The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin
Mac Donnell.
~~~~~

_The Statesman and the Storyteller: John Hay, Mark Twain, and the Rise of
American Imperialism_. Mark Zwonitzer. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,
2016. Pp. 583. Hardcover $35.00. ISBN 978-1-5651-2989-4.


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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by
Kevin Mac Donnell


Copyright (c) 2016 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.



Exactly when John Hay and Mark Twain first met seems lost to history and
Twain's own comments are somewhat contradictory. They certainly met in
December of 1870, just a few months after John Hay joined the staff of the
_New York Tribune_. Twain wrote a letter to Whitelaw Reid of the _Tribune_
that month asking to be remembered to John Hay, but had they met
previously? Twain says in his autobiography (which Hay had encouraged him
to write in 1875) that they met in 1867, and when Hay died in 1905, Twain
recalled that they'd been friends for thirty-eight years, reconfirming the
1867 date. But Twain also noted that their friendship dated back to when
Reid and Hay were working together at the _Tribune_. Reid joined the staff
in 1868, but Hay was not hired until 1870, and other than Twain's later
recollections there is no evidence of an earlier meeting, and only a few
months of time when they were in the same place at the same time between
1867 and 1870 (see note 3 to Twain letter _UCCL 02793_ at MTP Online for
more details). Whenever and however they first met, they became cordial
friends, respectful of each other's success from very similar humble
beginnings. During the next three and half decades they apparently
exchanged only a handful of letters, and their face-to-face meetings were
sporadic--a dignified Hay sitting next to his humorist friend at Twain's
67th birthday celebration in 1902 being the best known. But their
friendship and mutual respect endured to the end of Hay's life--despite
Mrs. Hay's distinct dislike of Twain.


Born just three years and fifty miles apart, both were products of
antebellum Mississippi River culture, even though Hay grew up on the
Illinois side of the river, where slave-traders and slave-catchers infested
the forests growing in the free soil that beckoned the enslaved black
people on the opposite shore. Their lives followed very different paths at
times. Sam Clemens promised $400 of his future wages to pay a steamboat
pilot to teach him the river during the same years Hay was busy obtaining a
degree from Brown University, paid for in full by a generous uncle. When
Twain was sitting out the Civil War in rough-and-tumble Nevada and cutting
his journalistic teeth while acting as personal secretary to his brother
Orion, Hay was working as one of President Abraham Lincoln's two private
secretaries. They would later differ in their views on race, social issues,
politics, and foreign policy, but there were similarities too. Both men
married very wealthy women, and both rose to the very pinnacle of their
chosen professions. It was this last shared trait that was the unbreakable
bond between them.


After serving Lincoln during the Civil War, Hay served at diplomatic posts
in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, becoming Assistant Secretary of State in 1878
after working at the _Tribune_, then Ambassador to Great Britain, and
eventually Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Teddy
Roosevelt. He co-authored a ten-volume biography of Lincoln in 1890, ten
years after he had arranged for a small proof printing of Mark Twain's
ribald classic, _1601_. His independent wealth allowed him to indulge a
passion for collecting art, but it also made it possible for him to serve
in government out of a sense of civic duty. He was a man of impeccable
dress and manners, cultured, and wise in the ways of politics. His career
during the last ten years of his life (1895-1905) when American imperialism
was rapidly on the rise is the focus of Mark Zwonitzer's study of both men.
As Zwonitzer explains, his study began with John Hay alone. But as he wrote
about England and the United States dangerously rattling sabers over a
border dispute in Venezuela; the United States behaving badly in the
Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba; and the machinations to make the Panama
Canal a reality, Mark Twain kept popping up. As a result, his study quickly
expanded into parallel studies of both men, tracing how their lives, their
mutual friends, and even their inner thoughts evolved and sometimes
intersected. The inclusion of Mark Twain also had an added bonus of giving
Zwonitzer a convenient and effective way to highlight different points of
view on every issue that confronted either man during those years.


By choosing two men whose thoughtful views on imperialism sometimes
collided, and presenting much of his story with alternating chapters on
each man (and alternating _within_ some chapters further along in the
story), Zwonitzer examines how their lives threaded along both sides (and
sometimes through) the warp and weave of American imperialism as it was
woven into a sometimes complex pattern that seems commonplace today but was
new to the fabric of American politics at the time. Zwontizer's experience
working on an editorial project ten years ago with (then) Senator Joe Biden
led to his realization that American imperialism had set winds in motion in
American foreign policy that are still howling a century later. This
background also uniquely qualifies him to write on this subject, and he
gets inside the heads of the main players, analyzing their motivations and
thought processes with a clarity that only somebody experienced in American
politics could muster.


The chronological approach makes it easier than it would be otherwise to
sort through some confusing political battles and convoluted international
relationships, but it is still a lengthy and sometimes complex account. For
that reason Zwonitzer's very readable writing style is a saving grace, and
a talent for turning a phrase keeps things moving along. For example, when
he describes President McKinley rejecting someone's suggestion that he ask
for the Pope's help in making peace with Spain he says "the good Methodist
workhorse spit the bit" (262). Describing amputations that took place after
a gruesome battle in Cuba he called it a "bloody restaging of the old Civil
War limb toss Hay had witnessed thirty-five years earlier" (289). He
describes African-American soldiers in Cuba who had saved white supremacist
Teddy Roosevelt's "Anglo-Saxon ass" (291). After the crisis over Venezuela
was over and war averted, American politicians are portrayed as "still
aquiver with frustration at the _bellum interruptus_" (168). Truth be told,
political wonks will read this book regardless, but these apt descriptive
phrases and bulls-eye humor combine to make this hefty book much more
approachable than the general reader might suppose if judging this book by
its cover.


