28 November 1873 • London, England (MS and transcript: CtHMTH and NN-B, UCCL 00990)
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 Ⓐemendationnobility say), & make my deposit there.1explanatory note
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.2explanatory note
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.3explanatory note
Yes—I’m to be at the Salutation Saturday night & shall be precisely the reverse of sorry to meet you there.4explanatory note
With kind regards to you all (ask Mrs. Fitz Gibbon if she does not think it is nothing against Miss Florence Stark5explanatory note that she resembles Mrs. Clemens?)
enclosure, page 1 in SLC’s hand: 6explanatory note
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 Ⓐemendationthe 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Ⓐemendation, 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.”7explanatory note
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 rise 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.8explanatory note
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: 9explanatory note 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!10explanatory note
Fitzgibbon’s letter is not known to survive. The “subscription paper” was probably a fund-raising device for the Scottish Corporation (see the next note). No record of any contribution from Clemens has been found.
Clemens was planning to attend a dinner on Monday, 1 December, commemorating the 209th anniversary of the Scottish Corporation, a benevolent society that provided pensions, allowances, and school grants for needy Scots in London. He went to the dinner after giving his eight o’clock lecture at the Hanover Square Rooms, and he responded to the toast to “The Ladies.” According to the London Times, he “returned thanks in a characteristic and most humorous speech, which was loudly and repeatedly cheered” (“St. Andrew’s Day” and “The Scottish Hospital,” London Times, 2 Dec 73, 5, 10; Weinreb and Hibbert, 777; for Clemens’s earlier toast on “Woman,” see L2 , 155–57). The London Morning Post published the speech on Tuesday, evidently from notes taken by its reporter (“Scottish Corporation of London,” 2 Dec 73, 6, clipping in Scrapbook 12:33, CU-MARK). The text in the Post was reprinted by an unidentified London newspaper, a clipping of which Clemens ultimately used as printer’s copy for the speech in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (SLC 1875). Although he labeled the clipping “{From the London Observer.},” the Observer did not in fact publish it (TxU-Hu).
No printing of the speech based on any of these copies has been found.
The day after he wrote this letter, Clemens attended a celebration given by the St. Andrew’s Society of London, presided over by Tom Hood at the Salutation Tavern. The Hartford Courant, evidently reprinting an unidentified English newspaper, reported:
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)
Unidentified. Stark is also mentioned in two other letters to Fitzgibbon: 5 Oct 72 and 30 Dec 73.
The enclosure is comprised of two pages in Clemens’s hand, ten pages in Charles Warren Stoddard’s hand, and two in an unidentified hand. Clemens presumably recruited help from Stoddard and an amanuensis to create multiple copies of the text. Fitzgibbon’s notes on the first and last pages of the manuscript indicate that he intended to publish it, probably in the newspaper for which he corresponded, the Darlington Northern Echo. It did not, however, appear there. At the beginning of the text he noted, “[Mark Twain responded for the Ladies.] He said—”. See also note 10.
The first two lines of Isaac Watts’s “Against Quarrelling and Fighting,” in Divine Songs (1715). Watts was one of Clemens’s perennial targets (ET&S1, 236, 237, 471, 472).
Clemens alluded to the following in his romp through history: Princess Alexandra (1844–1925), the eldest daughter of Christian IX of Denmark, who in 1863 married Prince Albert Edward, Queen Victoria’s eldest son and heir to the throne; Joan of Arc (1412–31); Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo on 18 June 1815; Sappho, a Greek poetess born on Lesbos in about 600 b.c.; King David of Israel (d. 973? b.c.), the “sweet singer of Israel”; Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519); Cleopatra (69–30 b.c.); George III (1738–1820), crowned king of England in 1760; Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832); Robert Bruce (1274–1329), hero of the Scottish War of Independence; Robert Burns (1759–96); Sir William Wallace (1272–1305), patriot and soldier in the Scottish War of Independence; Ben Nevis and Ben Lomond, mountains in Scotland; Benjamin Disraeli (see 20 Nov 73 to OLC, n. 2click to open link); the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1–13); Marie Joséphine (1763–1814), the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and empress of France; Semiramis (ninth century b.c.), a celebrated queen of Assyria; Sairey Gamp, the disreputable old nurse in Dickens’s Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44), which Clemens had read by November 1860 ( L1 , 104–5); Grace Horsley Darling (1815–42), who in 1838 helped her father, the keeper of a Farne Islands lighthouse, to rescue several shipwreck victims clinging to a rock and for her heroic deed was awarded a gold medal and £800; and Florence Nightingale (1820–1910).
The words now on page 12½ were first jotted down, by the unidentified amanuensis, underneath Fitzgibbon’s remarks on page 13 (see the next note), presumably to record that they were missing from the composite text. He then reinscribed them on a new page, numbered it 12½, and inserted it here.
Immediately after Clemens’s “Amen!” Fitzgibbon added, “(General cheering in the midst of which Mr Clemens resumed his seat.).”
MS, Cyril Clemens Collection, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH), is copy-text for the letter. No enclosure survives with the letter, but a manuscript that is clearly one of several copies prepared for the occasion, and might well have been the one enclosed, is in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B), and is copy-text for the enclosure. It comprises two MS pages in Clemens’s hand, and twelve pages of transcription, ten in the hand of Charles Warren Stoddard and two in an unidentified hand. One other page from Clemens’s original MS survives in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR); it is numbered ‘4’ and contains the text for ‘(and ... how,’ (488.34–489.3), with no significant variants.
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.
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.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
MS is copy-text for ‘Friday ... noticed’ (487.1–488.21)
Transcript is copy-text for ‘& ... of’ (488.22–490.23)