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One hundred and twelve years ago this week, Mark Twain delivered his 70th birthday speech at Delmonico's in New York. The dinner was held on December 5, 1905, a few days after his November 30 birthday. It's an interesting coincidence that another world-class satirist, Jonathan Swift, shares that birthday with Twain. Swift, sadly, did not smoke a pipe, but Twain smoked enough for both of them and more.
What's especially notable about his birthday speech is that it has much to say about smoking and contains some of Twain's most recognizable quotes on the subject. One hundred and seventy guests attended the dinner to celebrate the occasion with champagne, oysters, caviar, turtle, lamb, kingfish, and other delicacies, all while enjoying a 40-piece orchestra. Each of the guests received a 12-inch plaster bust of Twain and specially printed menus illustrated by famous artist Leon Barritt with images of Twain's many occupations, from riverboat pilot to miner to author and editor.
We can be sure that Twain smoked while delivering his speech, probably a cigar. He smoked cigars more often when speaking to audiences, though he sometimes smoked pipes, incorporating the pauses afforded by relighting to add dramatic effect before delivering a hilarious punchline.
Twain's birthday should be a national holiday. He elevated American humor from little more than slapstick and buffoonery to a sophisticated craft of timing, vocabulary, and tone. He was, for much of his life, the most famous person on Earth, his books read everywhere and his comments sought on every subject. William Dean Howells called him "the Lincoln of our literature." Ernest Hemingway, in Green Hills of Africa (1935), wrote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
William Dean Howells called him "the Lincoln of our literature."
Twain was born Samuel Clemens in 1835 while Halley's Comet loomed in the sky like a portent. His family lived in a two-room rented cabin in Florida, Missouri, and moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi River just before he turned four. He had been born two months prematurely, and his early years were not spent in good health, though he turned that misfortune into a joke in his speech:
... up to seven, I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did; it was for economy. My father took a drug store for a debt, and it made cod liver oil cheaper than other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drug store was exhausted, my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since.
According to Twain researcher and author Justin Kaplan, Twain was troubled by sleepwalking and nightmares in his youth, and he remained a nocturnal individual throughout his adult life. Three of his siblings had died before they were 10 years old, and for his first few years, he barely stayed alive. "He grew into manhood sparely built, small-boned, with narrow sloping shoulders, delicate hands, and tapering fingers, all in contrast to his thick eyebrows and shock of hair ..."
Twain was troubled by sleepwalking and nightmares in his youth
His hair was sandy colored in youth but changed to auburn in adulthood, particularly striking in conjunction with his piercing gray-green eyes, and he's perhaps most famous for the unruly white hair of his later life — on full display during his 70th birthday speech, in which he reminisced about previous birthdays:
I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate instincts — why, even the cradle wasn't whitewashed — nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that.
However, and as always, Twain took advantage of the opportunity to instruct others in his own characteristic style:
The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach — unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. ... You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. ... I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for 70 years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. I am not here to deceive. I am here to teach.
Having established his prerogative, he reveals his secret thusly: "I have achieved my 70 years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else."
"I have achieved my 70 years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else."
Part of the regimen that helped Twain achieve his impressive age was, of course, smoking. Known to smoke constantly and without pause whenever he was conscious, Twain always had a cigar or pipe burning, as reflected in one of the most famous quotes from his birthday speech:
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke; I only know that it was in my father's lifetime and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past 11; ever since then, I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
As additional evidence, Twain reports that even when waking in the night, he smokes.
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that if I should break it, I should feel as you, Sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got. Meaning the Chairman. If you've got one; I am making no charge. I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking, now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle — it was only to show off.
"I have stopped smoking, now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle — it was only to show off."
Twain was unapologetic about his love for tobacco, and often referred to his early affection as a boy, so it's little surprise that tobacco would be a theme for his birthday speech. It was often a theme for him. In a different speech delivered a decade earlier, he said, "Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco. It began, I think, when I was a lad. ... I learned the delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for pipe smoking."
