Mark Twain, Collector Of Compliments

by Stephen J. Gertz

Little Montana Girl's Compliment
"She was gazing thoughtfully at a photograph of Mark Twain
on a neighbor's mantelpiece. Presently she said, reverently,
'We've got a Jesus like that at home only ours has more trimmings.'"

On January 11, 1908, The Lotos Club in New York City, one of the oldest literary associations in the United States, held a dinner in honor of one of its members, Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain.

Founded in New York City in 1870 by a group of young writers, journalists and critics, the Lotos Club initiated Twain to membership in 1873, who, waggish card that he was, immediately declared it “The Ace of Clubs.” At the dinner - attended by many luminaries - the guest of honor gave a speech announcing that he had become a collector of compliments. PBA Galleries is offering one of those compliments, in Twain's hand, in its Historic Autographs & Manuscripts with Archival Material sale May 8, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$4,000.

As reported in the New York Times, January 12, 1908, Twain told the gathering:

"I wish to begin at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether. I wish to thank you for your welcome now and for that of seven years ago, which I forgot to thank you for at the time, also for that of fourteen years ago which I also forgot to thank you for. I know how it is; when you have been in a parlor and are going away, common decency ought to make you say the decent thing, what a good time you have had. Everybody does it except myself.

"I hope that you will continue that excellent custom of giving me dinners every seven years. I had had it on my mind to join the hosts of another world - I do not know which world - but I have enjoyed your custom so much that I am willing to postpone it for another seven years.

"The guest is in an embarrassing position, because compliments have been paid to him. I don't care whether you deserve it or not, but it is hard to talk up to it.

"The other night at the Engineers' Club dinner they were paying Mr. Carnegie here discomforting compliments. They were all compliments and they were not deserved, and I tried to help him out with criticisms and references to things nobody understood.

"They say that one cannot live on bread alone, but I could live on compliments. I can digest them. They do not trouble me. I have missed much in life that I did not make a collection of compliments, and keep them where I could take them out and look at them once in a while. I am beginning now. Other people collect autographs, dogs, and cats, and I collect compliments. I have brought them along.

"I have written them down to preserve them, and think that they're mighty good and exceedingly just."

[Twain began to read a few. The first, by essayist, critic, and editor Hamilton W. Mabie, declared that La Salle might have been the first man to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but that Mark Twain was the first man to chart light and humor for the human race].

"If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on the Mississippi] it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you it is a talent by itself to pay complements gracefully and have them ring true. It's an art by itself.

"Now, here's one by my biographer. Well, he ought to know me if anybody does. He's been at my elbow for two years and a half. This is Albert Bigelow Paine:

"'Mark Twain is not merely the great writer, the great philosopher, but he is the supreme expression of the human being with its strengths and weaknesses.'

"What a talent for compression!"

[Novelist, editor, and critic William Dean Howells, Twain said, spoke of him as first of Hartford and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe].

"You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how modest and retiring Howells is, but deep down he is as vain as I am."

"Edison wrote: 'The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person he generally selects Mark Twain.'

"Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl, which came to me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said:

"'We've got a John the Baptist like that.' 

"She also said: 'Only ours has more trimmings.'

"I suppose she meant the halo.

[Since the offered "compliment" is numbered “4” and the Times reported the little girl’s compliment after three prior, this sheet was most likely Twain’s reading copy; he extemporaneously changed some of the words but it was basically the same story].

"Now here is a gold miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log schoolhouse. There were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there with their breeches tucked into their boot tops and with clay all over them. They wanted someone to introduce me, and then selected a miner, who protested that he didn't want to do on the ground that he had never appeared in public. This is what he said:

"'I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is he has never been in jail and the other is I don't know why...'"

The dinner was Twain-themed. As tasty as his speech was, the meal was tastier, a feast for those whose tongue for Twain went all the way. On the menu that evening:

Innocent Oysters Abroad.
Roughing It Soup.
Huckleberry Finn Fish.
Joan of Arc Filet of Beef.
Jumping Frog Terrapin.
Punch Brothers Punch.
Gilded Duck.
Hadleyburg Salad.
Life on the Mississippi Ice Cream.
Prince and the Pauper Cake.
Pudd'nhead Cheese.
White Elephant coffee.
Chateau Yquem Royals.
Pommery Brut.
Henkow Cognac.

Dishes served only in spirit included:

Double-Barrelled Detective Mystery Vegetable.

Connecticut Yankee Stew.

Mysterious Stranger Souvlaki.

