When Mark Twain Tried to Move Thanksgiving

From a story on the New Yorker's Book Bench...

In November of 1905, the month he turned seventy, Mark Twain was exceedingly famous; the nation was a-tingle with affection for its most humorous and most American American treasure, and all the more so because his birthday that year fell on the most American of holidays: Thursday, November 30th, Thanksgiving day. The birthday is well documented in the historical record. There are photographs of his party, which was held at Delmonico's restaurant, and a transcript of the speech he gave there, which includes his secrets of longevity:

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.

There are newspaper articles and interviews, which assert that Twain's life "is an additional reason why the American people should feel grateful." But if Americans did indeed feel grateful for their perfectly patriotic pet writer in 1905, they must also have been puzzled by his refusal to behave like one. Twain used the occasion to call attention to evils—the evils of King Leopold of Belgium, whose regime was busy brutalizing and massacring the native population of the Congo; and of the American financiers who held lucrative mining contracts there. When asked by the New York World what Americans should be thankful for that Thanksgiving, Twain said:

We have much to be thankful for: most of all, (politically), that America's first-born son, sole & only son, love-child of her trusting innocence & her virgin bed, King Leopold of the Undertakers, has been spared to us another year, & that his (& our) Cemetery Trust in the Congo is now doing a larger business in a single week than it used to in a month fifteen years ago.

Twain fans might know that he was political, but perhaps few of us know the extent of his politicization.

What was the menu, by the way, on his birthday, a few days after Thanksgiving, 1900? Here it is.

And what about Mark Twain hunting the deceitful turkey? Look no further.