5 December 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (Hartford Evening Post, 6 Dec 72, UCCL 11892)
to the editor of the post:1explanatory note—Mayor Hall appears to be coming to the surface as frequently &Ⓐemendation as persistently, now, as if he had never been in disgrace & glad to hide his despised head. The hardihood of this creature is beyond comprehension. Out of a jury of twelve men, seven are of the opinion that he is an oath-breaker & a thief; all men, in their secret hearts believe him to be an oath-breaker & a thief. And one thing is certain—a long black list of robberies which he could have prevented by withholding his signature he did not so prevent. If he knew these bills were frauds, he was a knave; if he failed to know it, he was a fool. I wonder which character he prefers?2explanatory note
Very well. When a distinguished English historian is coming over to visit us, who is it that pushes himself forward to receive him publicly? Longfellow?—Bryant?—Holmes? No—this precious Mayor Hall.3explanatory note When Stanley discovers Livingstone, England does him honor through some graceful personal attentions from the queen of the empire. When he arrives here do we vie with a foreign nation in appreciation of our citizen, & call upon the most exalted personage in the land to smoke a friendly cigar with him & say, “Well done, lad?” Oh, no—we take a pair of tongs & lead out our uncanny Mayor Hall & have him extend the people’s welcome.4explanatory note When the great editor dies & the nation mourns, do we select a gentleman to convey to the chief magistrate of the union the public desire that he shall honor himself & the dead with his presence at the funeral? Not at all. We permit our fragrant Mayor Hall, freely & unsnubbed, to crawl out of his sewer & insult the president of the United States, both in the language of the invitation & the source from whence it emanates.5explanatory note
Just once, the people rose up & pushed this creature aside & saved us a national shame. Otherwise he would have stepped out from among the foul ring of New York thieves & offered the insult of his welcome to the son of an emperor who has always honored & befriended us. And it was fortunate for Mayor Hall that he was snubbed into inaction at that time; for the people were not in a patient mood, then, & if he had ventured to thrust himself & his speech upon the nation’s imperial guest his face would have become a public spitton in fifteen minutes by the watch.6explanatory note
Is there no keeping this piece of animated putridity in the background? If the Second Advent shall transpire in our times, will he step forward, hat in hand, &——. But of course the man is equal to anything.
Hartford, Dec. 5.
Clemens may have directed this semi-anonymous letter to the Post because Orion had recently obtained a position on the editorial staff (25 Sept 72 to OLC, n. 11click to open link). The editor in chief at this time was probably Henry Thompson Sperry (1837–1912), part owner of the newspaper and president of the Evening Post Association. Sperry was certainly the editor by July 1873, and had presumably held the post since July 1872, when Isaac Hill Bromley (1833–98) resigned. It is not known if Sperry and Clemens were personally acquainted (Trumbull, 1:611; Geer: 1872, 37, 124, 290; 1873, 127, 293; “Editorial Announcement,” Hartford Evening Post, 16 July 72, 2).
Abraham Oakey Hall (1826–98) overcame early poverty, earning the money for his education by writing for newspapers. He attended the University of the City of New York and Harvard law school, and received further training in law offices in New York and New Orleans. In 1851 he was admitted to the New York bar; that same year he was appointed assistant district attorney of New York County. He served as district attorney from 1855 to 1858 and again from 1862 to 1868, gaining a reputation as an energetic and effective prosecutor. In 1864 he became a member of New York’s powerful Tammany Hall, and, through its influence and his association with William (“Boss”) Tweed and the Tweed Ring, became mayor in 1868 and was easily reelected in 1870. Literate, social, and meticulous in dress, he was known as “Elegant Oakey.” In July 1871 the New York Times began to escalate its campaign to expose Hall’s corrupt administration, charging that the city’s debt had ballooned while Hall rubber-stamped millions of dollars of fraudulent bills submitted by Tammany contractors. The Times’s daily attacks were reinforced by Thomas Nast’s scathing cartoons in Harper’s Weekly. A committee of outraged citizens demanded Hall’s resignation in November 1871. An attempt to prosecute him ended in March 1872 in a mistrial, when one of the jurors died. His retrial in October 1872 resulted in another mistrial, with five jurors voting for acquittal and seven for conviction. Hall maintained his innocence throughout, claiming to have authorized payments without questioning their validity and without fraudulent intent. He was tried again on similar charges in December 1873 and was found innocent, but his political career was ended. Clemens had previously commented on the Tweed Ring’s depredations in a satirical article written for the New York Tribune in September 1871, “The Revised Catechism,” in which “St. Hall’s Garbled Reports” were cited as prized texts “for the training of the young” in the new municipal morality (SLC 1871; see Vogelback 1955). He apparently soon concluded that Hall was more “fool” than “knave”: in a burlesque of Tammany frauds in chapter 33 of The Gilded Age, he stated, “The controller and the board of audit passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal, signed them” (SLC 1873–74, 303; “The Committee of Seventy Demands Mayor Hall’s Resignation,” New York Tribune, 29 Nov 71, 1; New York Herald: “Second Trial of Mayor Hall,” 24 Oct 72, 4; “Mayor Hall’s Trial—The Lessons of the Past,” 2 Nov 72, 7; “A. Oakey Hall Is Dead,” New York Times, 8 Oct 98, 1; Paine 1904, 140–46, 166–76; Hershkowitz, 177–84, 209, 217, 222–23).
