Mark Twain and American Whiskey

 

More than any other writer in American history,  Mark Twain celebrated whiskey as the national drink of choice.   He has been quoted saying:  “Whiskey is for drinking;  water is for fighting over.”  But perhaps his most famous tribute to whiskey was Twain’s rather elaborate spoof on a patriotic saying known to young and old of his time:   “Westward the course of empire takes its way....”

Originally penned by an obscure American poet named George Berkeley in the early 1700s, the quote was picked up by Historian George Bancroft in 1840 and became a line stamped on the back cover of his highly popular (and still read) “History of the United States.”   In turn, the quote became the title and theme of a painting that adorned a stairway in the U.S. Capitol, shown below.  Put simply, the quotation implies that the United States was destined to move westward and create a new empire in North America --  a prediction that largely became true.

For Twain,  who made a career out of debunking overly romantic notions,  the driving force behind American expansion was not empire-building but whiskey.  In his autobiographical book, “Life on the Mississippi,”  the author takes issue with  the well-known quote about America’s expansion.  It should have been, he said:  “Westward the JUG of Empire takes its way.” 

Twain explained:  “How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary--but always whiskey!  Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey -- I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail-- and behold, civilization is established for ever in the land. But whiskey, you see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work.”

Twain/Clemens was not merely a man of words about whiskey,  but of deeds as well.  While not given to over-indulging,  his  fondness for bourbon was well known.    As he wrote in his “Autobiography”,  he recalled imbibing at an early age:  “For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whiskey toddy when I was six weeks old but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old and my memory is not as active as it used to be.”   

During his brief career as a journalist in Washington about 1868,  Twain agreed to share expenses with a roommate with a similar taste for whiskey.   Their total joint income per week was $24.   In his autobiography he recounts:  “Twenty four dollars a week would really have been riches to us if hadn’t had to support that jug;  because of the jug we were always sailing pretty close to the wind....”

Later in life, when a friend sent him a case of whiskey, Twain’s thank-you note ran this way:   “The whiskey arrived in due course...;  last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted in me, on the installment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the best, smoothest whiskey now on the planet.” 

In his later years, while in England on a lecture tour, Twain remarked to companions that despite enjoying their company he badly missed the taste of Kentucky bourbon.  To accommodate him, friends imported six cases and even switched from scotch to help him drink it.   When he left England two cases remained. “I will be back very soon,” said he.  “Save them for me.”  Though Twain never returned, the bourbon was left untouched until World War II when the supply was destroyed during a German bombing raid.

During his lifetime,  Twain lent his famous face and name to a range of products:  Mark Twain Tobacco,  Mark Twain Cigars,  and -- naturally -- Mark Twain Whiskey.   One such brand was registered by Ralph W.  Ashcroft of Brooklyn, New York, in 1907.  Others were Mark Twain’s Private Stock,  a pre-Prohibition brand with a drawing of Twain on the front.  Shown here is a post-Prohibition brand called “Mark Twain Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” featuring a Mississippi riverboat on the label. It was identified as the product of the Mark Twain Distilling Company of Bardstown, Kentucky. 

No whiskey,  however,  can match Old Crow for latching onto the aura of Mark Twain.  In a series of ads that ran in national magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and LIFE during the late 1950s and early 1960s,  Twain is depicted in various situations,  including holding forth at a tavern, conversing with other notable contemporaries over a glass of bourbon, and visiting the distillery.  In another ad, shown here, he is visiting Klaproth’s Tavern, an Elmira, New York, saloon not far from Twain’s spacious home.  A barrel of Old Crow is being tapped on the bar and the author inquires of the bartender: “Lou, which barrel are we using now?”  

Old Crow was created  by a man credited with developing the first bourbon whiskey,  James Crowe,  a Scottish chemist and physician who settled in Kentucky.  The brand probably was familiar to Twain and may well have been his whiskey of choice.  But he would not have appreciated the Old Crow ad that showed him entertaining fellow writer, Bret Harte, at  his home.   

The ad depicts a mature, seated Twain while Harte is standing as if in the midst of a discourse. The scene could never have happened.   Although Twain and Harte had been youthful friends, later in life they had become estranged.  Twain publicly pilloried Harte in his autobiography,  stating:  “He was bad, distinctly bad;  he had no feeling and he had no conscience.”  In an 1878 private letter he wrote:  “Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward.....”  Harte was never invited to Twain’s house to sip Old Crow or anything else.

Clearly Mark Twain deserves to be considered the “patron saint” of American whiskey for his dedication to our Nation’s indigenous spirits.  It is appropriate, therefore to end this vignette with a final Twain observation: