"A Table for Two"

In which I interview Mark Twain at happy hour.

*(Sometimes while driving long distances I’ll dream up deceased people and and forgotten events and engage the characters in conversation to help the miles roll by. Here’s one of these and I hope you’ll forgive the indulgence. And if you like the concept, just leave a comment and I’ll make another one someday.)

Mark Twain

He was not born with that name as everybody knows. His mother, Mrs. Clemens, named him Samuel, perhaps in the hope that he would make a name for himself in Heaven before he got there. That name is from the Old Testament and in Hebrew it jeans “God has heard”. Not long after Samuel named himself Mark Twain, God probably started hearing quite enough from him, all right, although likely not in a way that Mrs. Clemens would have sanctioned.

We met in the near-empty lobby of the Birchfield Hotel on a Friday afternoon over a bottle of Old Crow, a bucket of ice, two crystal bar glasses and a plate of sardines and cheese. Mr. Twain was dressed in his traditional white suit. He offered me a cigar.

ME: “Thank you very much, sir but actually I don’t smoke. However I am much in your debt for this opportunity.”

MT: “Yes, well, you know sometimes you don’t see an opportunity until it ceases to be one so let’s hope you’re right.”

He lifted the plate of sardines and cheese and extended it in my direction.

MT: “Here, have some seafood.”

ME: “So let me ask you, if I may, why you always wear a white suit.”

MT: “When a man gets to be my age he can wear whatever he damn well pleases and it pleases me to wear white. The most beautiful costume of all is the human skin but since it isn’t polite to appear in public got up that way I wear white. Naked people have very little influence in society.”

ME: “You’ve written several books about your travels. What do you least like about going abroad?”

MT: “Ocean liners. Went to Bermuda on one once and it was like going through Hell to get to Heaven. You ever go on on of those?”

ME: “Never did.”

MT: “Don’t. One time out on the Indian Ocean the deck tilted up so far that I had to climb it with a rope and grappling hook. Went sharply down before I made it. Got thrown into a scupper and wound up below decks in the kitchen. Slid across a table and broke a stack of salad plates and barely escaped the wrath of a knife-waving chef. The ocean looks flat most of the time but, no, it spends much of its life being vertical. Probably out of meanness. Certainly out of habit.”

Mr. Twain leaned back in his chair, drew lustily on his cigar and pointed a finger at the whiskey.

MT: “Here. Put these glasses to good use. Wheels roll better when oiled.”

I uncapped the bottle and drained about two inches into each glass.

MT: “This is cheap whiskey, you know. But it has an interesting pedigree. I drink it out of respect for General Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president. Did you know it was his favorite whiskey during the Civil War?”

ME: “I did not.”

MT: “Well, it was and to the extent that some of the army officers and a few weasel congressmen went and tattled to President Lincoln that Grant was drunk most of the time and that he ought to replace him. They overlooked the fact that Grant was winning actual battles while the teetotaling top brass like General McClellan weren’t doing diddly squat. So, Lincoln told them to go get the name of the whiskey Grant was using to get drunk on so he could send each of his generals a barrel of it.”

ME: “That’s a great story.”

MT: “It has the added virtue of being true. What’s not true is that Grant was an alcoholic. He rarely drank but when he did he sometimes had to be carried off to bed. I’ve had such occasions myself, except that I usually groped my way to bed without help. Incidentally, I had the fortunate circumstance of helping Grant write his memoir before he died. He wrote it. I mostly helped him to keep the publishers from taking all his money.”

Twain leaned forward, dropped a chunk of ice into his glass, swirled it around and enjoyed a long, slow sip of the whiskey, holding the glass up to the light.

MT: “Do you know why the French avoid putting ice into a drink?”

ME: “I don’t. Why?”

MT: “Because it’s too American. But it’s their loss. They’re not overly fond of soap, either. But then, they’re French. They have the best butter in the whole world and refuse to put it on their bread.”

ME: “Who is your favorite philosopher?”

MT: “William Shakespere, hands down.”

ME: “I’m sorry, Mark, but wasn’t Shakespere a great poet and playwright, not a philosopher?”

MT: “Indeed, he’s those things and a philosopher in the bargain. Not to denigrate Aristotle or Plato but their heads were in the clouds. Old William knew the human heart. ‘A fool,’ he wrote in “As You Like It” ‘thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ That’s right up there with Socrates who admitted he didn’t actually know a damned thing. The biggest philosophical frauds of all time thought you could predict the future by scientific analysis of the past.”

ME: Can you name one?”

MT: “I can name several but the chief culprit is Hegel. That man didn’t know what he didn’t know and he didn’t know it so profoundly that he was able to invent whole volumes of indecipherable, utter nonsense and not bat an eye. The fact that professors keep on teaching his gibberish to pollute innocent minds is why I never allowed schooling to interfere with my education.”

G.F.W. Hegel’s convoluted gibberish was the chief inspiration for Karl Marx

ME: “Not to be too familiar, Mark but are you religious? Do you think there is a Heaven and a Hell?”

MT: “I imagine myself to be on reasonable terms with the Almighty but I’m opposed to His self-appointed spokesmen, His ambassadors and His salesmen. A religion that comes with thought and study and heartfelt conviction sticks best but much of the content of sermons everywhere now is little more than fervid blather and mortal fantasy from self-anointed saints with fat bank accounts. As for Heaven or Hell I must decline to comment since I have friends in both.”

ME: “So what’s your next move, Mark?”

MT: “Well, if I ever get to Heaven I probably won’t be walking in there on a red carpet and if I wind up in Hell I’ll just try to keep a low profile and not complain too much about the food. Or the lack of ice.

ME: “Thank you, sir.”

MT: “Don’t mention it. How about another little splash of that Old Crow.”

(Mr. Twain and I continued our conversation for another hour while enjoying a few more of glasses of General Grant’s favorite whiskey and speculating on the future of writing, philosophy, world travel, religion, French cuisine, death, medicine, cornbread and astronomy. He did most of the talking.)

Bourbon Old Fashioned

• Combine one and a half ounces bourbon, two teaspoons simple syrup*, three dashes of Angostura Bitters and a section of orange peel in a mixing glass with some ice. (ice optional here).

• Stir until well chilled.

• Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.

• Garnish with a strip of orange peel, squeezing the peel to express the oil over the top of the drink and drop it into the glass. (* simple syrup: two parts sugar to one part water, heated in a saucepan until dissolved then chilled.)

(Eat Your History is an ongoing research project to find and reveal those unexpected parts of our planet and our history which have been overlooked by the publishers of history books.

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Thanks,

Bob