The biographical literature on Mark Twain habitually pairs Mark Twain with
his friends and colleagues. In fact, a game of fill-in-the-blank could be
based upon all the books that begin with the words _Mark Twain and
_________, with a long list of correct answers that would include William
Dean Howells, Bret Harte, Joe Twichell, William James, Dan De Quille,
Elisha Bliss, General Grant, George W. Cable, Henry H. Rogers, Orion
Clemens, Teddy Roosevelt, and William Shakespeare--not to mention the many
places where Twain lived or visited. Some of these books flesh out the
details of close friendships based on plentiful correspondence and frequent
encounters, while others trace more distant relationships. While this book
falls into the latter category, Zwonitzer's effective use of original
sources and his ability to illuminate the inner lives of his main players
gives it more of the feel of the former.


Hay was often a reluctant public servant. A letter he wrote to President
Garfield on Christmas Day 1880, declining an offer to be his private
secretary sums up the attitude he held most of his life, even when he
accepted later positions: "To do a thing well a man must take some pleasure
in it, . . .  the contact with the greed and selfishness of office-seekers
and bulldog Congressmen, is unspeakably repulsive to me. . . . The constant
contact with envy, meanness, ignorance, and the swinish selfishness which
ignorance breeds, needs a stronger heart and a more obedient nervous system
than I can boast" (300). These misgivings notwithstanding, Hay was of like
mind with others of his social class. His views on race were paternalistic,
and he shared the widespread belief that only men of means and good
breeding--_white men_--were capable of governing, and those of other races
were destined to be the governed. It may surprise some Twainians to know
that Twain was sometimes a reluctant anti-imperialist. We think of Twain as
an outspoken critic of imperialism, but he was often hesitant to speak out,
especially while abroad. However, when he arrived back in America in
October 1900 he finally declared himself an anti-imperialist when asked by
a newspaper reporter. He admitted he'd been a "red hot" imperialist five
years before (408) but neglected to mention that he'd doubled his $18,000
investment in Federal Steel just one year before when that firm won a huge
government contract for the manufacture of heavy ammunition, beating out a
major competitor, Carnegie Steel, owned by Twain's friend Andrew Carnegie.


Besides Carnegie, many other friends and acquaintances of Mark Twain appear
in these pages, and most of them shared friendships or more formal
relationships with John Hay, including Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Adams,
Whitelaw Reid, Poultney Bigelow, and Teddy Roosevelt. Some, like Roosevelt
and Reid, would earn Twain's private condemnation, but they frequently
shared tables at dinners, ran into each other at clubs and other social
events, and were cordial in public. Twain and Hay both shared a disdain for
Roosevelt's juvenile antics, and Teddy's racism and war-mongering
tendencies seemed to know no bounds. As police commissioner of New York
City Roosevelt had contemplated an invasion of Canada (77). As acting
secretary of the navy, Roosevelt wrote a friend "I should welcome almost
any war, for I think this country needs one" (228). Some of Roosevelt's
racist comments are almost too vulgar to repeat, but even Teddy didn't go
so far as to embrace the dream of Senator John Morgan of Alabama, a former
Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan who envisioned shipping one million
African-Americans to Hawaii and the Philippines, where he was certain they
belonged (362-363). While Twain and Hay are always center stage, the other
characters in this drama invade and inform the scenes from stage-left and
stage-right, creating entertainment one moment and consternation the next.


These 550 pages of text are not flawless, but the errors of fact regarding
Twain are minor: the Paige compositor is incorrectly called a printing
press on one page (11) but correctly identified on another (26). Twain is
described as a "riverboat" pilot rather than a steamboat pilot (83), and
Clara is said to have told her father that she was pregnant (546); but
that's a matter of speculation that can never be resolved. Zwonitzer
provides a good accounting of his methodology and sources (551-553) and a
good bibliography. He makes no references to the well-known scholarship of
Jim Zwick, but because he is much more focused on the personalities and
politics of imperialism rather than Twain's writings, this might be excused
by some, but it is still a serious oversight. Most troubling is the absence
of endnotes or footnotes. Zwonitzer's numerous quotes and references to
specific events and dates seem to beg for footnotes, and this reviewer
suspects that the text probably began with extensive footnotes that were
removed by the publisher to save space. If so, that was a bad decision;
this book deserves its full textual apparatus intact.


Zwonitzer's prologue includes an apropos quote from a speech by Hay that
likely explains why he continued to serve his country despite his
oft-stated distrust and distaste for politics: "No man, no party, can fight
with any chance of final success against a cosmic tendency; no cleverness,
no popularity, avails against the spirit of the age" (xv-xvi). Hay could
not fight what he saw as the arc of history, but he could find ways to bend
it at times for good. Had Twain heard Hay's speech, he might have paused
from raging against the imperialist arc of history and responded with a
rejoiner: "Against the assault of Laughter, nothing can stand." This is the
record of the reaction of two great men to their own times more than it is
a story of the relationship of those two men. Those expecting the
delineation of a close personal friendship like those between Twain and
Twichell, or Twain and Howells, will not find that in this book, but they
will have this book to thank for bringing to life the kinship and inner
lives of two men who each served their country in different ways during
some pivotal moments in American history that feel dreadfully familiar and
dangerously contemporary.