New York, Monday 29.1
Dear Eagle:
In your issue of the 24th inst, you called upon me, as upon a sort of Fountain-Head of Facts (an intimation which touched the very marrow of my ambition, and sent a thrill of ecstacy throughout my being), to pour out some truth upon the Quaker City muddle, which Captain Duncan and Mr. Griswold have lately stirred up between them, and thus so rectify and clarify that muddle, that the public can tell at a glance whether the Pilgrims behaved themselves properly or not during the progress of the recent excursion around the world.2
Briefly, then, the muddle had this shape: Captain Duncan declares that he witnessed ten-tenths of drunkenness from the time he sailed from New York until he got back again, and that the large proportion of nine-tenths of it was in his own ship. Mr. Griswold denies the truth of this statement.3 Of course the question simply is, which of the two gentlemen is right. I must decide that Mr. Griswold, in acknowledging that he saw one man intoxicated on board the Quaker City, more than proved Duncan to be right, as far as my own observations extended—for I was with the excursion throughout, and I do not just now remember having seen even one man intoxicated in Europe. So, Griswold’s one man is sufficient to make up Captain Duncan’s nine-tenths and something over, as far as my individual knowledge goes.
But it isn’t the dictionary meaning of the words we speak that must be weighed, in order to get at the absolute correctness or incorrectness of the statement, but the impression they convey.
Captain Duncan’s words were true, I think, but that prodigious nine-tenths business was bound to create the impression that there was a vast deal of drunkenness on board the Quaker City—and that was a very grave error. If Captain Duncan had simply said he saw ten men intoxicated in his ship in the course of five months, and one man intoxicated in Europe, it would have been a severer statement than the one he did make, but the impression left by the reading of it would have been infinitely more favorable to the ship’s company. Captain Duncan, without ever intending to do it, made the set language of an unimpeachable fact convey to the public mind that which was not by any means a fact. If Mr. Griswold had attacked the Captain on this ground, victory would have perched upon his banner. {I use this expression figuratively, and without any intention of conveying to the public the impression that Mr. Griswold carries a banner. But, then, the best intentioned language is such an unreliable vehicle for thought—as is amply shown in Captain Duncan’s case—that I prefer to take no chances, and therefore beg to withdraw that expression and say that if Mr. Griswold had followed the above line of argument, victory would have perched upon his umbrella. I am aware that Mr. Griswold carries an umbrella, at any rate.}
But do you know that even the baldest facts and figures, while stating a fact in every way creditable and complimentary to a man, can at the same time give him a most injurious reputation in the eyes of the public? For instance—imagine that I am taking the following extract from my note-book of the voyage:—
“At sea, August 14—Captain Duncan appeared at breakfast this morning entirely sober. Heaven be praised!
“At sea, August 18—Four days of forebodings and uneasiness. But at last Captain Duncan appeared at breakfast again, apparently entirely sober. Cheerfulness sat upon every countenance, and every heart was filled with thankfulness.
“At sea, August 24—The awful storm gradually abated, the thunder and the lightning ceased, and at midnight a great calm fell upon the sea. Throughout all these days of peril and distress, Capt Duncan has not once been in liquor. Oh, how grateful we ought to be! A movement is on foot to present him a silver dinner service when we shall have arrived in Rome.
“At sea, August 25—Nobody drunk to-day.
“At sea, August 26—Only one man drunk between seven bells and breakfast.
“At sea, September 10—It is said there was not a single case of absolute drunkenness in the whole ship yesterday. How much quieter and pleasanter the Sabbath is when all on board are sober.”
I could have put those items in my note-book and stated nothing but the plain truth. Yet, with the very best intentions, I could print all those high compliments to Captain Duncan, with no explanation attached, and ruin his reputation forever! They do not state that he was ever in liquor at all—the dictionary meanings of the words convey a positive fact—but the impression they leave behind conveys a positive untruth. Anybody that read them would gather the idea that Captain Duncan had a pretty general fashion of appearing at breakfast in a state of blooming and gorgeous intoxication. Anybody would gather that idea as surely as the Captain’s nine-tenths estimate would convey the idea that our dreadfully proper and patriarchal pilgrims were the victims of an elaborate system of intoxication, the like of which could not be found in all Europe! Yet Captain Duncan was never in liquor in his life, and intoxication among his passengers was very, very far from being general.
I merely reiterate that Capt. Duncan told the truth in words, but the words [didn’t ]convey it to the public. There are sixty-four more Quakers to be heard from, yet. I wish you would ask them to come forward and testify. Let us pour ink upon the troubled waters.
Yours,
Mark Twain.
