S.
L. C.
A year later, Mark Twain did “come back again,”
as an honorary life member, and was given a dinner
of welcome by those who had signed the lines urging
his return.
Letters of 1905. To Twichell,
Mr. Duneka and others.
Politics and humanity. A summer
at Dublin. Mark Twain at
70
In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the
Republican Party to vote for Cleveland.
He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his
last day it was hard for him to see anything good
in Republican policies or performance.
He was a personal friend of Thedore Roosevelt’s
but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt
the politician rarely found favor in his eyes.
With or without justification, most of the President’s
political acts invited his caustic sarcasm and
unsparing condemnation. Another letter to Twichell
of this time affords a fair example.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell,
in Hartford:
Feb.
16, ’05. Dear Joe,—I
knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about
the President if I could only find the words to define
it with. Here they are, to a hair—from
Leonard Jerome: “For twenty years I have
loved Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman
and politician.”
It’s mighty good. Every time, in 25 years,
that I have met Roosevelt the man, a wave of welcome
has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but whenever
(as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician,
I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy.
It is plain that where his political self and his
party self are concerned he has nothing resembling
a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware
of them; ready to kick the Constitution into the back
yard whenever it gets in the way; and whenever he
smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it,
give extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not
out of his own pocket or the party’s, but out
of the nation’s, by cold pillage. As per
Order 78 and the appropriation of the Indian trust
funds.
But Roosevelt is excusable—I recognize
it and (ought to) concede it. We are all insane,
each in his own way, and with insanity goes irresponsibility.
Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to
keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician,
is insane and irresponsible.
Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study
them, let them raise you to higher planes and make
you better. You taught me in my callow days,
let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a
thesaurus with wisdom smelted from the golden ores
of experience.
Ever
yours for sweetness and light
mark.
