Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“About Mark Twain” (1877)

[71] === “About Mark Twain” (1877) Anonymous On his part, Captain Duncan was not amused by Twain’s portrayal of him in The Innocents Abroad, and he occasionally tried to retaliate over the years. In the end, of course, he was outmatched in the battle of wits. an audience of three hundred and odd people paid 25 cents apiece last evening for admission to the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church in Brooklyn to hear from the lips of the Quaker City’s captain an accurate account of that ship’s eventful trip to the Holy Land ten years ago, which accurate account the Captain, with some scorn, declares Innocents Abroad in no sense to be. . . . “One of the first persons,” said the Captain, “who made application for a berth in the Quaker City, when in the spring of 1867 I organized this grand excursion, was a tall, lanky, unkempt, unwashed individual, who seemed to be full of whiskey or something like it, and who filled my office with the fumes of bad liquor.1 He said he was a Baptist minister from San Francisco and desired to travel for his health. I knew him at once, it was Mark Twain, and I said, ‘You don’t look like a Baptist minister or smell like one either.’ I don’t intend to say much of Mark Twain, but I will just relate a single incident. We used to breakfast at 8 o’clock every morning, and everybody was always punctual except Mark Twain; he was always late. One morning he came straggling in tardy as usual, and picking up his cup began to abuse the coffee. He blamed the steward, he blamed everybody, and after all it turned out that the coffee he had found fault with for being so weak was an excellent cup of tea. In relating this experience in his book he says ‘that passenger made an egregious ass of himself,’ and I think as much.” This cut appeared sufficient for the Captain, and he proceeded to pure history, only once more attacking Mr. “Twain,” and this for an outrageously libelous paragraph in Innocents Abroad, wherein it is stated that Captain Duncan, at the great 4th of July dinner, made the following speech: “Ladies and gentlemen, may you all live long and prosper. Steward, pass up another basket of champagne.”2 “There is no truth in it,” twain in his own time [72] said the libeled Captain; “it was the speech Mark Twain was hankering for me to make, but if I had made any I would have said something sensible.” (Applause.) “I used to be proud of Innocents Abroad,” added the Captain, “until I discovered how unreliable it is.” Notes 1. Twain responded to Duncan in a letter to the New York World (18 February 1877, 5). To the charge that he seemed “full of whiskey” when he engaged passage, he replied, “I hope this is true, but I cannot say, because it is so long ago. . . . I was poor—I couldn’t afford good whiskey. How could I know that the ‘captain’ was so particular about the quality of a man’s liquor?” 2. The Innocents Abroad, chapter 10 (93): “Captain Duncan made a good speech; he made the only good speech of the evening. He said: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen:—May we all live to a green old age and be prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne.’” Anonymous, “About Mark Twain,” New York World, 12 January 1877, 5. ...