Mark Twain Speaking

30. Whittier Birthday Dinner

110 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 30 · On the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Atlantic Monthly, the publishers gave a dinner to celebrate the seventieth birthday ofJohn Greenleaf Whittier. The evening, though not devoid of decorous gayety, was rather solemn. As the Boston Advertiser put it next day, the presence ofthe guest of honor, as well as Emerson and Longfellow, "gave a reverent, almost holy, air to the place." Oliver Wendell Holmes was there, Warner, Howells, R. H. Stoddard, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, andsomefifty other Atlantic contributors. Speeches paid homage not only to Whittier, but also to the whole caste of New England literary Brahmins. Into this program of adulation Mark Twain, the wild westerner, injected a burlesque that was disrespectful of Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes. The ensuing furor of indignation around Boston and elsewhere overwhelmed Mark Twain with a sense ofguilt and made the occasion a traumatic experience. For the next thirty years he periodically reexamined the speech, his critical opinion swinging back andforth between admiration and distaste, hisfinal verdict (1906) being entire approval. The best accounts ofthe affair and its consequences are Henry Nash Smith's "That Hideous Mistake ofPoor Clemens's," Harvard Library Bulletin 9, no. 2 (Spring 1955):145-80; and "The California Bull and the Gracious Singers," Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer (Cambridge , 1962). Dinner Speech Atlantic Monthly Dinner, Seventieth Birthday of John Greenleaf Whittier, Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877 Mr. Chairman: This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and contemplating certain of its biggest literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which happened to me some fifteen years ago, when I had just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary ocean puddle myself, whose spume flakes were beginning to blow Californiawards. I started an inspection tramp through the southern MARK TWAIN SPEAKING III mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my nom de plume. I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened to me. When he heard my nom de plume, he looked -more dejected than before. He let me in-pretty reluctantly, I thought-and after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and a hot whiskey, I took a pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he spoke up and said in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "You're the fourth-I'm a-going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The fourth littery man that's been here in twenty-four hours-I'm a-going to move." "You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes-dad fetch the lot!" You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated-three hot whiskies did the rest-and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he: "They came herejust at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in, of course. Said they were going to Yosemite. They were a rough lot-but that's nothing-everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit ofa chap-red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon-he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prizefighter. His head was cropped and bristly-like as ifhe had a wig made of hair brushes. His nose lay straight down his face, like a finger, with the endjoint tilted up. They had been drinking-I could see that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected the cabin, then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he: Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, o my Soul! "Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to.' Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger that way! However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson came and looked on a while, and then he takes me aside...