 CHAPTER 255 FURTHER PERSONALITIES Like every person living, Mark Twain had some peculiar and petty economies. Such things in great men are noticeable. He lived extravagantly. His household expenses at the time amounted to more than fifty dollars a day. In the matter of food, the choicest and most expensive the market could furnish, was always served in lavish abundance. He had the best and highest priced servants ample as to number. His clothes he bought generously. He gave without stint to his children. His gratuities were always liberal. He never questioned pecuniary outgoes. seldom worried as to the state of his bank account, so long as there was plenty. He smoked cheap cigars because he preferred their flavor. Yet he had his economies. I have seen him before leaving a room go around and carefully lower the gas jets to provide against that waste. I have known him to examine into the cost of a cab, and object to an apparent overcharge of a few cents. It seemed that his idea of economy might be expressed in these words. He abhorred extortion and visible waste. Furthermore he had exact ideas as to ownership. One evening while we were playing billiards I noticed a five-cent piece on the floor. I picked it up saying, Here is five cents. I don't know who's it is. He regarded the coin rather seriously, I thought, and said, I don't know either. I laid it on top of the bookshelves which ran around the room. The play went on, and I forgot the circumstance. When the game ended that night I went into his room with him, as usual, for a good night word. As he took his change and keys from the pocket of his trousers he looked the assortment over and said, That five-cent piece you found was mine. I brought it to him at once, and he took it solemnly, laid it with the rest of his change, and neither of us referred to it again. It may have been one of his jokes, but I think it more likely that he remembered having had a five-cent piece, probably reserved for car fare, and that it was missing. More than once in Washington he had said, Draw plenty of money for incidental expenses. Don't bother to keep account of them. So it was not miserliness, it was just a peculiarity, a curious attention to a trifling detail. He had a fondness for riding on the then newly completed subway, which he called the Underground. Sometimes he would say, I'll pay your fare on the Underground if you want to take a ride with me. And he always insisted on paying the fare, and once when I rode far uptown with him to a place where he was going to luncheon, and had taken him to the door, he turned and said gravely, Here is five cents to pay your way home. And I took it in the same spirit in which it had been offered. It was probably this trait which caused someone occasionally to claim that Mark Twain was close in money matters. Perhaps there may have been times in his life when he was parsimonious. But if so, I must believe that it was when he was sorely pressed and exercising the natural instinct of self-preservation. He wished to receive the full value, who does not, of his labours and properties. He took a childish delight in piling up money, but it became greed only when he believed someone with whom he had dealings was trying to get an unfair division of profits. Then it became something besides greed. It became an indignation that amounted to malevolence. I was concerned in a number of dealings with Mark Twain, and at a period in his life when human traits are supposed to become exaggerated, which is to say old age, and if he had any natural tendency to be unfair or small or greedy in his money dealings, I think I should have seen it. Personally I found him liberal to excess, and I never observed in him anything less than generosity to those who were fair with him. Once that winter, when a letter came from Steve Gillis saying that he was an invalid now and would have plenty of time to read Sam's books if he owned them, Clemens ordered an expensive set from his publishers, and did what meant to him even more than the cost in money. He autographed each of those twenty-five volumes. Then he sent them, charges paid, to that far Californian retreat. It was hardly the act of a stingy man. He had the human fondness for a compliment when it was genuine, and from an authoritative source, and I remember how pleased he was that winter with Professor William Lyon Phelps' widely published opinion, which ranked Mark Twain as the greatest American novelist, and declared that his fame would outlive any American of his time. Phelps had placed him above Holmes, Howells, James, and even Hawthorne. He had declared him to be more American than any of these, more American even than Whitman. Professor Phelps' position in Yale College gave this opinion a certain official weight, but I think the fact of Phelps himself being a writer of great force, with an American freshness of style, gave it a still greater value. Among the pleasant things that winter was a meeting with Eugene F. Ware of Kansas, with whose pen-name, Ironquill, Clemens had long been familiar. Ware was a breezy, western genius of the finest type. If he had abandoned law for poetry there is no telling how far his fame might have reached. There was, in his work, that same spirit of Americanism and humor and humanity that is found in Mark Twain's writings, and he had the added faculty of rhyme and rhythm which would have set him in a place apart. I had known Ware personally during a period of western residence and later when he was commissioner of pensions under Roosevelt. I usually saw him when he came to New York, and it was a great pleasure now to bring together the two men whose work I so admired. They met at a small private luncheon at the players, and Peter Dunn was there, and Robert Collier, and it was such an afternoon as Howells has told of when he and Aldrich and Bret Hart and those others talked until the day faded into twilight and twilight deepened into evening. Clemens had put in most of the day before reading Ware's book of poems, the rhymes of iron quill, and had declared his work to rank with the very greatest of American poetry. I think he called it the most truly American in flavor. I remember that at the luncheon he noted Ware's big, splendid physique and his western liberties of syntax with a curious intentness. I believe he regarded him as being nearer his own type in mind and expression than any one he had met before. Among Ware's poems he had been especially impressed with the fables and with some verses entitled Wist, which, though rather more optimistic, conformed to his own philosophy. They have a distinctly western feeling. Hour after hour the cards were fairly shuffled and fairly dealt, and still I got no hand. The morning came, but I, with mind unruffled, did simply say, I do not understand. Life is a game of wist. From unseen sources the cards are shuffled and the hands are dealt. Blind are our efforts to control the forces that, though unseen, are no less strongly felt. I do not like the way the cards are shuffled, but still I like the game and want to play, and through the long, long night will I, unruffled, play what I get until the break of day. End of Chapter 255 Further Personalities. Red by John Greenman. Section 45 of Mark Twain a Biography. Volume 3. Part 2. 1907-1910. This Libber Box recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain a Biography. By Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 256. Honors from Oxford. Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twitchell along. Their first return to the island since the trip when they had promised to come back so soon, nearly thirty years before. They had been comparatively young men, then. They were old now, but they found the Green Island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find their old landlady. They could not even remember her name at first, and then Twitchell recalled that it was the same as an author of certain school books in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, Curecombe's Grammar. Curecombe was truly the name, and they went to find her. But she was dead, and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reigned in her stead, and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. They walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again a long discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. It gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow to fade again. Later in the year, March 1907, I also made a journey, it having been agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific Coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly passing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal schoolmates, also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the early pioneers, all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted, but whatever reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put aside in view of perspective benefits. John's, in fact, seemed to derive joy from the thought that he was commissioning a kind of personal emissary to his old comrades and provided me with a letter of credentials. It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken none too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the valley of the shadows as he talked to me by his fire, one memorable afternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in the cave and on Holiday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he died, and there were others of that scattering procession who did not reach the end of the year. Joe Goodman, still full of vigor, in 1912, journeyed with me to the green and dreamy solitudes of Jackass Hill to see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgettable Sunday when Steve Gillis, an invalid, but with a fire still in his eyes and speech, sat up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and told old tales and adventures. When I left, he said, Tell Sam, I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him, that I've loved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last word I'll ever send to him. Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already lying at the point of death, and so for him the visit was too late, though he was able to receive a message from his ancient mining partner and to send back a parting word. I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished to follow that abandoned water highway and to visit its presiding genius, Horace Bixby. He died August 2nd, 1912, at the age of 86. Still alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his headquarters at St. Louis. Coming up the river on one of the old passenger steamboats that still exist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was to receive from Oxford University the literary doctor's degree. There had been no hint of this when I came away, and it seemed rather too sudden and too good to be true. That the little barefoot lad that had played along the river banks at Hannibal, and received such meager advantages in the way of schooling, whose highest ambition had been to pilot such a craft as this one, was about to be crowned by the world's greatest institution of learning to receive the highest recognition for achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be likely to happen outside of a fairytale. Returning to New York I ran out to Tuxedo, where he had taken a home for the summer, for it was already May, and walking along the shaded paths of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he knew of the Oxford matter. Moberly Bell of the London Times had been over in April, and soon after his return to England there had come word of the proposed honour. Clemens privately and openly to Bell attributed it largely to his influence. He wrote to him, Dear Mr. Bell, your hand is in it, and you have my best thanks. Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the ship that carried me, I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan to sail for England, a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a few days in London before the twenty-sixth. A day or two later, when the time for sailing had been arranged, he overtook his letter with a cable. I perceive your hand in it, you have my best thanks. Sail on Minneapolis, June 8th. Due in Southampton, ten days later. Clemens said that his first word of the matter had been a newspaper cablegram, and that he had been doubtful concerning it until a cablegram to himself had confirmed it. I never expected to cross the water again, he said, but I would be willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford degree. He put the matter aside then and fell to talking of Jim Gillis and the others I had visited, dwelling especially on Gillis's astonishing faculty for improvising romances, recalling how he had stood with his back to the fire weaving his endless grotesque yarns with no other guide than his fancy. It was a long, happy walk we had, though rather a sad one in its memories, and he seemed that day, in a sense, to close the gate of those early scenes behind him, for he seldom referred to them afterward. He was back at twenty-one-fifth Avenue presently, arranging for his voyage. Meantime cable invitations of every sort were pouring in from this and that society and dignitary, invitations to dinners and ceremonials and what not, and it was clear enough that his English sojourn was to be a busy one. He had hoped to avoid this, and began by declining all but two invitations, a dinner-party given by Ambassador Whitelaw Reed, and a luncheon proposed by the Pilgrims. But it became clear that this would not do. England was not going to confer its greatest collegiate honour without being permitted to pay its wider and more popular tribute. Clemens engaged a special secretary for the trip, Mr. Ralph W. Ashcroft, a young Englishman familiar with London Life. They sailed on the eighth of June, by a curious coincidence exactly forty years from the day he had sailed on the Quaker City to win his great fame. I went with him to the ship. His first elation had passed by this time, and he seemed a little sad, remembering, I think, the wife, who would have enjoyed this honour with him, but could not share it now. End of Chapter 256. Honours from Oxford. Red by John Greenman. Section 46 of Mark Twain a Biography. Part II. 1907 to 1910. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain a Biography. By Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 257. A True English Welcome. Mark Twain's trip across the Atlantic would seem to have been a pleasant one. The Minneapolis is a fine, big ship, and there was plenty of company. Professor Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw's biographer, was aboard. Professor Henderson has since then published a volume on Mark Twain. An interesting commentary on his writings, mainly from the sociological point of view. Also President Patton of the Princeton Theological Seminary. A well-known cartoonist, Richards, and some very attractive young people, schoolgirls in particular, such as all through his life had appealed to Mark Twain. Indeed, in his later life they made a stronger appeal than ever. The years had robbed him of his own little flock, and always he was trying to replace them. Once, he said, during those years after my wife's death, I was washing about on a forlorn sea of banquets and speech making in high and holy causes, and these things furnished me intellectual cheer and entertainment. But they got at my heart for an evening only. Then left it dry and dusty. I had reached the grandfather's stage of life without grandchildren, so I began to adopt some. He adopted several on that journey to England and on the return voyage, and he kept on adopting others during the rest of his life. These companionships became one of the happiest aspects of his final days, as we shall see by and by. There were entertainments on the ship, one of them given for the benefit of the seamen's orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters, Charlie, he called her, played a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his autographs were sold at auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one autographed postal card brought twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the record price for a single Mark Twain signature. He wore his white suit on this occasion, and in the course of his speech referred to it. He told first of the many defects in his behavior and how members of his household had always tried to keep him straight. The children, he said, had fallen into the habit of calling it Dusting Papa Off. Then he went on, When my daughter came to see me off last Saturday at the boat, she slipped a note in my hand and said, Read it when you get aboard the ship. I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and it was a dusting off. And if I carry out all the instructions that I got there, I shall be more celebrated in England for my behavior than for anything else. I got instructions how to act on every occasion. She underscored, Now don't you wear white clothes on ship or on shore until you get back. And I intended to obey. I have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the white clothes tonight because the trunk that has the dark clothes in it is in the cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes. I am only apologizing to my daughter for not obeying her. He received a great welcome when the ship arrived at Tilbury. A throng of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and when he left the ship the stevedores gave him a round of cheers. It was the beginning of that almost unheard of demonstration of affection and honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day during the four weeks of his English sojourn. In a dictation following his return Mark Twain said, Who began it? The very people of all people in the world whom I would have chosen. A hundred men of my own class, grimy sons of labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the stevedores. They stood in a body on the dock and charged their masculine lungs and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of me. J. Y. W. McAllister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him, and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw who had come down to meet Professor Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented and met eagerly, for each greatly admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark Twain was extricated at last and hurried away to his apartments at Brown's Hotel. A placid, subdued, home-like, old-fashioned English inn, he called it, well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort now rare in England and becoming rarer every year. But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London newspapers declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only into a royal court, but a post-office, that the procession of visitors and the bundles of mail fully warranted this statement. It was, in fact, an experience which surpassed in general magnitude and magnificence anything he had hitherto known. His former London visits, beginning with that of 1872, had been distinguished by high attentions, but all of them combined could not equal this. When England decides to get up an ovation, her people are not to be outdone even by the lavish Americans. An assistant secretary had to be engaged immediately, and it sometimes required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for two skilled and busy men to receive callers and reduce the pile of correspondence. A pile of invitations had already accumulated, and others flowed in. Lady Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote, You know I want to see you, and join right hand to right hand. I must see your dear face again. You will have no peace, rest, or leisure, during your stay in London, and you will end by hating human beings. Let me come before you feel that