November 28 Friday – Sam’s notebook: “Train at 7.07. / 7.07 / Birth-day, dinner (not the 29th or 30th) Train leaves here at 7.07. / Wounds our conventions rather than our convictions. The convictions of one age are the conventions of the next” [NB 45 TS 34]. Note: evidently there had been some changes of the birthday dinner date; Sam entered a few things to say at the event in his Nov. 30 NB entry, and specified there it was to be the 29th; it wound up being this day. The 29th he was in Elmira at his niece’s wedding. The Nov. 30 entry:
“Col. Harvey, birth-day banquet. A Mo. native’s estimate of my modesty: ‘Well, he is this kind of a man,
you know: he would step in ahead of God in a procession.’
The old broken Mugwump, the iron-clad M. the moss-covered M that’s pointed for—”
At the Metropolitan Club in N.Y.C. a dinner was given in honor of Mark Twain’s 67th Birthday. (Note: Paine gives the evening of Nov. 27 going into the wee hours of Nov. 28 [MTB 1182].) A. Hoffman claims that George B. Harvey’s motivation for throwing the party was a desire to renew the contract for exclusive rights to Mark Twain’s books and articles, set to expire in 1903 [448].
Sam gave souvenirs to each guest. A paper inscription was placed at the foot of a copper plate with Sam’s self-portrait, and the words on the plate in facsimile: “N.B. I cannot make a good mouth, therefore leave it out. There is enough without it, anyway. Done with the best ink. M.T.” (see insert ) [MTP]. Note: The Metropolitan Club was founded in 1891 by J. Pierpont Morgan. About 54 copies of the plate were made; 53 guests were reported in attendance; about 42 of these plates are not extant; of those that survive, the following persons also received a plate and inscription with this date. The “extra” dinner card and plate was sent to his niece, Miss Ida Langdon on Nov. 30; see entry.
Will Carleton, John Kendrick Bangs, Robert W. Chambers, William Dean Howells, Adrian H. Joline, William Mackay Laffan, David A. Munro, H.H. Rogers, Henry L. Stoddard, Van Tassel Sutphen, and Edward W. Townsend.
Of those others listed in the NY Times of Nov. 29, p.2, not included in the above were:
Charles Frohman, E. Thompson Seton [Ernest Seton-Thompson], George W. Young, Will N. Harben, Booth Tarkington, Joseph H. Twichell, Clarence C. Rice, John White Alexander, Richard Watson Gilder, Henry M. Alden, Brander Matthews, Howard Pyle, Hamblen Sears, James Lane Allen, Hamlin Garland, Richard Le Gallienne, Thomas A. Janvier, James H. Hyde, Frederick A. Duneka, Thomas F. Ryan, William A. Nash, Aldolph S. Ochs, F.T. Leigh, St. Clair McKelway, J. Henry Harper, F. Hopkinson Smith, Samuel Bowles, Horace White, August Belmont, John Hay, Roy Rolfe Gilson, George Washington Cable, Dumont Clarke, Henry S. Harper, Daniel O’Day, W.B. Leeds, Henry Van Dyke, George B. Harvey, Chauncey M. Depew, Hamilton W. Mabie, Wayne MacVeagh.
One autographed dinner program that survives was given to an unidentified man and signed by Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, and Henry Van Dyke [MTP].
Sam also inscribed one of the self-portrait plates to Hamilton W. Mabie “Hamilton W. Mabie /.With the kindest regards of / Mark Twain” [MTP].
The New York Times covered the birthday celebration, on p.10, Nov. 30:
WHEN TWAIN GOT HIS SAY
———
Paid His Respects to Fellow-Guests at Col. Harvey’s Dinner.
———
Describes Thomas B. Reed’s Goings On
During a Yachting Trip; Also a Dream of Another World.
———
Humorous oratory flowed freely at the Metropolitan Club Friday night after the banquet given to Mark Twain, in honor of the humorist’s sixty-seventh birthday, by Col. George Harvey. Mr. Twain himself was the target, and had difficulty in getting a hearing. Thomas B. Reed was there, and he took occasion, as he always does when he encounters the author of “Huckleberry Finn,” to say a multitude of things more or less true but always funny things about him. Chauncey M. Depew, Wayne MacVeagh, Dr. Van Dyke, W. D. Howells, Hamilton W. Mabie, St. Clair McKelway, and John Kendrick Bangs had their say before Mr. Twain got the floor.