Our compliments to the chef - and honoree.
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Image courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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George Washington's Original Thanksgiving Proclamation $8-$12 Million

by Stephen J. Gertz

The original manuscript proclamation establishing the first federal Thanksgiving Day in the United States of America is being offered by Christie's-New York on Thursday evening November 14, 2013 in a  single-lot special event sale. Signed by George Washington on October 3, 1789 it is estimated to sell for $8,000,000 - $12,000,000.

The proclamation reads in full:

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation

    Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

    Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

    And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

    Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Prior to its sale, the proclamation will be on tour, exhibited October 17-20 in Los Angeles at the Reagan Library; October 22 in Dallas at the Harlan Crow Library; October 24 at Christie's-Chicago; October 30 in Boston; November 4 in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress; November 5 in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center; and November 7-13 in New York at Christie's Galleries.

The proclamation followed the request to President Washington by the House and Senate, on the day after ratification of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty God." Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey said that he “could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them" (The Annals of the Congress, The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States 1, Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, pp. 949–950).

Massachusetts Centinel, October 14, 1789.

This was not the first time that a day of thanksgiving had been proclaimed. On October 11, 1782, John Hanson, first president of the newly independent United States under the Articles of Confederation, declared the fourth Thursday of every November to be a national Thanksgiving Day. The holiday, however, was by the authority of each state, not the national government. Under the new Constitution it was to be a federal holiday.

But not an annual observation. George Washington again proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day in 1795. John Adams declared Thanksgiving Days in 1798 and 1799. In response to resolutions in Congress at the close of the War of 1812, James Madison renewed the tradition in 1814 and 1815. But it was not until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day on October 3, 1863 to occur in November of that year that the holiday has been annually celebrated.

Washington's proclamation is a foundational document in the history of the United States of America's grand national tradition of Thanksgiving. One of the great documents of Americana, it's no turkey.

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Document images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

Newspaper clipping courtesy of the Washington Post, with our thanks.
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Greetings From Bob Dylan On Highway 51, $12,500

by Stephen J. Gertz

A one-page, 8 1/2 x 6 inch autograph manuscript in black Flair pen by Bob Dylan from 1973 has come to market. Any Dylan material that finds its way into commerce is precious and highly desirable, and this piece, possessing a typically enigmatic, absurdist and surreal inscription and drawing, is no exception. Offered by Rulon-Miller Books, the asking price is $12,500.

The inscription to an unknown party reads: Proud of You. You never sniffed drainpipes but you have a good grasp of the Alphabet - Highway 51 is not your road. Bob Dylan 1973. To the left of his signature Dylan has drawn the rear end of an automobile with gross tailpipe trumpeting exhaust.

Those familiar with Highway 61 Revisited, the song from Dylan's sixth album of the same name released in August 1965, may be unfamiliar with Highway 51, Highway 61's sister road. Highway 51 appeared on Dylan's first album, Bob Dylan, released on March 19, 1962.

Highway 51 runs right by my baby's door
Highway 51 runs right by my baby's door
But won't get the girl I'm loving
Won't go down Highway 51 no more

Well, I know that highway like I know my hand
Yes, I know that highway like I know the back of my hand
Running from up Wisconsin way down to no man's land

Well, if I should die 'fore my time should come
And if I should die 'fore my time should come
Won't you bury my body out on Highway 51?

Highway 51 runs right by my baby's door
I said, "Highway 51 runs right by my baby's door"
But won't get the girl I'm loving
Won't go down Highway 51 no more 

Copyright 1962 © Bob Dylan

Highway 51 is strange. Highway 61 is stranger, a malignant ribbon of asphalt that runs through purgatory straight to hell:

Now the rowin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61. 

Copyright 1965 © Bob Dylan

Highway 51 is, in contrast, a benign boulevard. Though it's required that you have experience sniffing drainpipes before you hit the on-ramp, it is not necessary that you suck exhaust from a tailpipe as if it were hashish, a standard activity on Highway 61 and key survival skill on the way to Hades. Highway 51 is merely where love escapes to who knows where and leaves hearts behind as roadkill. Knowing the alphabet is a disadvantage; love spells trouble.

The difference between the two roads is the difference between the blues and psychosis. You are advised to avoid both. On the road with Bob Dylan makes On the Road with Jack Kerouac seem, in contrast, like placid motor down a country lane with flower petals strewn in advance of your car.