way. Mary Chumley, the author of Red Potage, niece of that lovable Reginald Chumley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and urgent invitations. Archdeacon Wilfers, wrote, I have just been preaching about your indictment of that scoundrel king of the Belgians, and telling my people to buy the book. I am only a humble item among the very many who offer you a cordial welcome in England, but we long to see you again, and I should like to change hats with you again. Do you remember? The Athenium, the Garrick, and a dozen other London clubs had anticipated his arrival with cards of honorary membership for the period of his stay. Every leading photographer had put in a claim for sittings. It was such a reception as Charles Dickens had received in America in 1842 and again in 1867. A London paper likened it to Voltaire's Return to Paris in 1778, when France went mad over him. There is simply no limit to English affection and hospitality once aroused. Clemens wrote, Surely such weeks as this must be very rare in this world. I had seen nothing like them before. I shall see nothing approaching them again. Sir Thomas Lipton and Bram Stoker old friends were among the first to present themselves, and there was no break in the line of callers. Clemens' resolutions for secluding himself were swept away. On the very next morning following his arrival he breakfasted with J. Henneker Heaton, father of the international penny postage at the bath club, just across Dover Street from Browns. He launched at the Ritz with Marjorie Bowen and Miss Bisdland. In the afternoon he sat for photographs at Barnetts and made one or two calls. He could no more resist these things than a debutante in her first season. He was breakfasting again with Heaton next morning, lunching with Toby MP and Mrs. Lucy, and having tea with Lady Stanley in the afternoon and being elaborately dined next day at Dorchester House by Ambassador and Mrs. Reed. These were all old and tried friends. He was not a stranger among them, he said. He was at home. Alfred Austin, Conan Doyle, Anthony Hope, Alma Tadeema, E. A. Abbey, Edmund Goss, George Smalley, Sir Norman Lockyer, Henry W. Lucy, Sydney Brooks, and Bram Stoker were among those at Dorchester House, all old comrades as were many of the other guests. I knew fully half of those present, he said afterward. Mark Twain's bursting upon London society naturally was made the most of by the London papers, and all his movements were tabulated and elaborated, and when there was any opportunity for humour in the situation it was not left unimproved. The celebrated Ascot Racing Cup was stolen just at the time of his arrival, and the papers suggestively mingled their headlines. Mark Twain arrives. Ascot Cup stolen. And kept the joke going in one form or another. Certain state jewels and other regalia also disappeared during his stay, and the news of these burglaries was reported in suspicious juxtaposition with the news of Mark Twain's doings. English reporters adopted American habits for the occasion, and invented or embellished when the demand for a new sensation was urgent. Once when following the custom of the place he descended the hotel elevator in a perfectly proper and heavy brown bathrobe and stepped across narrow Dover Street to the Bath Club. The papers flamed the next day with the story that Mark Twain had wandered about the lobby of Browns and promenaded Dover Street in a sky-blue bathrobe attracting wide attention. Clara Clemens across the ocean was naturally a trifle disturbed by such reports and cabled this delicate dusting off. Much worried, remember proprieties, to which he answered, They all pattern after me. A reply to the last degree characteristic. It was on the fourth day after his arrival, June 22, that he attended the King's Garden Party at Windsor Castle. There were eighty five hundred guests at the King's Party, and if we may judge from the London newspapers, Mark Twain was quite as much a figure in that great throng as any member of the royal family. His presentation to the King and the Queen is set down as an especially notable incident, and their conversation is quite fully given. Clemens himself reported, His Majesty was very courteous. In the course of the conversation I reminded him of an episode of fifteen years ago when I had the honour to walk a mile with him when he was taking the waters at Hamburg in Germany. I said that I had often told about that episode, and that whenever I was the historian I made good history of it, and it was worth listening to, but that it had found its way into print once or twice in inauthentic ways and was badly damaged thereby. I said I should like to go on repeating this history, but that I should be quite fair and reasonably honest, and while I should probably never tell it twice in the same way, I should at least never allow it to deteriorate in my hands. His Majesty intimated his willingness that I should continue to disseminate that piece of history, and he added a compliment, saying that he knew good and sound history would not suffer at my hands, and that if this good and sound history needed any improvement beyond the facts, he would trust me to furnish that improvement. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the Queen looked as young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago when I saw her first. I did not say this to her because I learned long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace and inexperienced people to say that she still looked to me as young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago is good evidence that ten thousand people have already noticed this and have mentioned it to her. I could have said it and spoken the truth, but I was too wise for that. I kept the remark unuttered and saved Her Majesty the vexation of hearing it the ten thousand and one time. All that report about my proposal to buy Windsor Castle and its grounds was a false rumor. I started it myself. One newspaper said I patted His Majesty on the shoulder, an impertinence of which I was not guilty. I was reared in the most exclusive circles of Missouri, and I know how to behave. The King rested his hand upon my arm a moment or two while we were chatting, but he did it of his own accord. The newspaper which said I talked with Her Majesty with my hat on spoke the truth, but my reasons for doing it were good and sufficient, in fact unassailable. Rain was threatening. The temperature had cooled, and the Queen said, Please put your hat on, Mr. Clemens. I begged her pardon and excused myself from doing it. After a moment or two she said, Mr. Clemens put your hat on, with a slight emphasis on the word on. I can't allow you to catch cold here. When a beautiful Queen commands, it is a pleasure to obey, and this time I obeyed, but I had already disobeyed once, which is more than a subject would have felt justified in doing. And so it is true as charged. I did talk with the Queen of England with my hat on, but it wasn't fair, in the newspaper man, to charge it upon me as an impoliteness, since there were reasons for it which he could not know of. Nearly all the members of the British Royal Family were there, and there were foreign visitors, which included the King of Siam, and a party of India princes, and their gorgeous court costumes, which Clemens admired openly and said he would like to wear himself. The English papers spoke of it as one of the largest and most distinguished parties ever given at Windsor. Clemens attended it in company with Mr. and Mrs. J. Hennaker Heaton, and when it was over Sir Thomas Lipton joined them and motored with them back to Brownes. He was at Archdeacon Wilberforce's next day, where a curious circumstance developed. When he arrived, Wilberforce said to him, in an undertone, Come into my library. I have something to show you. In the library Clemens was presented to a Mr. Pole, a plain-looking man suggesting in dress and appearance the English tradesman. Wilberforce said, Mr. Pole, show to Mr. Clemens what you have brought here. Mr. Pole unrolled a long strip of white linen, and brought to view at last a curious, saucer-looking vessel of silver, very ancient in appearance, and cunningly overlaid with green glass. The Archdeacon took it and handed it to Clemens as some precious jewel. Clemens said, What is it? Wilberforce impressively answered, It is the Holy Grail. Clemens naturally started with surprise. You may well start, said Wilberforce, but it's the truth. That is the Holy Grail. Then he gave this explanation. Mr. Pole, a grain-merchant of Bristol, had developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Woodchild of Bath, was mixed up in the matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup or a goblet or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a man of integrity, and it was clear that the Church man believed the discovery to be genuine and authentic. Of course there could be no positive proof. It was a thing that must be taken on trust. That the vessel itself was wholly different from anything that the generations had conceived, and was apparently of very ancient make, was opposed to the natural suggestion of fraud. Clemens, to whom the whole idea of the Holy Grail was simply a poetic legend and myth, had the feeling that he had suddenly been transmigrated, like his own Connecticut Yankee, back into the Arthurian days, but he made no question suggested no doubt. Whatever it was, it was to them the materialization of a symbol of faith which ranked only second to the cross itself, and he handled it reverently, and felt the honour of having been one of the first permitted to see the relic. In a subsequent dictation he said, I am glad I have lived to see that half hour, that astonishing half hour. In its way it stands alone in my life's experience. In the belief of two persons present, this was the very vessel which was brought by night and secretly delivered to Nicodemus, nearly nineteen centuries ago, after the creator of