“I’LL PAY YOU IN PARIS.”
from The Innocents Abroad (1869)
The fashion item most associated with Mark Twain unquestionably was his trademark white suit. There are pictures of Twain in a white suit before 1906, but it was at age seventy-one that he began wearing them in public—all the time. He called it his “dontcareadam suit.” And he knew he was making a fashion statement. With flowing white hair, he knew this was an attention grabber. “It is human nature to take delight in exciting admiration,” he said. “It is what prompts children to say ‘smart’ things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways ‘show off’ when company is present.” He was not above showing off.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
—quoted in More Maxims of Mark (1927)
Modesty died when clothes were born.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
Their costumes, as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels—chiefly diamonds. It would have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these women.
—The Gilded Age (1873)
“You haven’t seen a person with clothes on. Oh, well, you haven’t lost anything.”
—visiting angel in Letters from the Earth (1962)
Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress, and some would lose all of it.
—“Woman, God Bless Her!” speech (1882)
No woman can look as well out of fashion as in it.
—quoted in Mark Twain’s
Travels with Mr. Brown (1940)
Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.
—Mark Twain’s Notebook (1935)
Whatever a man’s age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole.
—The American Claimant (1899)
We must put up with our clothes as they are—they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us—to advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of suppressed vanity; a pretense that we desire gorgeous colors and form; and we put them on to propagate that lie and back it up.
—Following the Equator (1897)
Never run after your own hat—others will be delighted to do it. Why spoil their fun?
—quoted in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field (1922)
I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also . . . I did steal his hat, but he began by taking mine . . . He came out before the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one which suited. It happened to be mine . . . There were results that were pleasing to me—possibly to him. He found out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms.
I had another experience. It was not unpleasing. I was received with a deference which was entirely foreign to my experience . . . so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion of myself than I have ever had before or since.
—1907 speech
The most fashionably dressed lady was Mrs. G.C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front but with a good deal of rake to it—to the train, I mean; it was said to be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor some little time after the woman was gone.
—Sketches New and Old (1875)
A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it.
—“The Czar’s Soliloquy”
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
—Following the Equator (1897)
As for me, give me comfort first, and style afterwards.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
We have to send soldiers—we can’t get out of that—but we can disguise them. It is the way England does in South Africa. Even Mr. Chamberlain himself takes pride in England’s honorable uniform, and makes the army down there wear an ugly and odious and appropriate disguise, of yellow stuff such as quarantine flags are made of, and which are hoisted to warn the healthy away from unclean disease and repulsive death. This cloth is called khaki. We could adopt it. It is light, comfortable, grotesque, and deceives the enemy, for he cannot conceive of a soldier being concealed in it.
—“To the Person Sitting in Darkness”
What sorry shows and shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.
—“The Memorable Assassination”
I talked in a snow-white fulldress, swallow-tail and all, and dined in the same. It’s a delightful impudence. I think I will call it my dontcareadam suit. But in the case of the private dinner I will always ask permission to wear it first saying: “Dear Madam, may I come in my dontcareadams?”
—quoted in My Father, Mark Twain (1931
by Clara Clemens
When I find myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know I possess something that is superior to everybody else’s . . . You don’t know whether they are clean or not, because you can’t see . . . If you wear white clothes, you are clean . . . I am proud to say I can wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to give it to you . . . I do not want to boast. I only want to make you understand that you are not clean.
—1907 speech
This suit, I may say, is the uniform of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Purity and Perfection, of which organization I am president, secretary, treasurer, and sole member. I may add that I don’t know of any one else who is eligible. You see, when a man gets to be 71, as I am, the world begins to look somber and dark. I believe we should do all we can to brighten things up and make ourselves look cheerful. You can’t do that by wearing black, funereal clothes. And why shouldn’t a man wear white? It betokens purity and innocence. I’m in favor of peek-a-boo waists and décolleté costumes. The most beautiful costume is the human skin, but since it isn’t conventional or polite to appear in public in that garb alone, I believe in wearing white. I don’t know anything more hideous or disgusting in men’s attire than the black clawhammer coat. A group of men thus adorned remind me more of a flock of crows than anything else. About the most becoming get up I ever saw in my life was out in the Sandwich Islands thirty years ago, where a native who wanted to appear at his best usually appeared in a pair of eyeglasses.
—quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune (1906)
I have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of 71 years as I have, the continual sight of dark clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him. Light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit. Now, of course, I cannot compel every one to wear such clothing just for my especial benefit, so I do the next best thing and wear it myself.
—quoted in The New York Times (1906)
As for black clothes, my aversion to them is incurable.
—1909 letter
