TRIBUTE TO MARK TWAIN
[Speech of St. Clair McKelway at a dinner given in honor of Samuel L. Clemens [Mark Twain] by the Lotos Club, New York City, November II, 1900. The President of the Lotos, Frank R. Lawrence, introduced Dr. McKelway as the man whose wondrous use of adjectives has converted to his opinion many doubters throughout this city and country.]
Mr. President and Friends:—Years ago we here sought to hold up Mark Twain's hands. Now we all feel like holding up our own, in congratulation of him and of ourselves. Of him because his warfare is accomplished. Of ourselves because he has returned to our company. If it was a pleasure to know him then, it is a privilege and an honor to know him now. He has fought the good fight. He has kept the faith. He is ready to be offered up, but we are not ready to have him offered up. For we want the Indian summer of his life to be long, and that to be followed by a genial winter, which, if it be as frosty as his hair, shall also be as kindly as his heart. [Applause.]
He has enough excess and versatility of ability to be a genius. He has enough quality and quantity of virtues to be a saint. But he has honorably transmuted his genius into work, whereby it has been brought into relations with literature and with life. And he has preferred warm fellowship to cold perfection, so that sinners love him and saints are content to wait for him. May they wait long. [Applause.]
I think he is entitled to be regarded as the Dean of America's humor; that he is entitled to the distinction of being the greatest humorist this nation ever had. I say this with a fair knowledge of the chiefs of the entire corps, from Francis Hopkinson and the author of "Hasty Pudding," down to Bill Nye and Dooley. None of them would I depreciate. I would greatly prefer to honor and hail them all for the singular fittedness of their gifts to the needs of the nation in their times. Hopkinson and Joel Barlow lightened the woes of the Revolution by the touch of nature that makes the whole world grin. Seba Smith relieved the Yankee sense of tension under the impact of Jacksonian roughness, by tickling its ribs with a quill. Lieutenant Derby turned the searchlight of fun on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels of tragedy and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended grandeurs and the coveted treasures of primeval nature. Charles F. Browne made "Artemus Ward" as well known as Abraham Lincoln in the time the two divided the attention of the world. Bill Nye singed the shams of his day, and Dooley dissects for Hinnissey the shams of our own. Nor should we forget Eugene Field, the beatifier of childhood; or Joel Chandler Harris, the fabulist of the plantation; or Ruth McEnery Stuart, the coronal singer of the joys and hopes, the loves and the dreams of the images of God in ebony in the old South, ere it leaped and hardened to the new.
To these, love and honor. But to this man honor's crown of honor, for he has made a mark none of the others has reached. Few of them have diversified the delights to be drawn from their pages of humor. They have, as humorists, in distinction to the work of moralists, novelists, orators and poets, in which the rarest among them shine, they have as humorists, in the main, worked a single vein. And some of them were humorists for a purpose, a dreary grind that, and some of them were only humorists for a period as well as for a purpose. The purpose served, the period passed, the humor that was of their life a thing apart, ceased. 'Tis Clemens' whole existence! [Applause.]
As Bacon made all learning his province, so Mark Twain has made all life and history his quarry, from the Jumping Frog to the Yankee at Arthur's Court; from the inquested petrifaction that died of protracted exposure to the present parliament of Austria; from the Grave of Adam to the mysteries of the Adamless Eden known as the league of professional women; from Mulberry Sellers to Joan of Arc, and from Edward the Sixth to Puddin'head Wilson, who wanted to kill his half of the deathless dog.
Nevada is forgiven its decay because he flashed the oddities of its zenith life on pages that endure. California is worth more than its gold, because he showed to men the heart under its swagger. He annexed the Sandwich Islands to the fun of the nation long before they were put under its flag. Because of him the Missouri and the Mississippi go not unvexed to the sea, for they ripple with laughter as they recall Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, poor Jim, and the Duke. Europe, Asia Minor, and Palestine are open doors to the world, thanks to this Pilgrim's Progress with his "Innocents Abroad." Purity, piety and pity shine out from "Prince and Pauper" like the eyes of a wondering deer on a torch-lighted night from a wooded fringe of mountain and of lake.
But enough of what I fear is already too much. In expressing my debt to him, I hope I express somewhat at least of yours. I cannot repay him in kind any more than I could rival him. None of us can. But we can render to him a return he would like. With him we can get our way to reality, and burn off pretence as acid eats its way to the denuded plate of the engraver. We can strip the veneer of convention from style, and strengthen our thought in his Anglo-Saxon well of English undefiled. We can drop seeming for sincerity. We can be relentless toward hypocrisy and tender to humanity. We can rejoice in the love of laughter, without ever once letting it lead us to libertinism of fancy. We can reach through humor the heart of man. We can make exaggeration the scourge of meanness and the magnifier of truth on the broad screen of life. By study of him, the nothing new under the sun can be made fresh and fragrant by the supreme art of putting things. Though none of us can handle his wand, all of us can be transformed by it into something different from and finer than our dull selves. That is our delight, that is our debt, both due to him, and long may he remain with us to brighten, to broaden and to better our souls with the magic mirth and with the mirthful magic of his incomparable spell. [Applause.]
REPRODUCTION OF MURAL DECORATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON
"PATRIOTISM"
Photo-engraving in colors after an original painting by George W. Maynard
This is from a series of eight panels, representing "The Virtues"—Fortitude, Justice, Patriotism, Courage, Temperance, Prudence, Industry, and Concord. Each figure is about five and a half feet high clad in drapery, and standing out on a solid red background. The style is Pompeiian, the general tone is some what like marble, but relieved by a touch of color. "Patriotism" is represented as feeding an eagle, the emblem of America, from a golden bowl, symbolizing the nourishment given by this Virtue to the spirit of the nation.