To
George H. Fitzgibbon
28 November 1873 • London, England
(MS and transcript: CtHMTH and NN-B, UCCL 00990)
Friday.
My Dear F Mr. Fitz Gibbon—
Thank you ever so much for your timely hints & suggestions. I shall make good use of them. I shall “lay” for that subscription paper & make my paper (as [ we the ]nobility say), & make my deposit there.1
And I have gone to work & written a speech for the occasion in order to be on the safe side (I enclose a copy.) It is not lost labor, even if I am not called upon, or even if I find it best to curtail it like e◇ sin in the delivery, because it will easily find room in a future volume of Sketches as the impromptu speech which I intended to make.2
It will take me just ten minutes to deliver this speech (I have timed it,) but I do not know how to shorten it—every time I try, I only lengthen it.
I know Mr. Russel, editor of the Scotsman, very well, & I like him. My wife & I spent a day or so very delightfully at his country house near Edinburgh last summer. I know all of them. Finlay, proprietor of the Belfast “Northern Whig” is one of the closest friends I have. He is Russel’s son-in-law. I would send him a copy of this speech to publish next morning “by telegraph” if I knew I was going to deliver it. Good advertisement, as I may possibly lecture in Belfast. You see, ◇ be the speech good, bad, or indifferent, I would like it to be published in full in as many papers as possible, because of its advertising qualities. If you have
I shall have my Secretary make several copies, & I will carry them with me Monday night, so that if you see a reporter who would use the MS., we will let him have it—& welcome.3
Yes—I’m to be at the Salutation Saturday night & shall be precisely the reverse of sorry to meet you there.4
With kind regards to you all (ask Mrs. Fitz Gibbon if she does not think it is nothing against Miss Florence Stark5 that she resembles Mrs. Clemens?)
Ys Ever
S. L. Clemens
[enclosure, page 1 in SLC’s hand:] 6
I am
I am proud indeed of the distinction of being chosen to
respond to this especial toast—“to the
ladies”—or to Woman, if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is
certainly the older, & therefore the more entitled to reverence: I
have noticed [page 2, in
unidentified hand:] & probably you may have noticed that
the bible with that plain blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
characteristic of the Scriptures is careful to never even refer to the
illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a
“lady”
It is odd but I think you
will find that it is so. I am peculiarly proud of this honour because I think
that the toast of women should by right & every rule of gallantry
take precedence of all others—of the Army the Navy of even royalty
itself perhaps though the latter is not necessary this day & in this
land for the reason that tacitly you do drink a broad general health to all good
women when you drink to the health of the [page 3, in Stoddard’s hand:] Queen of
England and the Princess of Wales.
I have in mind a poem, just now, which is familiar to you all, familiar to every body. And what an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast [recals ]the verses to all our minds), where the most noble, the most gracious, the purest and sweetest of all poets says, “Woman, O Woman—er—Wom—” however you remember the lines.
And you remember how feelingly, how daintily, [page 4, in Stoddard’s hand:] how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere breath, mere words.
And you call to mind, now, as I speak, how the poet with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this beautiful child of his [page 5, in Stoddard’s hand:] heart and his brain over to the trials and the sorrows that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the Earth; and how the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe, so wild, so regretful, so full of mournful retrospection,—the lines run thus: “Alas! Alas!—a—Alas!— — —Alas!—[”] and so on. I do not remember the rest. But taken altogether it seems to me that that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has ever [page 6, in Stoddard’s hand:] brought forth; and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poets matchless words.
The phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. And you shall find the whole world joining you [page 7, in Stoddard’s hand:] heart and hand. Who was more patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah, you remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal-wave of grief swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo.—Who does not sorrow for the loss of Sappho the sweet singer of Israel? Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, [page 8, in Stoddard’s hand:] the softening influences, the humble piety, of Lucretia Borgia?
Who can join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress, when he can look back and call to mind our simple and [lowly], Mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the Highland costume?
Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been poets. As long as language lives, [page 9, in Stoddard’s hand:] the name of Cleopatra will live. And not because she conquered George III., but because she wrote those divine lines,
“Let dogs delight to bark &
bite
For
God
hath
made
them
so.”7
The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of our own sex, some of them sons of St Andrew, too,—Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis, the gifted Ben Lomond, & the great new Scotchman Ben Disraeli. [page 10, in Stoddard’s hand:]
Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain ranges of sublime women. The Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey Gamp—the list is endless.
But I will not call the mighty roll—the names ris[e] up in your own memories at the mere [page 11, in Stoddard’s hand:] memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes.
Suffice it for our pride and our honour that we in our day have added to it such names as those of Grace Darling & Florence Nightingale.8
Woman is all that she should be: gentle, patient, long-suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of [page 12, in Stoddard’s hand:] generous impulses. It is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend the friendless,—in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune that knock at its hospitable door. And when I say God bless her, [page 12½ (inserted), in unidentified hand:] 9 there is none here present who has known the enobling affection of [page 13, in SLC’s hand:] a wife or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say Amen!10
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
One of the guests of the evening was Mr. Clemens,
better known under the nom de plume of Mark Twain. The chairman gave
the toast of the evening in appropriate terms, and Mark Twain in the
course of his reply to the toast of “The
Guests” said: I feel singularly at home in this Scotch
society. I have spent so much time in Scotland that everything
connected with Scotland is familiar to me. Last summer I passed five
weeks in that magnificent city of Edinburgh, resting. I needed rest,
and I did rest. I did not know anybody. I did not take any letters
of introduction at all. I simply rested and enjoyed myself. From my
experience of the Scotch everything belonging to them is familiar,
the language, the peculiarities of expression, even the technical
things that are national, are simple household words with me. I
remember when in Edinburgh I was nearly always taken for a
Scotchman. Oh, yes! (Laughter.) I had my clothes some part colored
tartan, and I rather enjoyed being taken for a Scotchman. I stuck a
big feather in my cap, too, and the people would follow me for
miles. They thought I was a Highlander, and some of the best judges
in Scotland said they had never seen a Highland costume like mine.
What’s more, one of those judges fined me for wearing
it—out of mere envy, I suppose. (Laughter.) But any man
may have a noble, good time in Scotland if they only think
he’s a native. (Laughter.) For breakfast you may have
oatmeal poultice—I beg pardon, I mean porridge.
(Laughter.) Then for dinner you may have fine Scotch
game—the blackcock, the spatchcock, the woodcock, the
moorcock. I have simply to return to you my acknowledgments, and to
apologize for not being able to make a speech; but give me fair
play, and certainly I can make a speech that will astonish anybody
and nobody more than myself. (Laughter.) My present position is a
national one, if I may be regarded as representing the United States
of America. On that side of the Atlantic there are 40,000,000 of
people. They may be respectable, and I will say in conclusion that I
do hope “a brother American” will soon cease
to be simply a phrase meaning nothing, but will by and by become a
reality, when Great Britain and the citizens of America will be
brethren indeed. (Cheers.) (SLC 1873)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L5, 487–492; AAA/Anderson 1934, lot 127; Parke-Bernet 1946, lot 88, excerpts from the letter only. The
enclosed MS has never been published, but a verbatim text of the speech as
delivered by Clemens was published in “Scottish Corporation of
London,” London Morning Post, 2 Dec 73, 6.
Later texts apparently derived from it or another verbatim transcription:
“Mark Twain on Woman,” Hornet,
13 Dec 73, clipping in Scrapbook 12:43, 45, CU-MARK; “Mark Twain’s Best,”
San Francisco Illustrated Press 2 (Sept 74): 29;
SLC 1875, 213–14; MTS 1910, 94–98; MTS 1923, 42–45; Fatout 1976, 78–80; Budd 1992, 559–61.
Provenance:The letter MS, owned at one time by Charles Retz (New York), later belonged
to Edmund W. Evans, Jr. (of Oil City, Pennsylvania), who offered it for sale
in April 1934. It was again offered for sale in 1946, when it was apparently
the property of W. W. Cohen. Cyril Clemens donated it to CtHMTH in 1984. The enclosure was
owned by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr.
A. A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.
Emendations and textual notes:
we the • w ‸th‸e
recals • recals ‸recals‸ [corrected miswriting]
lowly • lolwly lowly [corrected miswriting]
