A year later, Mark Twain did “come back again,” as an honorary life
member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the
lines urging his return.
XLIV. LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS. POLITICS AND
HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70.
In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for
Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his
last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican
policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Theodore
Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the
politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without
justification, most of the President's political acts invited his
caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to
Twichell of this time affords a fair example.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Feb. 16, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the
President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they
are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome: “For twenty years I have loved
Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician.”
It's mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the
man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but
whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician, I
find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that
where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing
resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready
to kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way;
and whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it,
give extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket
or the party's, but out of the nation's, by cold pillage. As per Order
78 and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds.
But Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it and (ought to) concede it.
We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes
irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to
keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and
irresponsible.
Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise
you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow
days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with
wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience.
Ever yours for sweetness and light
MARK.
The next letter to Twichell takes up politics and humanity in
general, in a manner complimentary to neither. Mark Twain was never
really a pessimist, but he had pessimistic intervals, such as come
to most of us in life's later years, and at such times he let
himself go without stint concerning “the damned human race,” as he
called it, usually with a manifest sense of indignation that he
should be a member of it. In much of his later writing
--A Mysterious Stranger for example--he said his say with but small
restraint, and certainly in his purely intellectual moments he was
likely to be a pessimist of the most extreme type, capably damning
the race and the inventor of it. Yet, at heart, no man loved his
kind more genuinely, or with deeper compassion, than Mark Twain,
perhaps for its very weaknesses. It was only that he had intervals
--frequent intervals, and rather long ones--when he did not admire
it, and was still more doubtful as to the ways of providence.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
March 14, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I have a Puddn'head maxim:
“When a man is a pessimist before 48 he knows too much; if he is an
optimist after it, he knows too little.”
It is with contentment, therefore, that I reflect that I am better and
wiser than you. Joe, you seem to be dealing in “bulks,” now; the “bulk”
of the farmers and U. S. Senators are “honest.” As regards purchase and
sale with money? Who doubts it? Is that the only measure of honesty?
Aren't there a dozen kinds of honesty which can't be measured by the
money-standard? Treason is treason--and there's more than one form of
it; the money-form is but one of them. When a person is disloyal to any
confessed duty, he is plainly and simply dishonest, and knows it; knows
it, and is privately troubled about it and not proud of himself. Judged
by this standard--and who will challenge the validity of it?--there
isn't an honest man in Connecticut, nor in the Senate, nor anywhere
else. I do not even except myself, this time.
Am I finding fault with you and the rest of the populace? No--I assure
you I am not. For I know the human race's limitations, and this makes it
my duty--my pleasant duty--to be fair to it. Each person in it is honest
in one or several ways, but no member of it is honest in all the ways
required by--by what? By his own standard. Outside of that, as I look at
it, there is no obligation upon him.
Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (private) I am not. For seven
years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought
to publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult
duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I
am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.
We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--every man in the
world--though I have reason to think I am the only one whose black-list
runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.
Yes, oh, yes, I am not overlooking the “steady progress from age to age
of the coming of the kingdom of God and righteousness.” “From age to
age”--yes, it describes that giddy gait. I (and the rocks) will not live
to see it arrive, but that is all right--it will arrive, it surely will.
But you ought not to be always ironically apologizing for the Deity.
If that thing is going to arrive, it is inferable that He wants it to
arrive; and so it is not quite kind of you, and it hurts me, to see you
flinging sarcasms at the gait of it. And yet it would not be fair in
me not to admit that the sarcasms are deserved. When the Deity wants
a thing, and after working at it for “ages and ages” can't show even a
shade of progress toward its accomplishment, we--well, we don't laugh,
but it is only because we dasn't. The source of “righteousness”--is in
the heart? Yes. And engineered and directed by the brain? Yes. Well,
history and tradition testify that the heart is just about what it was
in the beginning; it has undergone no shade of change. Its good and evil
impulses and their consequences are the same today that they were in Old
Bible times, in Egyptian times, in Greek times, in Middle Age times, in
Twentieth Century times. There has been no change.
Meantime, the brain has undergone no change. It is what it always was.
There are a few good brains and a multitude of poor ones. It was so in
Old Bible times and in all other times--Greek, Roman, Middle Ages and
Twentieth Century. Among the savages--all the savages--the average brain
is as competent as the average brain here or elsewhere. I will prove it
to you, some time, if you like. And there are great brains among them,
too. I will prove that also, if you like.
Well, the 19th century made progress--the first progress after “ages
and ages”--colossal progress. In what? Materialities. Prodigious
acquisitions were made in things which add to the comfort of many and
make life harder for as many more. But the addition to righteousness? Is
that discoverable? I think not. The materialities were not invented in
the interest of righteousness; that there is more righteousness in the
world because of them than there, was before, is hardly demonstrable,
I think. In Europe and America, there is a vast change (due to them)
in ideals--do you admire it? All Europe and all America, are feverishly
scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal--all others take tenth
place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always
existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a
madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations;
it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive.
Did England rise against the infamy of the Boer war? No--rose in favor
of it. Did America rise against the infamy of the Phillipine war?
No--rose in favor of it. Did Russia rise against the infamy of the
present war? No--sat still and said nothing. Has the Kingdom of God
advanced in Russia since the beginning of time?
Or in Europe and America, considering the vast backward step of the
money-lust? Or anywhere else? If there has been any progress
toward righteousness since the early days of Creation--which, in my
ineradicable honesty, I am obliged to doubt--I think we must confine it
to ten per cent of the populations of Christendom, (but leaving, Russia,
Spain and South America entirely out.) This gives us 320,000,000 to draw
the ten per cent from. That is to say, 32,000,000 have advanced toward
righteousness and the Kingdom of God since the “ages and ages” have
been flying along, the Deity sitting up there admiring. Well, you see
it leaves 1,200,000,000 out of the race. They stand just where they have
always stood; there has been no change.
N. B. No charge for these informations. Do come down soon, Joe.
With love,
MARK.
St. Clair McKelway, of The Brooklyn Eagle, narrowly escaped injuries
in a railway accident, and received the following. Clemens and
McKelway were old friends.
*****
To St. Clair McKelway, in Brooklyn:
21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday Morning.
April 30, 1905.
DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.
As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen
a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is
an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens
and McIntyres along to save our friends.
The Government's Official report, showing that our railways killed
twelve hundred persons last year and injured sixty thousand convinces me
that under present conditions one Providence is not enough to
properly and efficiently take care of our railroad business. But it is
characteristically American--always trying to get along short-handed and
save wages.
I am helping your family congratulate themselves, and am your friend as
always.