Such vast experience leads to conclusions, and Twain had concluded not only that one's personally beneficial lifestyle might inversely affect others, but that individual tastes differ, especially in regard to smoking.
As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is this — that there is a STANDARD governing the matter, whereas there is nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much influence us." ("Concerning Tobacco," 1893)
One hundred and seventeen years ago this week, Mark Twain reveled in the attention as he listened to letters read from the President and from other influential people across Europe and around the world. And he celebrated his 70 years by reflecting on his long relationship with smoking:
Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me. I have always bought cheap cigars — reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me $4 a barrel, but my taste has improved laterly, and I pay $7 now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel.
Few have loved tobacco to the extent that Mark Twain did; whether smoked as cigars or in pipes, tobacco was rarely far from him. He depended on it, saying that he couldn't write without it, and he enjoyed it every chance that he could. Smoking and Mark Twain are inextricably linked and he's among our greatest ambassadors. His dedication to the leaf was profound.
His 70th Birthday Speech was a brief reflection on his lifestyle, so of course smoking would be a dramatic inclusion. He was at that time famous, loved, and admired worldwide, accepted as a literary giant. He had achieved not only old age but the acclamation, approval, and affection of the world.
He achieved not only old age but the acclamation, approval, and affection of the world
Five years later he was no longer with us. He died at age 74, still smoking. He had been born with Halley's Comet's previous visit, and it returned to send him off, hanging in the sky as he departed, pipes lying on his nightstand and cigar butts in the ashtray. This is a good time of year to remember him. The beginning of the holiday season coincides with his birthday and with the anniversary of a speech that summarized a life lived to its fullest potential.
Bibliography:
- Why Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Was Such a Legendary Party"
- "Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Speech"
- Mark Twain and his World (1974) by Justin Kaplan
- "Celebrate Mark Twain's Seventieth Birthday" (1905), The New York Times
- "Why Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Was Such a Legendary Party" (2017) by Jeremy Repanich, Robb Report
- "Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Celebration," Culture Now: Museum Without Walls
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Comments
Thank you, Chuck! A fine appreciation of a great man.
Great article!!!
This is an excellent article. Thank you. I very much appreciate a well written article about one of my favorite authors. I am sure much of this article's whimsey and substance is owed to Mr. Stanion's authorship. Charles is precisely the man who should write this tribute.
An excellent article about an excellent American..who..lived his life to the full..and understood how to enjoy life..especially the joys if tobacco!
For those of us in our 70s, 74 seems a young age to die, though Mark Twain had suffered the loss of so many loved ones at that point in his life. Chuck Stanion is the Mark Twain scholar extraordinaire, especially when it comes to his love of cigars and pipes. Great story!
This wonderful article gives me the chance to praise the Mark Twain inspired Peterson Pipe of the Year 2022.As you may know, it is a faithful rendition of the long discontinued 14B model smoked by Twain himself.Being an avid Twain reader (I live in Italy, and on my first trip to the USA I took a long detour to visit his house in Hartford, Conn.), I bought one PoY 2022 mainly because of that, but, quite surprisingly, it has soon become my favourite over my whole pipes collection.Mind that I am a huge fan of Peterson System pipes (no matter what range, from Standard to De Luxe), so much so that, after having tried virtually all of the most prestigious brands from all over the world for many decades, I found myself smoking almost exclusively Systems.But this one beats them all: it has all that System pipes have (in a nut: cool dry smoke from a beautiful and well balanced workhorse pipe, at a reasonable price), but it takes it to a further level that to me is unprecedented.Having been the PoY 2022 soon sold out as usual, I can only hope and pray for Peterson to introduce some rendition of it in their regular production.I would certainly like to buy more.To Mark Twain and his Peterson pipe, and Chuck Stanion by the way, cheers!
Thanks, great read and well written. Twain was so incredibly witty and wise that his words ring true even today. He had a most interesting life which included great fame but which was also tinged with great sorrow.