The Oracle of Berkeley Visits Southern Maryland

How does one meet Bob Hirst, get to know him and his work, and not become influenced by him? All contributors in this volume have their own Bob Hirst stories to answer that question. Mine begins in spring 2007, although I didn't actually meet Bob until a year later.As a newly promoted full professor whose scholarly pursuits lay in the field of rhetoric and composition, it now seemed professionally safe to try something else: teaching and writing about American humor and Mark Twain in particular. What better way to start than by offering a senior seminar on Twain? Circumstance placed the son of our college president into the class. The next link in the chain: a pre-spring semester college event, where our president mentioned that her son was excited to take the seminar. In response, I said that a wonderful recent Twain biography by Ron Powers (Mark Twain: A Life, 2005) had been a great resource and inspiration in preparing the course. She perked up and said, “I know him. Want to bring him here this semester for a talk?—I'll pay!” Temperament said, “Do it!” Two months later, Ron Powers delivered the inaugural Twain Lecture, a tremendous success. Immediately following the event, the president sidled up to me and said, “We should do this every year!” Her offer led to the Mark Twain Lecture Series on American Humor and Culture, a campus fixture for the last eighteen years. Only problem: I had to find the next speaker for this series, and I didn't know anyone in the Twain world.So I asked Ron for a recommendation. Without hesitation, he said, “There's a guy at Berkeley who looks kinda like me, big guy with white hair and a white beard—Bob Hirst. He's the oracle of all things Twain.” (I'm sure he was referencing the Oracle at Delphi, not the one on the Quaker City!) He further described Bob Hirst as an indefatigable (and kind of ruthless) editor, who read and commented on all three drafts of his Twain biography, helping him reduce the over 1400-page original manuscript to the compelling 718-page final version. Ron said he tried to compensate Bob for this work, but Bob wouldn't hear of it. I soon learned firsthand that this is what Bob Hirst does: generously help others understand the works of Mark Twain by directing them to the essential primary resources and people needed to do so.Hoping to secure the second speaker of my fledgling series, I contacted Dr. Robert H. Hirst. Bob agreed to come east on February 8, 2008. He would meet with my seminar students in the afternoon and then give an evening lecture, “Better Shove This in the Stove: Tales from the Mark Twain Papers.” About three days before the event, I called to make sure everything was going alright with Bob's trip. It wasn't. He informed me that he didn't think he would make it because he was suffering from some kind of virus and had a fever. But the next day, he called and said, “I'm coming.” Instant relief! When I picked him up at the BWI airport, I could tell that he was not feeling well. As we drove down to Southern Maryland, I mentioned that while I could appreciate and understand literary and critical theory, I thought that scholars tended to avoid close readings of primary texts and investigating historical-biographical contexts of works. I suggested that for Twain scholarship this approach would be impossible to ignore and ill-advised. His response: “That's music to my ears.”When we got to the campus, Bob said he wanted to drop off something at my office before going to his lodging. When we arrived at the parking lot, I grabbed the boxy suitcase (the kind that should have had stickers on it from all his travels) out of the trunk; it was heavy. He took the case from me and walked with me to my office. Inside my office, he set down the suitcase and remarked, “Here's some materials that might be of use to you.” He proceeded to take out hard copies of six volumes of Mark Twain's Letters, three volumes of Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, two volumes of Mark Twain's Early Tales and Sketches, and a glossy facsimile of the original manuscript for “Corn-pone Opinions.” In watching him relieve the suitcase of its weight, all I could think was: The Oracle of Berkeley is giving me, a Twain newbie, hundreds of dollars’ worth of books that he selected and lugged all the way across the country to Southern Maryland. And this oracle was feeling like crap!After a night's rest, Bob met with my seminar students, sat for a formal interview, attended a dinner in his honor, and then gave his speech, “‘Better Shove this in the Stove’: Tales from the Mark Twain Papers.” He began by describing the monumental task of editing the papers, which continue to grow from the original cache of documents that came to Berkeley from Clara Clemens in 1949: “What I'd like to do today is a little bit like explaining why I've been doing this kind of work for over forty years, and I'm still not done, and don't expect to be done until they put me in the pine box—that I have thoughtfully installed in my office.” He proceeded to mesmerize and inform the audience with tales from the Papers—another success for this series! That night I improved my ability to read Twain “right” by hearing Bob read “Fitz Smyth's Horse,” and I learned that if you read him “right,” he still delivers, like Bob did.Since that evening seventeen years ago, Bob has graciously answered every email query I've ever sent him. He personally showed me how to use the Papers when I visited in 2009. He informed my thinking about my article on the controversial “raft episode,” and introduced me to Vic Fischer, who he called, “the world's expert on all this,” to further assist me. He also influenced how I conducted my work as the editor of The Mark Twain Annual (2018–2023). In fact, for most of the articles submitted during my editorial tenure, I found myself asking, “How would Bob Hirst respond to this argument?” I learned that Bob's a facilitator for whatever you need to engage with and understand in Twain. He is gracious, without ego, and always willing to help. In fact, he most recently personally copied several letters for an Elmira conference paper I delivered in 2022. In short, he put me on the path doing Twain scholarship in a thorough, accurate way.So when I received word that the Oracle of Berkeley was retiring, I was surprised and recalled that pine box comment. I wondered if Bob broke down the box in the office, took the pieces home, and used them for firewood or if he kept it intact for rafting. Or perhaps he just left it for the succeeding editor? If so, that's a mighty big box to fill. Thank you, Bob, for all that you have done!