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Image courtesy of Rulon-Miller Books, with our thanks.
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John Quincy Adams, The Sleeping-Pill Poet

by Stephen J. Gertz

American diplomat, Harvard professor, Secretary of State, member of the House of Representatives, Senator, son of a President, and himself President of the United States, sure. But John Quincy Adams, poet?

"Could I have chosen my own genius and condition, I would have made myself a great poet," he once declared, as cited in Nagel's John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life (1997). Actors want to be musicians; musicians want to be actors; writers want to be athletes; everyone wants to be what they aren't, except, perhaps, to be an insurance salesman, a species, I imagine, that would like to be anything but what they are. We all dream about what we wanted to be and might have been if only life hadn't gotten in the way.

John Quincy Adams read copiously and wrote poetry throughout his lifetime. He enjoyed composing secular and inspirational verse, hymns, translating poetry into English, and writing his own versions of the Psalms.

His poems, when published, were not well-received. When Dermot MacMorrogh or the Conquest of Ireland was issued (Boston: Carter, Hendee, 1832), a reviewer ripped him a new canto:

"This work consists of three parts, each very remarkable in its way. These parts are, first, the Title Page; second, the Dedication and Preface ; and, third, four Cantos of Rhyme. The most noticeable part of the title-page is the announcement of the author's name. Indeed, it is that short sentence of four words, By John Quincey Adams, to which Dermot Mac Morrogh will be solely indebted for all the attention it will receive. Were it not for this magic sentence, we doubt if many readers would get further than the middle of the first Canto; and we are quite certain that none would ever reach the end of the second. But as it is we are sure the work will be read through; for, in spite of yawns innumerable, and a drowsiness most oppressive, we have read it through, ourselves; and whatever effect it may have produced upon us, or whatever may be our opinion of it, we dare say, there will be found quite a number of persons, who, by the help of the author's name, will discover this Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century to be full of all manner of wit, genius, and ingenuity, and a striking proof that talent is not a mere bent towards some peculiar style of excellence, but an inherent power, which qualifies its possessor to succeed alike, in the closet and the council chamber, in politics and poetry, in business and philosophy.

"So much for the title page…" (The New-England Magazine,  Volume 3, Issue 6, Dec 1832).

That review was written a few years after Adams' Presidency and while he was a member of the House. He may have been President, he may have been a sitting Congressman, but that didn't stop the New-England Magazine's litterateur from lambasting the former President's literary ambitions.  Politicians can do many things when they leave office but entering the arts is not one of them; the waters are more treacherous than the Bermuda Triangle, which is to say, more dangerous than Beltway gossip and the D.C. commentariat. Newt Gingrich's historical novels? Consigned to Davey Jones' Locker almost immediately after publication. Jimmy Carter's The Hornet's Nest? Call pest control. Former Senator Gary Hart, writing as "John Blackthorn," published four novels. Remember I, Che Guevara? Me, neither.


While it is true that "politics is show business for ugly people," it is also true that fiction is a sinkhole for politicians, despite their routine ease with it during the pursuit their day jobs. But verse?

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Pols writing poetry?

What, nothing else to do?

Ten years after Adams wrote Dermot MacMorrogh..., he composed the poem whose manuscript appears above:

Not Solomon the wise, in all his glory
Bright bird of beauty, was array’d like thos
And thou like him shalt be renown’d in story -
Bird of the wise, the valiant and the free.
Borne on thy pinions, down the flight of Time
Columbia’s chosen sons shall wing their way;
United here, in harmony sublime
To teach mankind the blessings of her sway.
Oh! counst thou bid the floods of discord cease
And to the ark return, like Noah’s dove.
Thy voice would turn, surest Harbinger of Peace
This world of sorrow, to a world of Love
                    John Quincy Adams
Washington 9. June 1842

Under the spreading chestnut tree a former prez writes purplely.
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This manuscript poem by John Quincy Adams, on stationary with a vibrantly hand-colored Eurasian bullfinch perched on a sprig of holly as header, is being offered by Profiles In History in its Rare Books & Manuscripts Sale, July 10, 2013. It is estimated to sell for $800-$1200. 

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Image courtesy of Profiles In History, with our thanks.
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Thomas De Quincey Writes While High As A Kite

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking: and, what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it: -- and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes: -- this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me -- in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea - a [pharmakon nepenthez] for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach" (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater).

At an unknown date post-1804, the year that he first tried opium at age nineteen, Thomas De Quincey, famed author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (anonymously published in London magazine in 1821 and in book form in 1822), was working on a draft of an as yet unidentified or unpublished essay.

