No letters written between 21 and 27 December have been found. On 22 or 23 December, Clemens, possibly accompanied by Olivia, went to New York for the one hundredth performance of the Gilded Age play, registering at the Hoffman House, where the Clemenses had stayed in mid-September during preparations for the play’s New York debut. Also in New York for the occasion were Mrs. Langdon and the Cranes, all of whom registered at the Windsor Hotel on 22 December, having come either from Hartford or Elmira (“Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 22 Dec 74, 3; “Personal Intelligence,” New York Herald, 24 Dec 74, 4). The performance on the evening of 23 December, “one of the notable events of the week,” included a curtain speech by Mark Twain as an advertised added attraction. There was “a supper for the privileged few,” and mementos, provided by local merchants, were given to the audience: for the men, rosebud boutonnieres, and for the women, “Satin Programmes,” “Bouquets de Corsage,” and the “celebrated ‘Sellers’ Eye-Water,’ a perfume of rare fragrance” (“Amusements”: New York Evening Express, 21 Dec 74, 2; New York Herald, 23 Dec 74, 2; “Park Theatre”: New York Times, 23 Dec 74, 4; New York Evening Post, New York Evening Express, 24 Dec 74, 2).
The Times gave a full account of the speeches that Clemens and Raymond made at the conclusion of the penultimate act. Clemens said:
Ladies and Gentlemen: I thank you for this call, for it gives me an opportunity to testify my appreciation of the vast compliment which the Metropolis has paid to Mr. Raymond and me in approving of our efforts to the very substantial extent of filling this house for us a hundred nights in succession. After such praise as this from the first city in the land it would be useless for me to try to pretend that we are not feeling a good deal “set up,” so I shall not pretend anything of the kind. We feel a good deal vainer than anybody would want to confess. [Laughter] I learned through the newspapers that I was to make a speech here to-night, and so I went hard to work, as I always do, to try and do the very best I possibly could on this occasion. I was determined to do it; I went at it faithfully, but when I came to look critically into this matter I found that I shouldered a pretty heavy contract. [Laughter] I found I shouldered a very heavy contract because there is only one topic that is proper to be discussed on this platform at this time, and that is this play and these actors and all the success which this play has met. Very well, that is an excellent subject—for somebody else. [Laughter] It is right for an outsider, or for somebody not connected with the concern, but for me, the dramatist, to praise these actors of mine, to praise this play of mine, and this success of ours—that would not come gracefully from me. There would be a little egotism in it. Neither can I criticise and abuse the actors, for I don’t want to. I could abuse the play, but I have better judgment, [laughter and applause,] and I cannot praise these actors of mine right here in their hearing and before their faces, for that would make anybody with flesh and blood unhappy, and, indeed, to praise them would be like praising the members of my own family and glorifying the lady who does our washing. [Laughter] And the more I think of this matter, the more I see the difficulty of the position, until I find myself in a condition I once experienced. [Mr. Twain here recited from his published work, Roughing It, the sketch, “A Genuine Mexican Plug,” in a spirit of dry humor which convulsed the audience with laughter. The incident referred to was his unhappy experience with a Mexican horse, in which he came to grief.] Through that adventure, he continued, through that misfortune I lost the faculty of speech; for twenty-four hours I was absolutely speechless, and this is the second time that that has occurred. [Applause.]
Mr. John T. Raymond, the Col. Sellers of the piece, was loudly called before the curtain. He quickly appeared with the expression of Sellers when proclaiming a prospective gain of millions, and his manner provoked much merriment. He said:
Ladies and Gentlemen: After acting one hundred nights in this house, I don’t feel like playing a new part and playing it badly, which I certainly should if I attempted to say I was not very much pleased at the reception you have given me. It is not a very grateful or easy task to try to be funny or witty, after Mr. Twain, but any man would be happy, on such an occasion as this, and after what you have done for me, why should I not be happy? I want to thank you for a great many things, but especially for your constant appreciation of my efforts to please. Of one thing I can assure you: that Mr. Twain’s play would not have amounted to much if he had not found a man to act the part and other men to appreciate it. [Laughter] (That was such a success I don’t know what next to say.) [A laugh.] But I want to thank you over and over again for your kind recognition of our labors. The success of this piece is due to the management of the theatre, and I beg here to publicly thank Messrs. Stuart and Fulton for their efforts to do everything toward the success of the play. [Applause.] The little Park Theatre is now one of the institutions of the City, and I am heartily glad of it for Mr. Stuart’s sake. He deserves it, and I trust that Col. Sellers will be one of the institutions of your country; and if the people of the United States treat me half as well as you have done I am perfectly satisfied it will be all right. Once more let me thank you. Let me extend my sincere acknowledgments to the genius who conceived the character of Col. Sellers, to the generous public who have welcomed it, and to the press which has recognized so liberally all our efforts to give proper effect to American character and place it on a self-sustaining basis. [Applause.]
