Description:

Samuel Clemens writes to his wife describing Chicago's preparations for its reception for Ulysses Grant, for whom the author offered his famous "Babies" toast two nights later

SAMUEL CLEMENS (a.k.a. MARK TWAIN 1835-1910) Autograph Letter Signed, "Saml." 2 pages, 5" x 8", "Palmer House," [Chicago], November 11, [1879], in pencil addressed in his hand on the accompanying transmittal envelope to his wife, "Mrs. S. L. Clemens Hartford, Conn." describing his trip to Chicago and the preparations for Grant's reception in that city, and describing seeing Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore performed by a company of children. Light folds, else fine condition.

Clemens writes in full: "Livy Darling, George & I walked over 76 miles yesterday, round about the town, inspecting the outsides of beautiful & costly dwellings, the water-works machinery, the street decorations for the [Ulysses S.] Grant reception & so forth, had a good time. He [George] went west & I went to three theatres with a lot of newspaper men; staid [sic] but a few minutes at two of them, but saw a whole act at the third. It was the first act of Pinafore, admirably done by children—little children, like ours. The characters were most excellently taken—It was a marvel to see it. The singing was often delightful. I was home & in bed at 10 o'clock. Drank 11 gallons of Appalinaris water & 1 glass of lager during the evening; drank one Scotch whiskey in bed, read 2 hours & went to sleep without needing the other punch. I love you darling..."

Two nights later, Clemens took the podium at the Palmer House, before a grand banquet of more than 500 Union veterans concluding a grand reunion the Army of the Tennessee as a featured speaker at which Grant was the guest of honor. Clemens, who was among the final impromptu speakers that evening, responded to another speaker's toast "to Woman," by offering a toast "to Babies." To the bemused crowd, Clemens explained, "We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals or poets, or statesmen, but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground." The audience roared when Clemens noted that even a general was duty-bound to bow before the infant in his home. To Grant, he said, "You could face down the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back a blow for blow, but when he clawed your whiskers and pulled your hair and twisted your nose, you had to take it." Apparently unaware of the reverence in which the assembled crowd held Grant, Clemens described the future commander of the Union Army and President of the United States "trying to find some way to get his big toe into his mouth," a goal that "the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago." The audience's subsequent silence worried Clemens, who wondered if he had taken the analogy too far. After an awkward silence, he continued: "And if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded." Relating the incident to Livy, Clemens wrote that then," the house came down with a crash... And do you know, General Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a graven image, but I fetched him! I broke him up utterly! He told me he laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached." (as quoted in H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, 2013, p. 599 & William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography, 2002, p. 480).

The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, was presented by none other than the Juvenile Pinafore Company. Not only were Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan one of the fads of the 1870s; so were opera companies staffed entirely by children!

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