the universe had delivered up his life on the cross, for the redemption of the human race. The very cup which the stainless Sir Gala had had sought with nightly devotion in far fields of peril and adventure in Arthur's time, fourteen hundred years ago, the same cup which princely knights of other bygone ages had laid down their lives in long and patient efforts to find, and had passed from life disappointed, and here it was at last dug up by a grain broker at no cost of blood or travel, and apparently no purity required of him above the average purity of the twentieth century dealer in serial futures. Not even a stately name required. No, Sir Gala had. No, Sir Bors de Granis. No, Sir Lancelot of the lake. Nothing but a mere Mr. Pole. From the New York sun somewhat later Mr. Pole communicated the discovery to a dignitary of the Church of England, who summoned a number of eminent persons, including psychologists, to see and discuss it. Forty attended, including some peers with ecclesiastical interests, Ambassador Whitelaw Reed, Professor Crookus, and ministers of various religious bodies, including the Reverend R. J. Campbell. They heard Mr. Pole's story with deep attention, but he could not prove the genuineness of the relic. Clemens saw Mr. and Mrs. Rogers at Claridge's hotel that evening, lunched with his old friends, Sir Norman and Lady Lockyer, next day, took tea with T. P. O'Connor at the House of Commons, and on the day following, which was June 25th, he was the guest of honour at one of the most elaborate occasions of his visit, a luncheon given by the Pilgrims at the Savoy Hotel. It would be impossible to set down here a report of the doings, or even a list of the guests of that gathering. The Pilgrims is a club with branches on both sides of the ocean, and Mark Twain, on either side, was a favourite associate. At this luncheon, the picture on the Bill of Fair represented him as a robed pilgrim, with a great pen for his staff, turning his back on the Mississippi River, and being led along his literary way by a huge, jumping frog, to which he is attached by a string. On a guest card was printed, pilot of many pilgrims, since the shout, Mark Twain, that serves you for a deathless sign, on Mississippi's waterway rang out, over the plummet's line. Still, where the countless ripples laugh above, the blue of house and seas, long may you keep your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love ten thousand fathoms deep. O.S. Owen Seaman Augustine Birrell made this speech of introduction, closing with this paragraph. Mark Twain is a man whom English men and Americans do well to honour. He is a true consolidator of nations. His delightful humour is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. His truth and his honour, his love of truth and his love of honour, overflow all boundaries. He has made the world better by his presence, and we rejoice to see him here. Long may he live to reap a plentiful harvest of hearty, honest human affection. The toast was drunk standing. Then Clemens rose and made a speech which delighted all England. In his introduction Mr. Birrell had happened to say, How I came here I will not ask. Clemens remembered this, and looking down into Mr. Birrell's wine-glass, which was apparently unused he said, Mr. Birrell doesn't know how he got here, but he will be able to get away all right. He has not drunk anything since he came. He told stories about howls and twitchle and how Darwin had gone to sleep reading his books, and then he came down to personal things and company and told them how on the day of his arrival he had been shocked to read on a great placard, Mark Twain arrives, Ascot Cupp stolen. No doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered from it. I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defend it? I can say here and now that anybody can see by my face that I am sincere, that I speak the truth, and that I have never seen that cup. I have not got the cup. I did not have a chance to get it. I have always had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever stolen anything. And if I did steal anything, I had discretion enough to know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us do that. I know we all take things. That is to be expected. But really I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts to any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago, I stole a hat. But that did not amount to anything. It was not a good hat. It was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I dare say he is Archdeacon now. He was a cannon then, and he was serving in the Westminster Battery, if that is the proper term. I do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. He recounted the incident of the exchange-tats. Then he spoke of graver things. He closed, I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chafing. I must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race. I have my cares and griefs, and I therefore noticed what Mr. Birrell said. I was so glad to hear him say it, something that was in the nature of these verses here at the top of the programme. He lit our life with shafts of sun and vanquished pain. Thus two great nations stand as one in honouring Twain. I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions of people in England, men, women, and children, and there is compliment, praise, and above all, and better than all, there is in them a note of affection. Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection, that is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement, and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these letters make me feel that here in England, as in America, when I stand under the English or the American flag, I am not a stranger, I am not an alien, but at home. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. He left immediately following the pilgrim luncheon with Honourable Robert P. Porter of the London Times for Oxford, to remain his guest there during the various ceremonies. The insinia, the ceremony of conferring the degrees, occurred at the Sheldonian Theatre the following morning, June 26, 1907. It was a memorable affair, among those who were to receive degrees that morning besides Samuel Clemens were Prince Arthur of Connaught, Prime Minister Campbell Bannerman, White Law Reed, Rudyard Kipling, Sidney Lee, Sidney Colvin, Lord Archbishop of Arma, Primitive Ireland, Sir Norman Lockyer, Auguste Rodin, the sculptor, Saint-Saëns, and General William Booth of the Salvation Army, something more than thirty in all of the world's distinguished citizens. The candidates assembled at Magdalen College and led by Lord Curson, the Chancellor, and clad in their academic plumage, filed in radiant procession to the Sheldonian Theatre, a group of men, such as the world seldom sees collected together. The London standard, said of it, so brilliant and so interesting was the list of those who had been selected by Oxford University on convocation to receive degrees, honoris causa, in this first year of Lord Curson's chancellorship, that it is small wonder that the Sheldonian Theatre was besieged today at an early hour. Shortly after eleven o'clock the organ started playing the strains of God Save the King, and at once a great volume of sound arose as the anthem was taken up by the undergraduates and the rest of the assemblage. Everyone stood up as, headed by the mace of office, the procession slowly filed into the theatre, under the leadership of Lord Curson. In all the glory of his robes of office, the long black gown heavily embroidered with gold, the gold tasseled mortarboard, and the medals on his breast forming an admirable setting, thoroughly in keeping with the dignity and bearing of the late Viceroy of India. Following him came the members of convocation, a goodly number consisting of doctors of divinity whose robes of scarlet and black enhanced the brilliance of the scene. Robes of salmon and scarlet, which proclaimed the wearer to be a doctor of civil law, were also seen in numbers, while here and there was a gown of grey and scarlet, emblematic of the doctorate of science or of letters. The insignia is an impressive occasion, but it is not a silent one. There is a splendid dignity about it, but there goes with it all a sort of Greek chorus of hilarity, the time honoured prerogative of the Oxford undergraduate, who insists on having his joke and his merriment at the expense of those honoured guests. The degrees of doctor of law were conferred first. Prince Arthur was treated with proper dignity by the gallery, but when White Law Reed stepped forth a voice shouted, Where's your star-spangled banner? and when England's Prime Minister Campbell Bannerman came forward someone shouted, What about the House of Lords? And so they kept it up, cheering and chafing, until General Booth was introduced as the passionate advocate of the dregs of the people, leader of the submerged tenth and general of the Salvation Army. When the place broke into a perfect storm of applause, a storm that a few minutes later became, according to the Daily News, a veritable cyclone. For Mark Twain, clad in his robe of scarlet and grey, had been summoned forward to receive the highest academic honours which the world has to give. The undergraduates went wild then. There was such a mingling of yells and calls and questions such as, Have you brought the jumping frog with you? Where is the Ascot Cup? Where are the rest of the innocents? That it seemed as if it would not be possible to present him at all. But finally Chancellor Kersen addressed him in Latin, Most amiable and charming sir. You shake the sides of the whole world with your merriment. And the great degree was conferred. If only Tom Sawyer could have seen him then, if only Olivia Clemens could have sat among those who gave him welcome. But life is not like that. There is always an incompleteness somewhere and the shadow across the path. Rudyard Kipling followed, another supreme