Mr. Raymond was retiring when a bottle of Col. Sellers’ famous Oriental Optical Eye-water was presented to him. He took it and said: “Take it internally, externally, and eternally, and there is millions in it.” [Laughter and applause.]
Mr. Stuart, the manager, was also called for, but did not appear, and the performance then continued. (“The One Hundredth Representation of ‘The Gilded Age,’” 24 Dec 74, 4; reprinted in the Hartford Courant, 25 Dec 74, 2)
The Tribune called Clemens’s address “a characteristic speech, full of shrewdness and quizzical humor,” but said nothing about Raymond’s (“Park Theater,” 24 Dec 74, 4). The Evening Post remarked that Raymond “made a neat little speech, and Mark Twain kept the audience laughing with one of his humorous stories” (“Park Theatre,” 24 Dec 74, 2). But the Evening Express reported that “Mark Twain was called upon, and made a disjointed, irrelevant speech, in which he rehearsed one of the anecdotes from ‘Roughing It.’ Mr. Raymond made another speech that was much cleverer” (“Park Theatre,” 24 Dec 74, 2). And the Herald doubtless irritated Clemens by observing:
The performance last night was signalized by the appearance of Mark Twain in the character of the author. It was expected that he would make a long speech, but he contented himself with a very short address and the repetition of his “Bucking” story from “Roughing It.” It would have been a graceful act on the part of Mr. Twain to have publicly acknowledged his indebtedness to his co-laborer in the dramatization of the “Gilded Age,” Mr. Dinsmore, but the opportunity was let slip. It, therefore, becomes the duty of the press to call public attention to the fact that the first dramatization of “The Gilded Age” was made by a Californian newspaper writer named Dinsmore, and that the present play is but a modification of his work. It is due to Mr. Twain to say that some money compensation was given to Mr. Dinsmore in payment for his part of the work; but we consider that his partnership in the creation of the play should be publicly acknowledged.
The newspaper concluded by noting that Raymond was “demanded, and, on making his appearance, was loudly cheered,” and in response “made a few modest remarks” (“The Park Theatre,” 24 Dec 74, 5).
On 24 December Clemens called on a celebrity guest at the Windsor Hotel—Hawaiian King David Kalakaua, who had arrived the previous day for several days of sight-seeing in New York. When asked by a reporter if Clemens’s lectures faithfully portrayed “the manners and mode of life of the islanders,” Kalakaua replied:
Mark Twain’s writings and lectures were a blending of fact and fiction. He was a clever humorist, and had burlesqued some things, while he had truthfully described others. He had met Mark Twain on the islands several years ago, before the latter had become famous as a humorist.
The King was asked whether the pen-portrait of Minister Harris, a member of the Cabinet of a former King, was true to life. The King laughed, and replied that Mr. Harris was a tall, angular, rather awkward, but good-hearted, well-meaning man. He knew of no personal feeling between Mark Twain and Mr. Harris, and judged it was the humorist’s love of burlesque which had led him to seize upon the figure of Mr. Harris as a good subject for sport. (“The King’s Impressions of America,” New York Tribune, 24 Dec 74, 1)
Clemens had met Kalakaua, then grand chamberlain to King Kamehameha V, in Honolulu in April 1866. He had written scornfully about Charles C. Harris in his Sacramento Union letters from Hawaii that year, in Roughing It in 1872, and in his letter in the New York Tribune of 9 January 1873 (see L1 , 334–35; L5 , 570–72; RI 1993 , 463–64, 718). Now he “induced the King to defer his departure from the city and accept an invitation to see ‘The Gilded Age’ at the Park Theatre Tuesday evening” (New York World: “Our Royal Guest,” 24 Dec 74, 1; “Royalty in New York,” 25 Dec 74, 5; “The City’s Guest,” 27 Dec 74, 1; see 29 Dec 74 to Kalakauaclick to open link).
Later on 24 December the entire Clemens party traveled to Hartford for their Christmas celebrations.