W. D. Howells read what he called a double-Barrelled sonnet, prefacing it with the apology that Mark Twain did not lend himself well to the sonnet, as verse must be smooth, while his method was the inspired higglety-pigglety.
After Col. Harvey had restrained Mark Twain’s attempt to reply and had told of various experiences on board Mr. Rogers’s yacht, where Mr. Clemens had a hard time of it, Mr. Thomas B. Reed took the humorist in hand, saying, in part:
“One of Mark Twain’s defects and shortcomings arises from inaccuracy—inaccuracy of statement. For instance, in this trip to which Mr. Harvey has alluded, there was a storm, and Mr. Rogers heard a noise in the next stateroom, and he stepped in, and there he found Mr. Twain, clothed in his favorite raiment—a nightshirt and an overcoat—vibrating backward and forward in the somewhat circumscribed limits of the stateroom, and upon being asked what he was doing he said he was hunting for a match. Asked what he intended to do with it when he did find it, he said he intended to sit on it.
“Now, in my judgment, history will reason with Mr. Twain on that subject. It will not accept his statement without further proof in the nature of affidavits, because you see at once, if he had found that match and laid it down lengthwise, and if he had sat upon it, it would not have given him either fixidity of purpose or of body, nor would it have elevated him in the world in the slightest degree. If the match had been put upon end, it was certainly a very improper thing to suppose that he could balance himself against the laws of gravity in that way, and if the match was aflame, sitting upon it, especially in that costume, would not have been a safe or wise or sensible expedient.”
Mr. Depew told about a time at Hamburg when he and Mark Twain met the present King of England. “Mark was walking with me,” he said, and his trousers were too short, because they had been worn too
long; the sleeves of his coat had the same general expression; his linen was clean, but his hat had lost the nap. The Prince of Wales came along about that time and wanted to know who this apparition was, and when I told him it was Mark Twain he wanted an introduction. Well, I lost Twain shortly after, because at that time royalty had a charm for him which the ordinary American citizen did not possess, and he stuck to the Prince, much the same as the waiter once said to me when I had given him a dollar and nobody else had given him much of anything: ‘I will stick to you like a duck to water.’ Well, the Prince gave a dinner to which I was invited, and at that dinner the Prince said to me: ‘I would have invited Mark Twain if I thought he had any clothes.’ I said: ‘Mark has clothes,’ and he said: ‘Then bring him down immediately and we will have a night of it.’ So Mark came down and we had a famous dinner, and he told the same story I had told the night before!”
Mr. Mabie told of the time when a certain religious newspaper in Boston was called The Fireside Companion, and then, with the change of modern habits and modern methods of heating it was called The Christian Register. It was this sort of modern progress Mark Twain represented.
Dr. Henry Van Dyke read a poem. John Kendrick Bangs also read a poem in which he proved that Twain was really Adam.
When at last Mr. Clemens himself got a chance he said in part:
“Tom Reed has got a good heart and he has got a good intellect, but he hasn’t got any judgment. He has had a good deal to say about that yachting cruise last Spring down in the West Indies in Mr. H. H. Rogers’s yacht. We went down there to hunt up Martinique and start up that volcano, and that was a remarkable voyage in various ways.
“We had a storm, so I got out of my berth at 2 o’clock in the morning, and went up to the poker chapel to see if I could find anything to hang on to, and presently I heard Tom Reed lumbering up that companionway and grunting and blaspheming, and butting the bulkhead, carrying on—land! I thought something was the matter with his appendicitis. Then he appeared, he appeared up there in his pajamas, and he was going it. Well, he said: ‘I couldn’t stay in my berth at all, it’s wet!’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘you old thing, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—scared to that extent.’
“A lot of accounts have been settled here to-night for me; I have held grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by the very handsome compliments they have paid me. Even Wayne MacVeagh, I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner party at Charles A. Dana’s, and when I got there he was going on, and I tried to get a word in here and there—but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is started, and I could not get in five words to his one, or one word to his five. I struggled along, and—well, I wanted to tell, and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before.
“It was a remarkable dream, a dream it was worth people’s while to listen to, and it was a dream such as the revivalists describe, some general reception in heaven, and I got along. I was on a train, and had stopped
at the Celestial Way Station—I had a through ticket—and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me that was asleep and he had his ticket in his hat; that was the remains of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against him, he didn’t object, he wasn’t in a condition to object, and presently when the train stopped at the heavenly station—well, I got off and he went on my request.
“There they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one with a torch. They had a torchlight procession, they were expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a shout, but it didn’t materialize. I don’t know whether they were disappointed; I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the Archbishop and what he looked like, and I didn’t fill the bill, and I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and I was doing it in the German tongue because I didn’t want to be too explicit.