favourite, who was hailed with a chorus, for he's a jolly good fellow! And then came Saint-Saint. The prize poems and essays followed, and then the procession of newly created doctors left the theatre with Lord Kersen at their head. So it was all over that for which, as he said, he would have made the journey to Mars. The world had nothing more to give him now, except that which he had already long possessed, its honour and its love. The newly made doctors were to be the guests of Lord Kersen at All Souls College for luncheon, as they left the theatre, according to Sidney Lee. The people in the streets singled out Mark Twain, formed a vast and cheering bodyguard around him, and escorted him to the college gates. But before and after the lunch it was Mark Twain again whom everybody seemed most of all to want to meet. The Maharaja of Bikanir, for instance, finding himself seated at lunch next to Mrs. Riggs, Kate Douglas Wigan, and hearing that she knew Mark Twain, asked her to present him, a ceremony duly performed later on the quadrangle, at the garden party given the same afternoon in the beautiful grounds of St. John's, where the indefatigable Mark put in an appearance, it was just the same. Everyone pressed forward for an exchange of greetings and a handshake. On the following day, when the Oxford pageant took place, it was even more so. Mark Twain's pageant, it was called by one of the papers. There was a dinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken information, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have worn his scarlet gown. When I arrived, he said, the place was just a conflagration, a kind of human prairie fire. I looked as out of place as a Presbyterian in hell. Clemens remained the guest of Robert Porter, whose house was besieged with those desiring a glimpse of their new Doctor of Letters. If he went on the streets, he was instantly recognized by some newsboy, or cabman, or butcher-boy, and the word ran along, like a chron of fire, while the crowds assembled. At a luncheon which the Porter's gave him, the proprietor of the catering establishment garbed himself as a waiter, in order to have the distinction of serving Mark Twain, and declared it to have been the greatest moment of his life. This gentleman, for he was no less than that, was a man well-read, and his tribute was not inspired by Myr's snobbery. Clemens, learning of the situation, later withdrew from the drawing-room for a talk with him. I found, he said, that he knew about ten or fifteen times as much about my books as I knew about them myself. Mark Twain viewed the Oxford pageant from a box with Rudyard Kipling and Lord Curzon, and as they sat there, someone passed up a folded slip of paper on the outside of which was written, Not True. Opening it they read, East is East, and West is West, and never the Twain shall meet. A quotation from Kipling. They saw the panorama of history filed by a wonderful spectacle which made Oxford a veritable dream of the Middle Ages. The lanes and streets and meadows were thronged with such costumes as Oxford had seen in its long history. History was realized in a manner which no one could appreciate more fully than Mark Twain. I was particularly anxious to see this pageant, he said, so that I could get ideas for my funeral procession, which I am planning on a large scale. He was not disappointed. It was a realization to him of all the gorgeous spectacles that his soul had dreamed from youth up. He easily recognized the great characters of history as they passed by, and he was recognized by them in turn, for they waved to him, and bowed, and sometimes called his name, and when he went down out of his box by and by, Henry the Eighth shook hands with him. A monarch he had always detested, though he was full of friendship for him now, and Charles the First took off his broad, velvet-plumed hat when they met, and Henry the Second, and Rosamond, and Queen Elizabeth all saluted him, ghosts of the dead centuries. End of Chapter 258 Doctor of Literature, Oxford, read by John Greenman Section 48 of Mark Twain of Biography, Part II, 1907-1910 We may not detail all the story of that English visit, even the path of glory leads to monotony at last. We may only mention a few more of the great honors paid to our unofficial ambassador to the world, among them a dinner given to members of the Savage Club by the Lord Mayor of London at the Mansion House, also a dinner given by the American Society at the Hotel Cecil in honor of the Fourth of July. Clemens was the guest of honor, and responded to the toast given by Ambassador Reid, the day we celebrate. He made an amusing and not altogether unserious reference to the American habit of exploding enthusiasm in dangerous fireworks. To English colonists he gave credit for having established American independence, and closed, we have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and that is the memorable proclamation issued forty years ago by that great American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful tribute, Abraham Lincoln, a proclamation which not only set the black slave free, but set his white owner free also. The owner was set free from that burden and offense, that sad condition of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter England led the way, for she had set her slaves free thirty years before, and we but followed her example. We always follow her example, whether it is good or bad, and it was an English judge a century ago that issued that other great proclamation and established that great principle, that when a slave let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon English soil his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man before the world. It is true then that all our fourths of July, and we have five of them, England gave to us except that one that I have mentioned, the Emancipation Proclamation, and let us not forget that we owe this debt to her. Let us be able to say to old England, this great-hearted venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our fourths of July, that we love and that we honour and revere. You gave us the Declaration of Independence, which is the charter of our rights. You, the venerable mother of liberties, the champion and protector of Anglo-Saxon freedom, you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them. It was at this dinner that he characteristically confessed at last to having stolen the Ascot Cup. He lunched one day with Bernard Shaw, and the two discussed the philosophies in which they were mutually interested. Shaw regarded Clemens as a sociologist before all else, and gave it out with great frankness that America had produced just two great geniuses, Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain. Later Shaw wrote him a note in which he said, I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire. I tell you so because I am the author of a play in which a priest says, telling the truths the funniest joke in the world, a piece of wisdom which you helped to teach me. Clemens saw a great deal of Moberly Bell. The two lunched and dined privately together when there was an opportunity, and often met at public gatherings. The bare memorandum of the week following July 4th will convey something of Mark Twain's London activities. Friday, July 5th, dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth. Saturday, July 6th, breakfast at Lord Aveberry's. Lord Calvin, Sir Charles Lyle, and Sir Archibald Geeky were there. Sat 22 times for photos, 16 at His Ted's, Savage Club Dinner in the Evening, White Suit, Ascot Cup. Sunday, July 7th, called on Lady Langetocke and others. Lunched with Sir Norman Lockyer. Monday, July 8th, lunched with Plasmon Directors at Bath Club. Dined privately at C. F. Moberly Bells. Tuesday, July 9th, lunched at the house with Sir Benjamin Stone. Balfour and Camura were the other guests of honour. Punched dinner in the Evening. Joy Agnew and the Cartoon. Wednesday, July 10th, went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attended Banquet in the Town Hall in the Evening. Thursday, July 11th, returned to London with Tay Pay. Calls in the Afternoon. The Savage Club would inevitably want to entertain him on its own account, and their dinner of July 6th was a handsome affair. He felt at home with the savages and put on white for the only time publicly in England. He made them one of his reminiscent speeches, recalling his association with them on his first visit to London thirty-seven years before. Then he said, That is a long time ago, and as I had come into a very strange land and was with friends, as I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed Evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad to be here, and to see you all, because it is very likely that I shall not see you again. I have been received, as you know, in the most delightfully generous way in England, ever since I came here. It keeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem to give you such a hardy welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it higher than I do. The club gave him a surprise in the course of the Evening. A note was sent to him, accompanied by a parcel which, when opened, proved to contain a gilded plaster replica of the Ascot Gold Cup. The note said, Dear Mark, I return the cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shut about it. It is too pretty to melt, as you want me to. Next time I work a pinch, I'll have a pard. Don't make after-dinner speeches. There was a post-crypt which said, I changed the acorn atop for another nut with m'knife. The acorn was, in fact, replaced by a well-modeled head of Mark Twain. So, after all, the Ascot Cup would be one of the trophies which he would bear home with him across the Atlantic. Probably the most valued of his London honours was the dinner given to him by the staff of Punch. Punch had already saluted him with a front-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge. A picture