Archibald Forbes lectured in Allyn Hall in Hartford, Connecticut on November 17, 1881. He was escorted to the stage and introduced to the audience by Mark Twain. The Hartford Daily Courant recorded Twain's speech as follows:
| Ladies and Gentlemen -- It
seems peculiarly fitting that a soldier should introduce a soldier to his
audience; I exercise this function by this authority, for I who address
you am not unacquainted with the grim sublimities of war. I having served,
now, during more than two years, as an honorary private in the Connecticut
militia, and in that time have dared all that they have dared, suffered
all that they have suffered, and fought, bled and died as gallantly as the
best of them. Why I was not invited to go to Charleston and Atlanta with
my regiment the other day, is a matter which I cannot explain, counting
out professional jealousy. I would have gone with a heart stored with the
purest and most unselfish motives; and not as some others did, simply to
get a new suit of clothes for nothing.
But a truce to military heart burnings and injustices; let them perish with the perishable past. My office here is only to make you acquainted with a man whom you already know perfectly well -- a man who has heard the roar and thunder of battle in many and widely separated lands around and about the globe; a man whose record is filled with brilliant achievements in war and with the pen; a man who has fairly earned, not merely once, but several times, that rarely-granted badge of supreme daring, the coveted Victoria cross; a man who has smelt the breath of dissolution on many a field, and is as familiar with it as is our Angel of Death who presides over the malarious mission of our river Sty [sic] and from the dome of the Hartford capitol, yonder -- Archibald Forbes, soldier and war correspondent. (Applause.) International appreciations have received a new birth in these past months.
We have saluted the red cross of England at Yorktown' England has saluted
the stars and stripes in the shadow of Westminster; you remember the queen's
touching messages when our President's life hung wavering in the balance
and the world watched by his bedside; and how, when he died, she did what
no British monarch had done before -- clothed her court in the symbols
of sorrow for one not born in the purple; and you remember how all England,
from the throne down to the forlorn and the homeless, mourned with us
over the bier where the heart of this nation lay broken. I have wished
you to give to Mr. Forbes a right American welcome; and so I have reminded
you of who and what he is, and what he has done. Doubtless it would have
been sufficient to simply say, He is our guest, and an Englishman. (Applause.) |
 Archibald Forbes English Journalist & War Correspondent 1838-1900 |
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