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 thebelief of two persons present this was the very vessel which wasbrought by night and secretly delivered to Nicodemus, nearlynineteen centuries ago, after the Creator of the universe haddelivered up His life on the cross for the redemption of the humanrace; the very cup which the stainless Sir Galahad had sought withknightly devotion in far fields of peril and adventure in Arthur'stime, fourteen hundred years ago; the same cup which princelyknights of other bygone ages had laid down their lives in long andpatient efforts to find, and had passed from life disappointed—andhere it was at last, dug up by a grain-broker at no cost of blood ortravel, and apparently no purity required of him above the averagepurity of the twentieth-century dealer in cereal futures; not even astately name required—no Sir Galahad, no Sir Bors de Ganis, no SirLancelot of the Lake—nothing but a mere Mr. Pole.—[From the NewYork Sun somewhat later: “Mr. Pole communicated the discovery to adignitary of the Church of England, who summoned a number of eminentpersons, including psychologists, to see and discuss it. Fortyattended, including some peers with ecclesiastical interests,Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, Professor Crookas, and ministers ofvarious religious bodies, including the Rev. R. J. Campbell. Theyheard Mr. Pole's story with deep attention, but he could not provethe 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 a 5th, he was the guest of honor 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 favorite associate. At this luncheon the picture on the bill of fare 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 outOver the plummet's line—Still where the countless ripples laugh aboveThe blue of halcyon seas long may you keepYour course unbroken, buoyed upon a loveTen thousand fathoms deep!—O. S. [OWEN SEAMAN].
Augustine Birrell made the speech of introduction, closing with this paragraph:
Mark Twain is a man whom Englishmen and Americans do well to honor.He is a true consolidator of nations. His delightful humor is ofthe kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. Histruth and his honor—his love of truth and his love of honor—overflow all boundaries. He has made the world better by hispresence, and we rejoice to see him here. Long may he live to reapa 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 Howells and Twichell, 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 Cup Stolen.”
No doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined togetherin that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered fromit. I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defendit? I can say here and now that anybody can see by my face that Iam sincere—that I speak the truth, and that I have never seen thatCup. I have not got the Cup, I did not have a chance to get it. Ihave always had a good character in that way. I have hardly everstolen anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion enoughto know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that arelikely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us dothat. I know we all take things—that is to be expected; but reallyI have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts toany great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years agoI stole a hat—but that did not amount to anything. It was not agood hat it was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. I was at aluncheon-party and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I dare sayhe is archdeacon now—he was a canon then—and he was serving in theWestminster Battery, if that is the proper term. I do not know, asyou mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much.
He recounted the incident of the exchanged hats; then he spoke of graver things. He closed:
I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing. Imust sometimes lay the cap and bells aside and recognize that I amof the human race. I have my cares and griefs, and I thereforenoticed 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 topof the program:He lit our life with shafts of sunAnd vanquished pain.Thus two great nations stand as oneIn honoring 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.
He left, immediately following the Pilgrim luncheon, with Hon. Robert P. Porter, of the London Times, for Oxford, to remain his guest there during the various ceremonies. The encenia—the ceremony of conferring the degrees—occurred at the Sheldonian Theater 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; Whitelaw Reid; Rudyard Kipling; Sidney Lee; Sidney Colvin; Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland; Sir Norman Lockyer; Auguste Rodin, the sculptor; Saint-Saens, and Gen. 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 Curzon, the Chancellor, and clad in their academic plumage, filed in radiant procession to the Sheldonian Theater, 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 beenselected by Oxford University on Convocation to receive degrees,'honoris causa', in this first year of Lord Curzon's chancellorship,that it is small wonder that the Sheldonian Theater was besiegedtoday at an early hour.Shortly after 11 o'clock the organ started playing the strains of“God Save the King,” and at once a great volume of sound arose asthe anthem was taken up by the undergraduates and the rest of theassemblage. Every one stood up as, headed by the mace of office,the procession slowly filed into the theater, under the leadershipof Lord Curzon, in all the glory of his robes of office, the longblack gown heavily embroidered with gold, the gold-tasseled mortar-board, and the medals on his breast forming an admirable setting,thoroughly in keeping with the dignity and bearing of the lateViceroy of India. Following him came the members of Convocation, agoodly number consisting of doctors of divinity, whose robes ofscarlet and black enhanced the brilliance of the scene. Robes ofsalmon and scarlet-which proclaim the wearer to be a doctor of civillaw—were also seen in numbers, while here and there was a gown ofgray and scarlet, emblematic of the doctorate of science or ofletters.