James Anthony Froude (1818–94) arrived in the United States on 9 October 1872 on a lecture tour connected with the publication of the first volume of The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols., 1872–74). The Lotos Club, whose members reputedly “watched the wharves for the arrival of distinguished strangers from Europe” (Elderkin, 13), honored him with a reception on 12 October. Mayor Hall, who served as president of the club from 1870 until May 1872 (when Whitelaw Reid succeeded him), was one of several speakers. He referred facetiously to the welcome accorded Froude by the city and suggested:
If he will take a walk to-morrow perhaps we will get him up a few first-class street brawls. I have the authority of The Tribune for saying that street brawls on Sunday are very common. [Laughter.] I may say in passing, and I believe it to be so, Tribune or no, that there is no such thing as murder in this city. We have street brawls and homicides and misadventures, but old-fashioned grudge murder we hand over to London and Boston. (“James Anthony Froude. Reception by the Lotos Club,” New York Tribune, 14 Oct 72, 5)
Members and guests at the reception included John Bigelow (1817–1911), former U.S. minister to France; Samuel J. Tilden (1814–86), chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee; David G. Croly of the New York World; William C. Church of the Galaxy; Edward Eggleston; Bret Harte; John Hay; Josiah Holland; Joaquin Miller; and Edmund Yates. On 29 October the New York Times referred to the occasion:
The manager of the Tribune Whitelaw Reid and Mayor Hall were the principal “speakers” at a thing called a “reception,” recently foisted upon Mr. Froude at an obscure “club” in this City. Hall and Greeley’s representative are samples of Reformers on the Greeley-Fenton pattern. Probably Mr. Froude never found himself in such company before, but he is expert at whitewashing, and he will have plenty of room for his skill in the objects which he met at the “club” alluded to. (“‘Reform,’” 1)
Reuben E. Fenton (1819–85), U.S. senator from New York, was one of the leaders of the anti-Grant faction. The Times’s allusion to Froude’s skill at “white-washing” probably referred to his appreciative portrait of Henry VIII in the History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth (12 vols., 1856–70), and to the opinions he expressed in his most recent work, which were seen as an attempt to vindicate England’s policies toward Ireland (Dunn, 2:266–70, 370–87; New York Tribune: “New-York City,” 10 Oct 72, 8; Elderkin, 11–12, 18–20; Cortissoz, 1:235–36; Paine 1904, 208; see also 1 Feb 73 to Reid, n. 2click to open link).
Henry M. Stanley arrived in New York from Europe on 20 November. The next day Mayor Hall addressed a message to the city council, asking it to pass “joint resolutions of welcome” and recommending that an “opportunity upon some appointed day be afforded to our citizens of giving, under civic auspices, a popular welcome to Mr. Stanley in the City Hall” (“Honors to Mr. Stanley,” New York Tribune, 25 Nov 72, 2). The publication of Hall’s message, before the council had considered it, occasioned “severe comment”: “The matter was characterized as a misdemeanor and an infringement upon the dignity of the legislative branch of the City Government” (“Municipal Matters,” New York Tribune, 27 Nov 72, 2). On 22 November the Lotos Club gave Stanley a reception, at which Mayor Hall was one of the speakers (New York Tribune: “Arrival of Mr. Stanley,” 21 Nov 72, 5; “Stanley Welcomed,” 23 Nov 72, 5; for Queen Victoria’s reception of Stanley, see 25 Oct 72 to OLC, n. 4click to open link; see also 30 Nov 72 to Redpath, n. 6).
On 1 December, two days after Horace Greeley’s death, Mayor Hall sent a telegram to George Maxwell Robeson, secretary of the navy:
Having the honor of your personal acquaintance, I telegraph you to say that the civic authorities will join the private societies and citizens in a public funeral on Wednesday, from the City Hall, to the late Mr. Greeley, and the idea is universal that should the President attend, and the authorities hereby respectfully invite him, his attendance would popularly be regarded the most magnanimous, graceful, and faction-assuaging event of the country.
Robeson replied the next day that President Grant had decided to attend the funeral even before receiving Hall’s telegram (“The President to Attend the Funeral,” New York Tribune, 3 Dec 72, 1).
Grand Duke Alexis Aleksandrovich (1850–1908), the third son of Tsar Aleksandr II, sailed into New York harbor with a fleet of Russian ships on 19 November 1871, on the first leg of an extensive tour of the United States. In April, as soon as unofficial reports of the upcoming visit appeared in the press, a committee of prominent citizens had begun preparations for an elaborate reception. Mayor Hall was not on the committee, nor did his name appear on the list of those attending the climactic event of the prince’s stay, a banquet and ball at the Academy of Music on 29 November (“The Grand Duke’s Arrival,” New York Tribune, 20 Nov 71, 1; New York Times: “An Imperial Visitor,” 21 Apr 71, 1; “The Coming Reception of the Grand Duke Alexis,” 27 Apr 71, 2; “The Russian Grand Duke,” 18 Oct 71, 2; “The Prince’s Ball,” 30 Nov 71, 1).
“Concerning an Insupportable Nuisance,” Hartford Evening Post, 6 Dec 72, 2. Copy-text is a microfilm prepared for the Mark Twain Papers from the original newspaper at the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford (CtHi).
L5 , 244–247.