in which the presiding genius of that paper, Mr. Punch himself, presents him with a glass of the patronymic beverage with the words, Sir, I honour myself by drinking your health, long life to you, and happiness, and perpetual youth. Mr. Agnew, Chief Editor, Lindley Sanborn, Francis Bernand, Henry Lucy, and others of the staff, welcomed him at the Punch offices at Ten Buvery Street, in the historic Punch dining-room, where Thackery had sat, and Douglas Gerald, and so many of the great departed. Mark Twain was the first foreign visitor to be so honoured, in fifty years the first stranger to sit at the sacred board—a mighty distinction. In the course of the dinner they gave him a pretty surprise, when little Joy Agnew presented him with the original drawing of Partridge's cartoon. Nothing could have appealed to him more, and the Punch dinner, with its associations and that dainty presentation, remained a part in his memory from all other feastings. Clemens had intended to return early in July, but so much was happening that he postponed his sailing until the thirteenth. Before leaving America, he had declined a dinner offered by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool. Repeatedly urged to let Liverpool share in his visit, he had reconsidered now, and on the day following the Punch dinner, on July 10th, they carried him with T. P. O'Connor, T. Pay, in the Prince of Wales special coach to Liverpool, to be guest of honour at the reception and banquet which Lord Mayor Jep tendered him at the town hall. Clemens was too tired to be present while the courses were being served, but arrived rested and fresh to respond to his toast. Perhaps because it was his farewell speech in England, he made that night the most effective address of his four weeks' visit—one of the most effective of his whole career. He began by some light reference to the Ascot Cup and the Dublin Jewels and the State Regalia, and other disappearances that had been laid to his charge, to amuse his hearers, and spoke at greater length than usual, and with even greater variety. Then laying all levity aside he told them, like the Queen of Sheba, all that was in his heart. Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing to my own home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest honour that has ever fallen to my share of this life's prizes. It is the very one I would have chosen as outranking all and any others, the one more precious to me than any and all others within the gift of man or state. During my four weeks' sojourn in England I have had another lofty honour, a continuous honour, an honour which has flowed serenely along without halt or obstruction through all these twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honour. The heart felt grip of the hand, and the welcome that does not descend from the pale grey matter of the brain, but rushes up with the red blood from the heart. It makes me proud, and sometimes it makes me humble too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from Dana's two years before the mast. It was like this. There was a presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop engaged in the dried apple and kitchen furniture trade, and he was always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to hear himself talk, and to air his small grandeur. One day a majestic indie man came plowing by, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hull burdened to the plimsel line with a rich freightage of precious spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odours of the Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle. Of course the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail. Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And wence and wither! In a deep and thunderous base the answer came back through the speaking trumpet. The begum of Bengal, one hundred and forty-two days out from Canton, homeward bound. What ship is that? Well, it just crushed that poor little creature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly. Only the Marianne, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point, with nothing to speak of. Oh, what an eloquent word that only, to express the depths of his humbleness. That is just my case. During just one hour in the twenty-four, not more, I pause and reflect in the stillness of the night, with the echoes of your English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble. Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the Marianne, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware. But during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency rides high on the white crests of your approval. And then I am a stately India man, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas, and laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any wandering alien in this world, I think. Then my twenty-six fortunate days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am the begum of Bengal, one hundred and forty-two days out from Canton, homeward bound. He returned to London, and with one of his young acquaintances, an American, he called her Francesca, paid many calls. It took the dreariness out of that social function to perform it in that way. With a list of the calls they were to make, they drove forth each day to cancel the social debt. They paid calls in every walk of life. His young companion was privileged to see the inside of London homes of almost every class, for he showed no partiality. He went to the homes of the poor and the rich alike. One day they visited the home of an old book-keeper whom he had known in 1872 as a clerk in a large establishment, earning a salary of perhaps a pound a week, who now had risen mightily, for he had become head book-keeper in that establishment on the salary of six pounds a week, and thought it great prosperity and fortune for his old age. He sailed on July 13th for home, besought to the last moment by a crowd of autograph-seekers and reporters and photographers, and a multitude who only wished to see him and to shout and wave goodbye. He was sailing away from them for the last time. They hoped he would make a speech, but that would not have been possible. To the reporters he gave a farewell message. It has been the most enjoyable holiday I have ever had, and I am sorry the end of it has come. I have met a hundred old friends, and I have made a hundred new ones. It is a good kind of riches to have. There is none better, I think. And the London tribute declared that the ship that bore him away had difficulty in getting clear, so thickly was the water strewn with the bay leaves of his triumph. For Mark Twain has triumphed, and in his all too brief stay of a month has done more for the cause of the world's peace than will be accomplished by the Hague Conference. He has made the world laugh again. His ship was the Minnetonka, and there were some little folks aboard to be adopted as grandchildren. On July 5th, in a fog, the Minnetonka collided with the bark sterling and narrowly escaped sinking her. On the whole, however, the homeward way was clear, and the vessel reached New York nearly a day in advance of their schedule. Some ceremonies of welcome had been prepared for him, but they were upset by the early arrival, so that when he descended the gangplank to his native soil, only a few who had received special information were there to greet him. But perhaps he did not notice it. He seldom took account of the absence of such things. By early afternoon, however, the papers rang with the announcement that Mark Twain was home again. It is a sorrow to me that I was not at the dock to welcome him. I had been visiting in Elmira, and timed my return for the evening of the twenty-second, to be on hand the following morning, when the ship was due. When I saw the announcement that he had already arrived, I called a greeting over the telephone, and was told to come down and play billiards. I confess I went with a certain degree of awe, for one could not but be overwhelmed with the echoes of the great splendor he had so recently achieved, and I prepared to sit a good way off in silence and hear something of the tail of this returning conqueror. But when I arrived, he was already in the billiard room knocking the balls about, his coat off, for it was a hot night, and as I entered he said, Get your cue! I have been inventing a new game!" And I think there were scarcely ten words exchanged before we were at it. The pageant was over, the curtain was rung down, business was resumed at the old stand. End of Chapter 259 London Social Hunters Read by John Greenman Section 49 of Mark Twain A Biography, Part II, 1907-1910 He returned to Tuxedo and took up his dictations, and mingled freely with the social life, but the contrast between his recent London experience and his semi-retirement must have been very great. When I visited him now and then he seemed to me lonely, not especially for companionship, but rather for the life that lay behind him, the great career which in a sense now had been completed since he had touched its highest point. There was no billiard table at Tuxedo, and he spoke expectantly of getting back to town and the games there, also of the new home which was then building in Reading, and which would have a billiard room where we could assemble daily, my own habitation being not far away. Various diversions were planned for Reading, among them was discussed a possible school of philosophy such as Hawthorne and Emerson and Alcott had established at Concord. He spoke quite freely of his English experiences, but usually of the more amusing phases. He almost never referred to the honours that had been paid to him, yet he must have thought of them sometimes, and cherished them, for it had been the greatest national tribute ever paid to a private citizen. He must have known that in his heart. He spoke amusingly of his visit to Marie Corelli in Stratford, and of the Holy Grail incident ending the matter by questioning, in words at least, all psychic manifestations. I said to him, but remember your own dream, Mr. Clemens, which presaged the death of your brother. He answered, I ask nobody to believe that it ever happened. To me it is true, but it has no logical right to be true, and I do not expect belief in it. Which I thought a peculiar point of view, but on the whole characteristic. He was invited to be a special guest at the Jamestown Exposition on Fulton Day in September, and Mr. Rogers lent him his yacht, in which to make the trip. It was a break in the summer's monotonies, and the Jamestown honours must have reminded him of those in London. When he entered the auditorium where the services were to be held, there was a demonstration which lasted more than five minutes. Every person in the hall rose and cheered, waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas. He made them a brief, amusing talk on Fulton and other matters, then introduced Admiral Harrington, who delivered a masterly address, and was followed by Martin W. Littleton, the real orator of the day. Littleton acquainted himself so notably that Mark Twain conceived for him a deep admiration, and the two men quickly became friends. They saw each other often during the remainder of the Jamestown stay, and Clemens, learning that Littleton lived just across Ninth Street from him in New York, invited him to come over when he had an evening to spare and join the billiard games. So it happened, somewhat later, when everyone was back in town, Mr. and Mrs. Littleton frequently came over for billiards, and the games became three-handed with an audience, very pleasant games played in that way. Clemens sometimes set himself up as umpire, and became critic and gave advice, while Littleton and I played. He had a favorite shot that he frequently used himself, and was always wanting us to try, which was to drive the ball to the cushion at the beginning of the shot. He played it with a good deal of success, and achieved unexpected results with it. He was even inspired to write a poem on a subject. Cushion First When all your days are dark with doubt, and dying hope is at its worst, when all life's balls are scattered wide with not a shot in sight to left or right, don't give it up, advance your cue, and shut your eyes, and take the cushion first. The Harry Thaw trial was in progress just then, and Littleton was Thaw's chief attorney. It was most interesting to hear from him direct the day's proceedings, and his views of the situation, and of Thaw. Littleton and billiards recall a curious thing which happened one afternoon. I had been absent the evening before, and Littleton had been over. It was after luncheon now, and Clemens and I began preparing for the customary games. We were playing then a game with four balls, two white and two red. I began by placing the red balls on the table, and then went around, looking in the pockets for the two white cue balls. When I had made the round of the table, I had found but one white ball. I thought I must have overlooked the other, and made the round again. Then I said, There is one white ball missing. Clemens, to satisfy himself, also made the round of the pockets, and said, Why it was here last night! He felt in the pockets of the little white silk coat which he usually wore, thinking that he might unconsciously have placed it there at the end of the last game, but his coke pockets were empty. He said, I'll bet Littleton carried that ball home with him! Then I suggested that near the end of the game it might have jumped off the table, and I looked carefully under the furniture and in the various corners, but without success. There was another set of balls, and out of it I selected a white one for our play, and the game began. It went along in the usual way, the balls constantly falling into the pockets, and as constantly being replaced on the table. This had continued for perhaps half an hour, there being no pocket that had not been frequently occupied, and emptied during that time. And then it happened that Clemens reached into the middle pocket, and taking out a white ball, laid it in place, whereupon we made the discovery that three white balls lay upon the table. The one just taken from the pocket was the missing ball. We looked at each other, both at first too astonished to say anything at all. No one had been in the room since we began to play, and at no time during the play had there been more than two white balls in evidence, though the pockets had been emptied at the end of each shot. The pocket from which the missing ball had been taken had been filled and emptied again and again. Then Clemens said, We must be dreaming. We stopped the game for a while to discuss it, but we could devise no material explanation. I suggested the kobold, that mischievous invisible which is supposed to play pranks by carrying off such things as pencils, letters, and the like, and suddenly restoring them almost before one's eyes. Clemens, who in spite of his material logic was always a mystic at heart, said, But that, so far as I know, has never happened to more than one person at a time, and has been explained by a sort of temporary mental blindness. This thing has happened to two of us, and there can be no question as to the positive absence of the object. How about dematerialization? Yes, if one of us were a medium, that might be considered an explanation. He went on to recall that Sir Alfred Russell Wallace had written of such things, and cited instances which Wallace had recorded. In the end he said, Well, it happened. That's all we can say. And nobody can ever convince me that it didn't. We went on playing, and the ball remained solid and substantial ever after, so far as I know. I am reminded of two more or less related incidents of this period. Clemens was one morning dictating something about his Christian Union article concerning Mrs. Clemens' Government of Children, published in 1885. I had discovered no copy of it among the materials, and he was wishing very much that he could see one. Somewhat later, as he was walking down Fifth Avenue, the thought of this article and his desire for it suddenly entered his mind. Reaching the corner of 42nd Street, he stopped a moment to let a jam of vehicles pass. As he did so a stranger crossed the street, noticed him, and came dodging his way through the blockade and thrust some clippings into his hand. Mr. Clemens, he said, You don't know me, but here is something you may wish to have. I have been saving them for more than twenty years, and this morning it occurred to me to send them to you. I was going to mail them from my office, but now I will give them to you." And with a word or two he disappeared. The clippings were from the Christian Union of 1885, and were the much desired article. Clemens regarded it as a remarkable case of mental telegraphy. Or, if it wasn't that, he said, it was a most remarkable coincidence. The other circumstance has been thought amusing. I had gone to Reading for a few days, and while there, one afternoon about five o'clock, fell over a coal scuttle and scarified myself a good deal between the ankle and the knee. I mentioned the hour because it seems important. Next morning I received a note prompted by Mr. Clemens, in which he said, Tell pain! I am sorry he fell and skinned his shin at five o'clock yesterday afternoon. I was naturally astonished, and immediately wrote, I did fall and skin my shin at five o'clock yesterday afternoon, but how did you find it out? I followed the letter in person next day and learned that at the same hour, on the same afternoon, Clemens himself had fallen up the front steps and, as he said, peeled off from his starboard shin a ribbon of skin three inches long. The disaster was still uppermost in his mind at the time of writing, and the suggestion of my own mishap had flashed out for no particular reason. Clemens was always having his fortune told, in one way or another, being superstitious, as he readily confessed, though at times professing little faith in these prognostics. Once when a clairvoyant of whom he had never even heard, and whom he had reason to believe was ignorant of his family history, told him more about it than he knew himself, besides reading a list of names from a piece of paper which Clemens had concealed in his vest pocket, he came home deeply impressed. The clairvoyant added that he would probably live to a great age and die in a foreign land. A prophecy which did not comfort him. End of chapter 260 Matters Psychic and Otherwise Read by John Greenman Section 50 of Mark Twain a Biography Part II 1907-1910 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain a Biography By Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 261 Minor Events and Diversions Mark Twain was deeply interested during the autumn of 1907 in the children's theatre of the Jewish Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side, a most worthy institution which ought to have survived. A Miss Alice M. Hertz, who developed and directed it, gave her strength and health to build up an institution through which the interest of the children could be diverted from less fortunate amusements. She had interested a great body of Jewish children in the plays of Shakespeare and of more modern dramatists, and these they had performed from time to time with great success. The admission fee to their performance was ten cents, and the theatre was always crowded with other children, certainly a better diversion for them than the amusements of the street, though of course as a business enterprise the theatre could not pay. It required patrons. Miss Hertz obtained permission to play The Prince and the Pauper, and Mark Twain agreed to become a sort of chief patron in using his influence to bring together an audience who might be willing to assist financially in this worthy work. The Prince and the Pauper evening turned out a distinguished affair. On the night of November 19, 1907 the Hall of the Educational Alliance was crowded with such an audience as perhaps never before assembled on the East Side. The finance and the fashion of New York were there. It was a gallonite for the little East Side performers. Behind the curtain they whispered to each other that they were to play before Queens. The performance they gave was an astonishing one. So fully did they enter into the spirit of Tom Canty's rise to royalty that they seemed absolutely to forget that they were lowly born children of the ghetto. They had become little princesses and lords and maids in waiting, and they moved through their pretty tinsel parts as if all their ornaments were gems and their raiment cloth of gold. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness of speech or gesture, and they rose really to sublime heights in the barn scene where the little prince is in the hands of the mob. Never in the history of the stage has there been assembled a mob more wonderful than that. These children knew mobs. A mob to them was a daily sight, and their reproduction of it was a thing to startle you with its realism. Never was it absurd, never was there a single note of artificiality in it. It was Hougarthian in its bigness. Both Mark Twain and Miss Hurts made brief addresses, and the audience shouted approval of their words. It seems a pity that such a project as that must fail, and I do not know why it happened. Wealthy men and women manifested an interest, but there was some hitch somewhere, and the children's theatre exists today only as history. In a letter to a Mrs. Amelia Dunn-Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays at the Howland School of Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote, If I were going to begin life over again, I would have a children's theatre, and watch it, and work for it, and see it grow and blossom, and bear its rich moral and intellectual fruitage, and I should get more pleasure, and a saner and healthier profit out of my vocation, than I should ever be able to get out of any other constituted as I am. Yes, you are easily the most fortunate of women, I think. It was at a dinner at the Players, a small private dinner given by Mr. George C. Riggs, that I saw Edward L. Burlingham and Mark Twain for the only time together. They had often met during the forty-two years that had passed since their long ago Sandwich Island friendship, but only incidentally, for Mr. Burlingham cared not much for great public occasions, and as editor of Scribner's magazine he had been somewhat out of the line of Mark Twain's literary doings. Howells was there, and General Stuart L. Woodford, and David Bisfam, John Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Monroe. Clemens told that night for the first time the story of General Miles and the three-dollar dog, inventing it, I believe, as he went along, though for the moment it certainly did sound like history. He told it often after that, and it has been included in his book of speeches. Later in the cab he said, That was a mighty good dinner. Riggs knows how to do that sort of thing. I enjoyed it ever so much. Now we'll go home and play billiards. We began about eleven o'clock and played until after midnight. I happened to be too strong for him, and he swore amazingly. He vowed that it was not a gentleman's game at all. That Riggs' wine had demoralized the play. But at the end, when we were putting up the cues, he said, Well, those were good games. There is nothing like billiards after all. We did not play billiards on his birthday that year. He went to the theatre in the afternoon, and it happened that, with Jesse Lynch Williams, I attended the same performance, the Toymaker of Nuremberg, written by Austin Strong. It proved to be a charming play, and I could see that Clemens was enjoying it. He sat in a box next to the stage, and the actors clearly were doing their very prettiest for his benefit. When later I mentioned having seen him at the play, he spoke freely of his pleasure in it. It is a fine, delicate piece of work, he said. I wish I could do such things as that. I believe you are too literary for playwriting. Yes, no doubt. There was never any question with the managers about my plays. They always said they wouldn't act. Howls has come pretty near to something once or twice. I judge the trouble is that the literary man is thinking of the style and quality of the thing, while the playwright thinks only of how it will play. One is thinking of how it will sound, the other of how it will look. I suppose, I said, the literary man should have a collaborator with a genius for stage mechanism. John Luther Long's exquisite plays would hardly have been successful without David Belasco to stage them. Belasco could not write a play himself, but in the matter of acting, construction, his genius is supreme. Yes, so it is. It was Belasco who made it possible to play The Prince and the Pauper, a collection of literary garbage before he got hold of it. Clemens attended few public functions now. He was beset with invitations, but he declined most of them. He told the dog-story one night to the Pleiades Club, assembled at the Brevoort. But that was only a step away, and we went in after the dining was ended and came away before the exercises were concluded. He also spoke at a banquet given to Andrew Carnegie, St. Andrew, as he called him, by the engineers' club, and had his usual fun at the chief guest's expense. I have been chief guest at a good many banquets myself, and I know what Brother Andrew is feeling like now. He has been receiving compliments, and nothing but compliments. But he knows that there is another side to him that needs censure. I am going to vary the complementary monotony. While we have all been listening to the complementary talk, Mr. Carnegie's face has scintillated with fictitious innocence. You'd think he never committed a crime in his life, but he has. Look at his pastiferous simplified spelling. Imagine the calamity on two sides of the ocean when he foisted his simplified spelling on the whole human race. We've got it all now so that nobody could spell. If Mr. Carnegie had left spelling alone, we wouldn't have had any spots on the sun, or any San Francisco quake, or any business depression. There, I trust he feels better now, and that he has enjoyed my abuse more than he did his compliments. And now that I think I have him smoothed down and feeling comfortable, I just want to say one thing more, that his simplified spelling is all right enough, but, like Chastity, you can carry it too far. As he was about to go, Carnegie called his attention to the beautiful souvenir bronze and gold-plated goblets that stood at each guest's plate. Carnegie said, The club had those especially made at Tiffany's for this occasion. They cost ten dollars a piece. Clemens said, Is that so? Well, I only meant to take my own, but if that's the case, I'll load my cab with them. We made an attempt to reform on the matter of billiards. The continued strain of late hours was doing neither of us any particular good. More than once I journeyed into the country on one errand on another, mainly for rest, but a card saying that he was lonely and upset for lack of his evening games quickly brought me back again. It was my wish only to serve him, it was a privilege and an honour to give him happiness. Billiards, however, was not his only recreation just then. He walked out a great deal, and especially of a pleasant Sunday morning, he liked the stroll up Fifth Avenue. Sometimes we went as high as Carnegie's on Ninety Second Street and rode home on top of the electric stage, always one of Mark Twain's favourite diversions. From that high seat he liked to look down on the panorama of the streets, and in that free open air he could smoke without interference. Offener, however, we turned at Fifty Ninth Street, walking both ways. When it was pleasant we sometimes sat on a bench in Central Park, and once, he must have left a handkerchief there, for a few days later one of his handkerchiefs came to him accompanied by a note. Its finder, Mr. Lockwood, received a reward, for Mark Twain wrote him, There is more rejoicing in this house over that one handkerchief that was lost, and is found again, than over the Ninety and Nine that never went to the wash at all. Heaven will reward you, I know it will. On Sunday mornings the return walk would be timed for about the hour that the churches would be dismissed. On the first Sunday morning we had started a little early, and I thoughtlessly suggested, when we reached Fifty Ninth Street, that if we returned at once we would avoid the throng. He said quietly, I like the throng. So we rested in the Plaza Hotel until the appointed hour. Men and women noticed him and came over to shake his hand. The gigantic man in uniform, in charge of the carriages at the door, came in for a word. He had opened carriages for Mr. Clemens at the Twenty-Third Street Station, and now wanted to claim that honour. I think he received the most cordial welcome of any one who came. I am sure he did. It was Mark Twain's way to warm to the man of the lower social rank. He was never too busy, never too preoccupied, to grasp the hand of such a man, to listen to his story and to say just the words that would make that man happy remembering him. We left the Plaza Hotel and presently were amid the throng of outpouring congregations. Of course he was the object on which every passing eye turned, the presence to which every hat was lifted. I realised that this open and eagerly paid homage of the multitude was still dear to him, not at any small and petty way, but as the tribute of a nation, the expression of that affection which in his London and Liverpool speeches he had declared to be the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement. It was his final harvest, and he had the courage to claim it, the aftermath of all his years of honourable labour and noble doing. End of CHAPTER 261 MINOR EVENTS AND DEVERSIONS Red by John Greenman