My research is focused on confirming the existence of Willie Winter and finding the names of the other dinner guests. Using a quick Wikipedia search for Willie Winter and the New York Tribune (Twain mentioned it in the typescript), I was able to confirm that William Winter did indeed exist and he did work for the New York Tribune. However, it was pretty difficult to know whether Winter was actually there or who the other dinner guests were.
Luckily, I ran into this incredible article by Henry Nash Smith in the Harvard Library Bulletin (Spring, 1955). The article was focused on "contradictory evidence bearing on the occasion [Whittier's party] in order to discover how much distortion it suffered in Mark Twain's and Howell's recollection." Basically, the article tried to answers the same questions that we raised in class on Thursday.
The most important piece of evidence that I was got from the article is scanned and reprinted above. It's an autographed seating plan of the dinner. After looking it over several times, I am pretty confident that William Winter wasn't at the dinner. And it also answered my questions as to the other party guests.
Smith also validated the absence of Winter at this dinner. He wrote the following in one of his footnote:
Luckily, I ran into this incredible article by Henry Nash Smith in the Harvard Library Bulletin (Spring, 1955). The article was focused on "contradictory evidence bearing on the occasion [Whittier's party] in order to discover how much distortion it suffered in Mark Twain's and Howell's recollection." Basically, the article tried to answers the same questions that we raised in class on Thursday.
The most important piece of evidence that I was got from the article is scanned and reprinted above. It's an autographed seating plan of the dinner. After looking it over several times, I am pretty confident that William Winter wasn't at the dinner. And it also answered my questions as to the other party guests.
Smith also validated the absence of Winter at this dinner. He wrote the following in one of his footnote:
The degree of confusion in Mark Twain's reminiscences of the dinner is evident in the fact that he describes at length an address of William Winter, mainly in verse, which was actually made two years later at the Holmes breakfast ... Both ceremonies took place in the Brunswick Hotel.
5 comments:
You said you wre trying to find the names of the other dinner guests. I found this 1877 newspaper article that has a list of most of the people who attended the dinner: http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/onstage/whitnews.html. I also do not see Willie Winter on this list.
Hmm this is a very interesting find. I just read Jorge's recent post and it reminded me that Mark Twain did in fact write that Willie Winter was there. I looked up Wesley's suggested site and followed the order of the post-dinner speeches. If the list was complete, it seemed like letters of regrets were read aloud before Mark Twain gave his speech, not Willie Winter's speech....
This is a very interesting find. What I found really interesting is the fact that the speech Willie Winter gave was actually given 2 years later at the same hotel. If it is true, it clearly discredits Twain's account. It would also be interesting to understand why Twain would include it; I doubt Twain mistakenly mixed the 2 stories together. Did Twain lie in order to exaggerate the story? And what does it show about his character?
I really think that Twain might has just mixed up the details of Winter's speech, much like he mixed up a lot of details in his account of the dinner. It's pretty hard for a man in his 70's to remember the exact details of some traumatizing event that occurred 30 years earlier. And for what it's worth, Howells also had a lot of mistakes in his account of the dinner.
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