The encenia 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-honored prerogative of the Oxford undergraduate, who insists on having his joke and his merriment at the expense of those honored guests. The degrees of doctor of law were conferred first. Prince Arthur was treated with proper dignity by the gallery; but when Whitelaw Reid stepped forth a voice shouted, “Where's your Star-spangled Banner?” and when England's Prime Minister-Campbell-Bannerman—came forward some one shouted, “What about the House of Lords?” and so they kept it up, cheering and chaffing, 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 gray, had been summoned forward to receive the highest academic honors 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 Curzon 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 favorite, who was hailed with the chorus, “For he's a jolly good fellow,” and then came Saint-Satins. The prize poems and essays followed, and then the procession of newly created doctors left the theater with Lord Curzon 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 honor and its love.
The newly made doctors were to be the guests of Lord Curzon at All Souls College for luncheon. As they left the theater (according to Sidney Lee):
The people in the streets singled out Mark Twain, formed a vast andcheering body-guard around him and escorted him to the collegegates. But before and after the lunch it was Mark Twain again whomeverybody seemed most of all to want to meet. The Maharajah ofBikanir, for instance, finding himself seated at lunch next to Mrs.Riggs (Kate Douglas Wiggin), and hearing that she knew Mark Twain,asked her to present him a ceremony duly performed later on thequadrangle. At the garden-party given the same afternoon in thebeautiful grounds of St. John's, where the indefatigable Mark putin an appearance, it was just the same—every one pressed forwardfor an exchange of greetings and a hand-shake. On the followingday, when the Oxford pageant took place, it was even more so. “MarkTwain's Pageant,” it was called by one of the papers.—[There was adinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistakeninformation, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should haveworn his scarlet gown. “When I arrived,” he said, “the place wasjust a conflagration—a kind of human prairie-fire. I looked as outof 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 cry of fire, while the crowds assembled.
At a luncheon which the Porters 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 mere 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 some one 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 file 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 VIII. shook hands with him, a monarch he had always detested, though he was full of friendship for him now; and Charles I. took off his broad, velvet-plumed hat when they met, and Henry II. and Rosamond and Queen Elizabeth all saluted him—ghosts of the dead centuries.
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 bythat great American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just andbeautiful tribute—Abraham Lincoln: a proclamation which not onlyset the black slave free, but set his white owner free also. Theowner was set free from that burden and offense, that sad conditionof things where he was in so many instances a master and owner ofslaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set them allfree. But even in this matter England led the way, for she had sether slaves free thirty years before, and we but followed herexample. We always follow her example, whether it is good or bad.And it was an English judge, a century ago, that issued that othergreat proclamation, and established that great principle, that whena slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence hemay, sets his foot upon English soil his fetters, by that act, fallaway and he is a free man before the world!It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five ofthem, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned—theEmancipation Proclamation; and let us not forget that we owe thisdebt to her. Let us be able to say to old England, this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our Fourthsof July, that we love and that we honor and revere; you gave us theDeclaration of Independence, which is the charter of our rights;you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Champion and Protectorof Anglo-Saxon Freedom—you gave us these things, and we do mosthonestly 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 truth's 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 opportunity, and often met at the public gatherings.
The bare memorandum of the week following July Fourth will convey something of Mark Twain's London activities:
Friday, July 5. Dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth.Saturday, July 6. Breakfasted at Lord Avebury's. Lord Kelvin, SirCharles Lyell, and Sir Archibald Geikie were there. Sat 22 timesfor photos, 16 at Histed's. Savage Club dinner in the evening.White suit. Ascot Cup.Sunday, July 7. Called on Lady Langattock and others. Lunched withSir Norman Lockyer.Monday, July 8. Lunched with Plasmon directors at Bath Club. Dinedprivately at C. F. Moberly Bell's.Tuesday, July 9. Lunched at the House with Sir Benjamin Stone.Balfour and Komura were the other guests of honor. Punch dinner inthe evening. Joy Agnew and the cartoon.Wednesday, July 10. Went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attendedbanquet in the Town Hall in the evening.Thursday, July 11. Returned to London with Tay Pay. Calls in theafternoon.
