up
there and apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later
and explain the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we
used to have.
It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars
again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others
showing a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this
time, I find one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the
list.
And here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another,
and you will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing
tranquillity in America--a building up of public confidence. We are doing
the best we can for our country. I think we have spent our lives in
serving our country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than
when we get out of it.
But impromptu speaking--that is what I was trying to learn. That is a
difficult thing. I used to do it in this way.
I used to begin about a
week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart. Then
I brought it to the New England dinner printed on a piece of paper in my
pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried,
and in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to
indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. I put them all in it.
And then you want the applause in the right places.
When I got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in
I did not care, but I had it marked in the paper. And these masters of
mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the
first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis.
I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand speech), and do it well,
and make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and
make that audience believe it is an impromptu speech--that is art.
I was frightened out of it at last by an experience of Doctor Hayes. He
was a sort of Nansen of that day. He had been to the North Pole, and it
made him celebrated. He had even seen the polar bear climb the pole.
He had made one of those magnificent voyages such as Nansen made, and in
those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for
the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about
it.
Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature like Nansen, superbly
built. He was to appear in Boston. He wrote his lecture out, and it was
his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded
that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather
handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and
deliver as if it were the thought of the moment.
He had not had my experience, and could not do that. He came on the
platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of
oratory. He spoke something like this:
"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture
of nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the
horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up
their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun--"
Here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and
said: "One minute. " And then to the audience:
"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house? Her husband has slipped on the ice and
broken his leg. "
And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up everywhere and drift out
of the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes began
again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture--" The janitor
came in again and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith! It is Mrs. John
Jones! "
Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left. Once more the speaker started,
and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again,
and the result was that the lecture was not delivered. But the lecturer
interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the
fragments of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful. "
Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with
so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really
no better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am
a person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you
better than when you came here.
I should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which
you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who
are not able to get away.
And this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a
difficulty and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and
uncertainty has come to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe
it as I do day and night.
I always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy
from me, and it is "When in doubt, tell the truth. "
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
The news of Mr. Clemens's arrival in England in June, 1907, was
announced in the papers with big headlines. Immediately
following the announcement was the news--also with big
headlines--that the Ascot Gold Cup had been stolen the same
day. The combination, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES-ASCOT CUP STOLEN,
amused the public. The Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at
the Mansion House in honor of Mr. Clemens.
I do assure you that I am not so dishonest as I look. I have been so
busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have
had no time to prepare a speech.
I was not so honest in former days as I am now, but I have always
been reasonably honest. Well, you know how a man is influenced by his
surroundings. Once upon a time I went to a public meeting where the
oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common
with others, I would have dropped something substantial in the hat--if it
had come round at that moment.
The speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one. We
were all affected. That was the moment for the hat. I would have put
two hundred dollars in. Before he had finished I could have put in
four hundred dollars. I felt I could have filled up a blank check--with
somebody else's name--and dropped it in.
Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my
spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm
went away. When at last the hat came round I dropped in ten cents--and
took out twenty-five.
I came over here to get the honorary degree from Oxford, and I would
have encompassed the seven seas for an honor like that--the greatest
honor that has ever fallen to my share. I am grateful to Oxford for
conferring that honor upon me, and I am sure my country appreciates it,
because first and foremost it is an honor to my country.
And now I am going home again across the sea. I am in spirit young but
in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when I go away I shall
ever see England again. But I shall go with the recollection of the
generous and kindly welcome I have had.
I suppose I must say "Good-bye. " I say it not with my lips only, but
from the heart.
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the
club attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907,
and in submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J.
Scott Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor
Clemens's works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last
illness.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,--I am very glad indeed to have that
portrait. I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and there
have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. I have sat to
photographers twenty-two times to-day. Those sittings added to those
that have preceded them since I have been in Europe--if we average at
that rate--must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out
of all those there ought to be some good photographs. This is the best I
have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it. I did not know
Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and
nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead
a man to honor another man and to love him. I consider that it is a
misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if
any book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier
for him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that. I call
to mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known
in her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in
every possible way. In a little biographical sketch of her I found that
her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she
was no longer able to read. That has always remained in my mind, and
I have always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. I had
read what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done.
Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa,
and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there
in the wilds of Africa--because on his previous journeys he never carried
anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not know of
that circumstance. I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.
I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. I knew
Stanley very well in those old days. Stanley was the first man who ever
reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When I was down
there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them
something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. I met Stanley here
when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with
the finding of Livingstone. You remember how he would break out at the
meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people
said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain
them. They had to come out or break him up--and so he would go round and
address geographical societies. He was always on the warpath in
those days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their
geography for them and improving it. But he always came back and sat
drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was
then one of the most civilized human beings that ever was.
I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which
appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer
said that I characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at the
Pilgrims' Club as "bully. " Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang
to an interviewer or anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said
about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as good English as
anybody uses. If I could not describe Mr. Birrell's delightful speech
without using slang I would not describe it at all. I would close my
mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.
Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an
altogether wrong way to interview him. It is entirely wrong because none
of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man--could listen to a man
talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in
the first person. It can't be done. What results is merely that the
interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own
language and puts it in your mouth. It will always be either better
language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.
I have a great respect for the English language. I am one of its
supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I don't degrade it. A slip of
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.
Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I
would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had
white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.
In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black
that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I
wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out
in the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention.
I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I
may be more conspicuous than anybody else.
If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with
blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay
clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when
I go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the
men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These
are two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find
myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know
I possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are
never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you
can't see.
Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or
it is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your
hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill
gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you
need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as
well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast. I
only want to make you understand that you are not clean.
As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not
clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with
me as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.
Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is
very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now
sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would
not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here
to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time
when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is
a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends,
as I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly
blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own
kind and my own feelings.
I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very
likely that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to
come across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps
me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem
to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it
higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came
ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome--a
good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the
world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them
that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me
with a "Hurrah! " that went to my heart. They are the men that build
civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came
first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the
Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The
toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high
tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was
dear to the hearts of all Americans.
It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments
from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to.
When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says
pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what
he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,
the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.
I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other
worm--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date
when I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.
One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can,
and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember
one detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are
these:
I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.
But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3
at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The
Lord will provide. "
I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He offered
me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I
refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The General carried
the dog to his room.
Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.
"Did you lose a dog? " I asked. He said he had.
