Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Charles Dudley Warner
3? January 1874 • London, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 11879)

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[in top margin:]

{

Northern Whig.
Belfast, Ireland.

[in left margin:] I can’t get halls in Ireland on dates that are satisfactory—lose too much time—so I don’t lecture in Ireland at all.—Mark. 1

MARK TWAIN.

We regret to learn that in consequence of other engage-
ments Mr. S. L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”) has been com-
pelled to relinquish the intention of giving his now cele-
brated “lecture” in Belfast, prior to his return to America
on the 13th inst. The people of Belfast have missed a
great enjoyment, for Mr. Clemens’s “lecture” is perfectly
unique, and is one of the most singular,
most [homurous] and most exhilarating discourses
that can be imagined.2 It is, in point of fact, impossible
to form, without having heard him, an adequate conception
of the steady deliberate gravity with which Mark Twain for
an hour and a half pours out an even stream of jokes, and
stories, and ludicrous phrases, his [countenence ] remaining
stonily impassive, whilst his auditors are shaking and
screaming with laughter. Hardly changing his position,
never moving the muscles of his face, speaking in a tone
which is almost melancholy, with what the French call
“tears in his voice” when he is saying the fun-
niest things, the lecturer is the only person in
the room who preserves a semblance of gravity or
maintains any personal dignity. The closest attention
is demanded from the audience, for often the finest bits
of humour and the best hits are quietly dropped out
parenthetically, as if the speaker either wasn’t aware there
was any fun in them or didn’t notice it himself. [Hearing ]
Mark Twain’s lecture is a perfect cure for low spirits,
and as a hearty good laugh is a very good thing alike for
body and mind, we are sorry that, for the present at any
rate, our readers are not to have a call from Mr. Clemens
on his way home. His visit to England, we may mention,
was not made with the object of giving lectures, but to
secure, by personal residence, the copyright of a new novel,
“The Gilded Age,” which has just been issued in London.3
It is announced, as written by Mark Twain and Charles
Dudley Warner, conjointly, and deals with phases of
American society. Its aim and scope are indicated in the
following preface:—

In America nearly every man has his dream, his pet
scheme, whereby he is to advance himself socially or pe-
cuniarily. It is this all-pervading speculativeness which
we have tried to illustrate in “The Gilded Age.” It is a
characteristic which is both bad and good for both the
individual and the nation. Good, because it allows
neither to stand still, but drives both for ever on, toward
some point or other which is a-head, not behind nor at
one side. Bad, because the chosen point is often badly
chosen, and then the individual is wrecked; the aggregation
of such cases affects the nation, and so is bad for the nation.
Still, it is a trait which it is of course better for a people
to have and sometimes suffer from than to be without.
We have also touched upon one sad feature, and it is one
which we found little pleasure in handling. That is the
shameful corruption which lately crept into our politics,
and in a handful of years has spread until the pollution
has affected some portion of every State and every Terri-
tory in the Union. But I have a great strong faith in a
noble future for my country. A vast majority of the
people are straightforward and honest; and this late state
of things is stirring them to action. If it would only
keep on stirring them until it became the habit of their lives
to attend to the politics of the country personally, and
put only their very best men into positions of trust and
authority! That day will come. Our improvement has
already begun. Mr. Tweed (whom Great Britain fur-
nished to us), after laughing at our laws and courts for a
good while, has at last been sentenced to thirteen years’
imprisonment, with hard labour. It is simply bliss to
think of it. It will be at least two years before any
governor will dare to pardon him out, too. A great New
York judge, who continued a vile, a shameless career,
season after season, defying the legislature and sneering
at the newspapers, was brought low at last, stripped of his
dignities, and by public sentence debarred from ever again
holding any office of honour or profit in the State. An-
other such judge (furnished to us by Great Britain) had
the grace to break his heart and die in the palace built
with his robberies when he saw the same blow preparing
for his own head and sure to fall upon it.4

Mark Twain.

The Langham Hotel, London, Dec. 11th, 1873.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens had planned a lecture tour to northern England, Scotland, and Ireland (Belfast, Dublin, and Cork) for late December and early January. By 30 December he had limited the tour to Leicester and Liverpool, having found that every “hall & theatre is full of holiday shows” (L5, 539). Francis Dalzell Finlay was proprietor of the Belfast Northern Whig. Clemens met him in Belfast in August 1873, in November called him “one of the closest friends I have” (L5, 487), and in December hosted him in London. Finlay probably wrote the following article—which the Northern Whig published on 2 January—and sent Clemens this clipping. Clemens knew that Warner would be interested in the comments on The Gilded Age and might have sent the clipping to him as early as 3 January. The original, inscribed clipping is too large to be reproduced here in photofacsimile, and is therefore simulated in a line-by-line resetting (L5, 432, 470 n. 27, 518, 523, 529).

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2 Clemens began his second English lecture series on 1 December with his popular “Sandwich Islands” talk. On 8 December he switched to “Roughing It on the Silver Frontier,” which was equally well received (L5, 492, 496–98).

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3 George Routledge and Sons issued The Gilded Age in three volumes on 22 December 1873. Clemens’s residence in England at the time of publication—which had to precede or be simultaneous with the publication of the American edition—secured the Routledges a valid British copyright (L5, 416, 418, 421 n. 2, 532 n. 2).

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4 Clemens alluded to William M. Tweed, George G. Barnard, and John H. McCunn (see L5, 572 n. 16, 644 nn. 1, 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). Clemens wrote his note on a clipping from the Belfast Northern Whig, 2 Jan 74, 3.

glyph Previous publication: L6, 4–7.

glyph Provenance:donated in January 1950 by Mary Barton of Hartford, a close friend of the Warners’, who had owned it since at least 1938.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

homurous • [sic]

countenence • [sic]

Hearing • [sic]