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 mymind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me intocontact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad tobe here, and to see you all, because it is very likely that I shallnot see you again. I have been received, as you know, in the mostdelightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. Itkeeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and theydo seem to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world canappreciate 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:
Dere Mark, i return the Cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shutabout it. 'Tis 2 pretty 2 melt, as you want me 2; nest time I worka pinch ile have a pard who don't make after-dinner speeches.
There was a postcript which said: “I changed the acorn atop for another nut with my 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 honors 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 honor myself by drinking your health. Long life to you—and happiness—and perpetual youth!”
Mr. Agnew, chief editor; Linley Sambourne, Francis Burnand, Henry Lucy, and others of the staff welcomed him at the Punch offices at 10 Bouverie Street, in the historic Punch dining-room where Thackeray had sat, and Douglas Jerrold, and so many of the great departed. Mark Twain was the first foreign visitor to be so honored—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 apart 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 13th. 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 (Tay Pay) in the Prince of Wales's special coach to Liverpool, to be guest of honor at the reception and banquet which Lord Mayor Japp 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 ownhome beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highesthonor that has ever fallen to my share of this life's prizes. It isthe 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 giftof man or state. During my four weeks' sojourn in England I havehad another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which hasflowed serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through allthese twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honor—theheartfelt grip of the hand, and the welcome that does not descendfrom the pale-gray matter of the brain, but rushes up with the redblood from the heart. It makes me proud and sometimes it makes mehumble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident fromDana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was apresumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloopengaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he wasalways hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just tohear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day a majesticIndiaman came plowing by with course on course of canvas toweringinto the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hullburdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of preciousspices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of theOrient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of coursethe little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail,“Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?” In a deepand thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking-trumpet, “The Begum, of Bengal—142 days out from Canton—homewardbound! What ship is that?” Well, it just crushed that poor littlecreature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, “Only theMary Ann, 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 andreflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of yourEnglish welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble.Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only theMary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware;but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacencyrides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am astately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas andladen with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to anywandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunatedays on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I amthe Begum, of Bengal, 142 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 bookkeeper 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 bookkeeper in that establishment on a 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 good-by. 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 Tribune 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 gang-plank 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 a 2d, 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 tale 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. 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.
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 Redding, and which would have a billiard-room where we could assemble daily—my own habitation being not far away. Various diversions were planned for Redding; 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 honors 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 latter 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 honors 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 acquitted 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 every one 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 the 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:
“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 coat 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; but 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 Russel 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's 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 Forty-second 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 Redding 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 mention the hour because it seems important. Next morning I received a note, prompted by Mr. Clemens, in which he said:
Tell Paine 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.
Mark Twain was deeply interested during the autumn of 1907 in the Children's Theater of the Jewish Educational Alliance, on the lower East Side—a most worthy institution which ought to have survived. A Miss Alice M. Herts, 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 the performance was ten cents, and the theater 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 theater could not pay. It required patrons. Miss Herts 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 gala night 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 Hogarthian in its bigness.
Both Mark Twain and Miss Herts 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 Theater exists to-day only as history.—[In a letter to a Mrs. Amelia Dunne Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays at the Howland School, Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote: “If I were going to begin life over again I would have a children's theater 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. Burlingame 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. Burlingame 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 Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, and David Bispham, John Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Munro. 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's 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 theater in the afternoon; and it happened that, with Jesse Lynch Williams, I attended the same performance—the “Toy-Maker 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 play-writing.”
“Yes, no doubt. There was never any question with the managers about my plays. They always said they wouldn't act. Howells 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 cannot 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—Saint Andrew, as he called him—by the Engineers Club, and had his usual fun at the chief guest's expense.