[Speech of St. Clair McKelway at a dinner given in honor of Samuel L.
Clemens [Mark Twain] by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 2,
1900. The President of the Lotos, Frank R. Lawrence, introduced Dr.
McKelway as the man whose wondrous use of adjectives has converted to
his opinion many doubters throughout this city and country.]
MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS:--Years ago we here sought to hold up
Mark Twain's hands. Now we all feel like holding up our own, in
congratulation of him and of ourselves. Of him because his warfare is
accomplished. Of ourselves because he has returned to our company. If it
was a pleasure to know him then, it is a privilege and an honor to know
him now. He has fought the good fight. He has kept the faith. He is
ready to be offered up, but we are not ready to have him offered up. For
we want the Indian summer of his life to be long, and that to be
followed by a genial winter, which, if it be as frosty as his hair,
shall also be as kindly as his heart. [Applause.]
He has enough excess and versatility of ability to be a genius. He has
enough quality and quantity of virtues to be a saint. But he has
honorably transmuted his genius into work, whereby it has been brought
into relations with literature and with life. And he has preferred warm
fellowship to cold perfection, so that sinners love him and saints are
content to wait for him. May they wait long. [Applause.]
I think he is entitled to be regarded as the Dean of America's humor;
that he is entitled to the distinction of being the greatest humorist
this nation ever had. I say this with a fair knowledge of the chiefs of
the entire corps, from Francis Hopkinson and the author of "Hasty
Pudding," down to Bill Nye and Dooley. None of them would I depreciate.
I would greatly prefer to honor and hail them all for the singular
fittedness of their gifts to the needs of the nation in their times.
Hopkinson and Joel Barlow lightened the woes of the Revolution by the
touch of nature that makes the whole world grin. Seba Smith relieved the
Yankee sense of tension under the impact of Jacksonian roughness, by
tickling its ribs with a quill. Lieutenant Derby turned the searchlight
of fun on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of
alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James
Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy
or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England
conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic,
satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of
contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels of tragedy
and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life
and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended grandeurs and the
coveted treasures of primeval nature. Charles F. Browne made "Artemus
Ward" as well known as Abraham Lincoln in the time the two divided the
attention of the world. Bill Nye singed the shams of his day, and Dooley
dissects for Hinnissey the shams of our own. Nor should we forget Eugene
Field, the beatifier of childhood; or Joel Chandler Harris, the fabulist
of the plantation; or Ruth McEnery Stuart, the coronal singer of the
joys and hopes, the loves and the dreams of the images of God in ebony
in the old South, ere it leaped and hardened to the new.
To these, love and honor. But to this man honor's crown of honor, for he
has made a mark none of the others has reached. Few of them have
diversified the delights to be drawn from their pages of humor. They
have, as humorists, in distinction to the work of moralists, novelists,
orators and poets, in which the rarest among them shine, they have as
humorists, in the main, worked a single vein. And some of them were
humorists for a purpose, a dreary grind that, and some of them were only
humorists for a period as well as for a purpose. The purpose served, the
period passed, the humor that was of their life a thing apart, ceased.
'Tis Clemens' whole existence! [Applause.]
As Bacon made all learning his province, so Mark Twain has made all life
and history his quarry, from the Jumping Frog to the Yankee at Arthur's
Court; from the inquested petrifaction that died of protracted exposure
to the present parliament of Austria; from the Grave of Adam to the
mysteries of the Adamless Eden known as the league of professional
women; from Mulberry Sellers to Joan of Arc, and from Edward the Sixth
to Puddin'head Wilson, who wanted to kill his half of the deathless dog.
Nevada is forgiven its decay because he flashed the oddities of its
zenith life on pages that endure. California is worth more than its
gold, because he showed to men the heart under its swagger. He annexed
the Sandwich Islands to the fun of the nation long before they were put
under its flag. Because of him the Missouri and the Mississippi go not
unvexed to the sea, for they ripple with laughter as they recall Tom
Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, poor Jim, and the Duke. Europe, Asia Minor,
and Palestine are open doors to the world, thanks to this Pilgrim's
Progress with his "Innocents Abroad." Purity, piety and pity shine out
from "Prince and Pauper" like the eyes of a wondering deer on a
torch-lighted night from a wooded fringe of mountain and of lake.
But enough of what I fear is already too much. In expressing my debt to
him, I hope I express somewhat at least of yours. I cannot repay him in
kind any more than I could rival him. None of us can. But we can render
to him a return he would like. With him we can get our way to reality,
and burn off pretence as acid eats its way to the denuded plate of the
engraver. We can strip the veneer of convention from style, and
strengthen our thought in his Anglo-Saxon well of English undefiled. We
can drop seeming for sincerity. We can be relentless toward hypocrisy
and tender to humanity. We can rejoice in the love of laughter, without
ever once letting it lead us to libertinism of fancy. We can reach
through humor the heart of man. We can make exaggeration the scourge of
meanness and the magnifier of truth on the broad screen of life. By
study of him, the nothing new under the sun can be made fresh and
fragrant by the supreme art of putting things. Though none of us can
handle his wand, all of us can be transformed by it into something
different from and finer than our dull selves. That is our delight, that
is our debt, both due to him, and long may he remain with us to
brighten, to broaden and to better our souls with the magic mirth and
with the mirthful magic of his incomparable spell. [Applause.]
[Illustration: REPRODUCTIONS OF MURAL DECORATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON
"_PATRIOTISM_"
_Photo-engraving in colors after an original painting by George W.
Maynard_
This is from a series of eight panels, representing "The
Virtues"--Fortitude, Justice, Patriotism, Courage, Temperance, Prudence,
Industry, and Concord. Each figure is about five and a half feet high
clad in drapery, and standing out on a solid red background. The style
is Pompeiian, the general tone is somewhat like marble, but relieved by
a touch of color. "Patriotism" is represented as feeding an eagle, the
emblem of America, from a golden bowl, symbolizing the nourishment given
by this Virtue to the spirit of the nation.]