March 26 – early April – In a supplement to a June, 1913 American Post review, the tale is told of Sam attending a performance of Benjamin Chapin playing Lincoln on stage. NY Times (Mar. 25, p. X1) gives the first week’s performance began on Mar. 26. The article and a letter (uncollected) Sam sent to Chapin’s secretary.
MARK TWAIN AND PARTY
ATTEND “LINCOLN”
By One of the Party
August Belmont, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), Clarence H. Mackay, Robert Collier and other members of the Executive Committee of the Lincoln Farm Association, were holding a session when the proposal was made that they attend Benjamin Chapin’s four act character play, “Lincoln,” then running for the first time in New York, at the Liberty Theatre.
This group of men dined together before the play. When it came time to attend the performance, Mark Twain refused to go. His friends urged, but he was obdurate. General Horace Porter, formerly ambassador to France, and a friend of Mr. Lincoln’s, and Mr. William Dean Howells, the novelist joined the party, and Mark Twain finally went with the others, but went reluctantly, declaring that he did not want some young buck in stage costume and makeup to muss up his own mental picture and memory of Lincoln. When the curtain went up on the first act he sat far back in the box but in a few minutes he came forward and was soon lost in the play. After the third act he asked to be taken back upon the stage that he might meet Mr. Chapin, and, behind the scenes, as if he could not shake off the illusion that it was the real living Lincoln, he addressed Mr. Chapin as Lincoln: “I am very glad to meet you again, Mr. President. You haven’t changed much in all these years.”
On leaving the theatre that evening he walked down the aisle (with the writer of this account, who had dined with the party and heard Mark Twain’s opposition to going), and he made this comment: “I wanted to keep my memory and thought of Lincoln unmarred by any disappointment in seeing a make-up imitation. But I am glad that I came, very glad. I feel as though I had spent an evening with Lincoln at the White House. I think I know Lincoln a little more intimately now. Mr. Chapin certainly gave a remarkable performance—he got me over the footlights.”
The next morning Mr. Chapin’s secretary received the following letter from Mr. Clemens:
“In the beginning of the first act, while Mr. Chapin did seem to me to be a very close and happy imitation of Mr. Lincoln, it was only an imitation. But at that point the miracle began. Little by little, step by step, by an imperceptible evolution the artificial Lincoln dissolved away and the living and real Lincoln was before my eyes and remained real until the end. I apply to it, that strong word ‘miracle’ because I think it justified. I think that I have not before seen so interesting a spectacle as this steady growth and transformation of an unreality into a reality.”