“Well, I found it was no use, I couldn’t get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole place, and I said to Mr. Dana, ‘What is the matter with that man? Who is that man with the long tongue? What’s the trouble with him, getting up a conflagration like this, without giving a man a chance; another incendiary, that long, lank, cadaver, old oil derrick out of a job, who is that?’ ‘Well, now,’ Mr. Dana says, ‘you don’t want to meddle with him, you had better keep quiet; just keep quiet, because that’s a bad man. Talk! He was born to talk. Don’t let him get out with you; he’ll skin you.’ I said: ‘I have been skinned, skinned, and skinned right along: there is nothing left.’ He says: ‘Oh, yes; that man is the very man, he is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb which says, “It’s no use how close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again.” ‘ Well, I reflected, and I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He’s got no discretion.
“When I was living in that village in Hannibal, Mo., on the banks of the Mississippi, and John Hay up in the town of Warsaw, also on the banks of the Mississippi River—it was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and we were good boys and we did not break the Sabbath often—not more than once a week. So we grew, John Hay and I, and now John Hay is Secretary of State and I am a gentleman.
“Another of my oldest friends is here—the Rev. Joe Twichell—and whenever Twichell goes to start a church I see them flocking, rushing to buy the land all around there. Many and many a time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the pews on a margin and it would have been better for me spiritually and financially if I had staid under his wing. I try to serve him, I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvelous in how many ways I have done good.
“Well, I like the poetry, I like all the speeches and the poetry, too, I liked Dr. Van Dyke’s poem. I wish I could return those in proper measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to pay me compliments. There is your double guest, my wife and me, and we together out of our single heart return you our deepest and most grateful thanks—and—yesterday was her birthday.”
Note: The Times also ran an article listing all of the attendees:
MARK TWAIN ENTERTAINED.
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Dinner in Honor of His Sixty-seventy
Birthday Given by Col. Harvey at the Metropolitan Club.
Mark Twain’s sixty-seventy birthday, which falls on Sunday, was celebrated at the Metropolitan Club last night by a dinner given in his honor by Col. George Harvey, editor of Harper’s Weekly and The North American Review, and President of Harper & Brothers, publishers. It was attended by fifty-three guests, most of them prominent in the literary world.
Mark Twain may or may not have read the notices of his demise which certain newspaper paragraphers have from time to time inserted in their papers prematurely as an excuse for the perpetration of a real or imagined witticism, but last night he laughingly listened while John Kendrick Bangs read a long obituary of him in rhyme and rhythm.
Mr. Howells read a sonnet in which he referred to a number of incidents in Mark Twain’s life, and particularly the article the humorist wrote on foreign missionaries. The other speakers were Chauncey M. Depew, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Col. George Harvey, W. D. Howells, Hamilton W. Mabie, Thomas B. Reed, Wayne MacVeagh, and Mr. Clemens.
The other members of the company were: [list as seen above] ….
George B. Harvey later had a privately printed volume of a record of the speeches and other talk at the dinner, together with a seating chart, a frontispiece portrait of Samuel Clemens, and a reproduction of the souvenir self- portrait given out as a souvenir, as well as a portrait of Thomas B. Reed, who died on Dec. 7, a few days after the dinner. The inclusion of Reed’s portrait denotes the volume was printed sometime after Dec. 7; it was titled, Mark Twain’s Birthday. Report of the Celebration of the Sixty-Seventh Thereof at the Metropolitan Club, New York, November 28th 1902. No publisher or publication date was given. See also MTB 1182-5 for another account of the evening.
Sam went to Elmira with Katy Leary and daughter Jean, likely on an overnight train; his niece, Julia Olivia Langdon was to be married the next evening, Nov. 29. Note: NB 45 TS 34 reveals the presence of Katy and Jean; they might have gone to Elmira previously, but returned with him on Dec. 3.
Howard E. Wright for the Plasmon Company wrote to Sam:
I am enclosing the note addressed to you giving the location of the Perry Picture Co.
Mr. Butters is expecting to leave for California in a few days and we are desirous of completing all calls before his departure.
Will it therefore, be convenient for you to respond to the extent of $500 without sacrificing to you at this time? [MTP]. Note: Perry Picture Co. was publisher of Perry Magazine, Boston. A note on the envelope in perhaps Isabel Lyon’s hand: “Notified that Mr. C. was out of town.” Under that, “500.00 sent.”