P.S.—I am sorry, I am truly sorry to say that in Italy Capt. Duncan bought wine and drank it on board the [ship——], and it almost breaks my heart when I reflect that in all human probability it was his example that seduced the innocent passengers into getting intoxicated, and I almost shudder to think that he may have done it in order to create telling illustrations for his intended lecture before the Temperance League in Brooklyn, of which he is President. Oh, the thought is more than I can bear! Capt. Duncan offered wine to me—he tried to make even me fall with his horrid Italian intoxicating bowl—but my virtue was proof against his wiles. I sternly refused to taste it. I preferred the French article. So did Griswold.4
M. T.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Trouble among the Pilgrims.
The select band of pilgrims who under the guidance of the gallant
Captain Duncan made their way to the Holy Land and back, are
agitated by a cruel reflection on their sobriety, coming from no
less a person than the Captain himself. The pilgrimage was properly
an enterprise of Plymouth Church, the pastor of which was to have
been its spiritual leader and guide; but Mr. Beecher had his novel
to write and could not go, and because he did not go many of the
lambs of his fold who were prepared to follow the
sheph[e]rd to the ends of the earth backed out also. Some
three score of adventurous spirits however, stuck to Captain Duncan,
and sailed with him in the good ship Quaker City. When the pilgrims
came back there were many anxious friends ready to welcome them, and
anxious to hear how they fared, and to gratify their curiosity
Captain Duncan delivered a lecture at Plymouth Church. The captain,
like all old salts, is blunt of speech, and did not give a very good
account of the conduct of his fellow pilgrims. He said that some of
them were under the influence of liquor from the time the vessel
left New York until they returned. For a time the Captain remained
unanswered, and the pilgrims were given up as a bad lot. But on
Sunday last, Brother Griswold, a pilgrim and a Plymouth churchman,
delivered a lecture on the pilgrimage, repelled the
Captain’s accusation, and bore testimony to the general
sobriety of his fellow pilgrims; the only exception being a
gentleman afflicted with consumption who drank under medical advice.
Correspondents have taken the question up, and it is getting to be a
very pretty quarrel as it stands. Captain Duncan is going to return
to the charge in the lecture room, so is Griswold,—there
is an indefinite prospect of lectures and correspondence on this
momentous question. Mark Twain is the man to settle the point, let
us hear from him. Mark has compared the excursion to a funeral, only
wanting the corpse to complete the resemblance. This however, throws
no light on the grave question, did the Pilgrims keep sober? It is
the custom with some people, to hold wakes on funeral occasions and
to drown their grief in mountain dew. Was it a funeral of this sort?
Let us hear from Twain. Stephen M. Griswold (1835–1916) was a prominent member of
Plymouth Church. Raised on a farm in Connecticut, he moved to Brooklyn
while still a young man and took a job in a grocery store, then in a
jewelry business. In 1857 he opened his own jewelry store in Brooklyn,
which he ran until his death. In 1885 he was elected to the state
senate, and in later years served as the president of the Union Bank of
Brooklyn (“Ex-Senator Stephen M. Griswold,” New
York Times, 3 June 1916, 13). In 1909, Clemens
commented on a photograph of Griswold used as the frontispiece to his
Sixty Years with Plymouth Church:
“Here is the real old familiar Plymouth-Church
self-complacency of 40 years ago. It is the way God looks when He has
had a successful season” (SLC 1909).
It seems that the Pilgrims though temperance men
were unable to subdue their Yankee curiosity and tasted the
wines of the countries they visited.... Duncan’s
opinion of Italian wines will be interesting to connoisseurs,
while Griswold can tell us why he preferred French wines. A
discussion on the relative merits of French and Italian wines
between two thorough-going temperance men, like Duncan and
Griswold, would be very entertaining.... Some preferred Italian,
some French wines, and some of them, perhaps, preferred their
native Bourbon. But why quarrel about it? (“Did the
Pilgrims Drink?” Brooklyn Eagle, 31 Dec 67, 2) No doubt Duncan thought he would have the last word on this matter
when, on 2 January 1868, the Eagle published
this letter (Charles C. Duncan 1868):
To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:
I have read Mark Twain’s last in
to-day’s Eagle, and am of
opinion that when that letter was written
Mark Twain was sober. Yours, truly, Brooklyn, December 31, 1867. But Mark Twain took his revenge in chapter 10 of The Innocents Abroad (see 21 and 29 June; 1, 3, and 5 July
67 to JLC and family, n. 7).
C. C. Duncan.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L2, 139–143; none known except the copy-text.
Provenance:Clemens’s MS is not known to survive.
Emendations and textual notes:
didn’t • did’nt
ship—— • ship ——