In 250 words over eighteen lines with numerous cancellations and insertions, De Quincey, apparently after chug-a-lugging laudanum (tincture of opium), to which he was addicted, took flight and soared to Xanadu as a  phoenix ecstatically lost in the ozone and content to be above it all, a mummified skeleton lying in a blissful state. That one-page, drug-addled manuscript has now come to auction.

It reads, in part:

"In a clock-case housed in a warm chamber of a spacious English mansion (inevitably as being English, so beautifully clean, so admirably preserved, [noise there is none, dust there is none, neither moth nor worm doth corrupt] how sweet it is to lie! – If thieves break through and steal, they will not steal a mummy; or not, unless they mistake the mummy for an eight-day clock. And if fire should arise, or even if it should descend from heaven is there not a Phoenix Office, able to look either sort of fire (earthly or heavenly) in the face ... Mummy or anti-Mummy, Skeleton or Anti-Skeleton, the Phoenix soars higher above both, and flaps her victorious wings in utter defiance of all that the element of fire can accomplish—making it her boast to ride in the upper air high above all malice from earthly enemies...."

To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, Write high, edit sober. It appears, however, that De Quincey, never completely free of opium's grip, remained stoned through the editorial process. This is is an opium-soaked apparition, a fantastic proto-Surrealist Gothic phantasmagory. It must have seemed to De Quincey that he had broken the boundaries of prose and ascended to that enchanted place where reveries take flight onto paper without volition or physical exertion, highly automatic writing while under the spell of the Oneiroi, the dream-spirits who emerge like bats from their deep cavern in Erebos, the land of eternal darkness beyond the rising sun, the infinite night that day cannot break. Don't mess with the Muse, feed Her. Judging by his penmanship there was laudanum in his inkwell.

This De Quincey manuscript, an early example of high-lit. during the Romantic period demonstrating the effect of opium on literary creation, is being offered at Bonham's Fine Books & Manuscripts sale, February 17, 2013, in San Francisco where it is estimated to sell for $800-$1200.

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Manuscript image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
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Emily Dickinson's $77,000 Bomb

by Stephen J. Gertz

A first edition publisher's presentation copy of Emily Dickinson's collection of poetry, The Single Hound (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1914), recently came to market. It was snapped up almost immediately: tipped-in was an autograph leaf of Dickinson manuscript for the poem beginning, "To love thee year by year..."

"To love thee year 
by year
May less appear
than sacrifice and
Cease -
However, dear,
Forever might 
be short
And so I pieced
it with a flower -
now.
Emily"

Dickinson's autograph signature to manuscript leaves is highly unusual. The poem, as published, is number 434 in the Johnson edition of the Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, and found on page 131 of The Single Hound. Another extant manuscript copy of this poem rests in Harvard's Houghton Library.

On the half-title, Dickinson's niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1866-1943) - who was responsible for publishing much of her aunt's unpublished work in collections, this, The Silent Hound, the first - has inscribed, "To Cousin Kate from Martha D. Bianchi - Christmas 1914."

"Bianchi...is best known for her work editing her aunt's poetry. After her mother Susan and her aunt Lavinia died, Bianchi inherited the Dickinson manuscripts that remained in her family (the other significant portion of the manuscripts was held by Mabel Loomis Todd). In 1914 Bianchi published The Single Hound: Poems of Emily Dickinson, which helped revive interest in her aunt's work. She published several more books of Dickinson’s poetry and letters as well her own reminiscences about her aunt. Bianchi and her secretary, Alfred Leete Hampson, like editors before them, edited Dickinson's poetry with the intent of making it easier to read by removing dashes and changing line breaks" (Emily Dickinson Museum).

Due to the unusual circumstances of Emily Dickinson's poetic career - an entirely private endeavor conducted in a vacuum - no presentation copies of her work are known; there weren't any published collections while she was alive. At her death in 1886 only ten of her poems had been published, seven of which appeared in the Springfield Republican, her local newspaper.

Emily Dickinson.

Three posthumous collections were issued in the 1890s but they presented Dickinson as an eccentric and the poems as weird. It was not until Bianchi published her collections of her aunt's poems in the early twentieth century that Dickinson's poetry came to be appreciated and her reputation established.

A very good-near fine copy of A Single Hound is currently being offered for $2,000. The example under notice, a presentation copy with signed autograph manuscript leaf, was offered for £50,000 ($77,790) and instantaneously sold.  It's the bomb, courtesy of the Belle of Amherst.

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Images courtesy of Peter Harrington Rare Books, with our thanks.
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