“'Tis time we Twain did show ourselves.” 'Twas said
By Caesar, when one Mark had lost his head:
By Mark, whose head's quite bright, 'tis said again:
Therefore, “go with me, friends, to bless this Twain.”
--Punch.
Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he proved his sound business
judgment and experience by taking the largest available hall in London
for Mark Twain.
On the evening of October 13th, in the spacious Queen's Concert Rooms,
Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered his first public address in
England. The subject was “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,”
the old lecture with which he had made his first great successes. He was
not introduced. He appeared on the platform in evening dress, assuming
the character of a manager announcing a disappointment.
Mr. Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present. He paused
and loud murmurs arose from the audience. He lifted his hand and they
subsided. Then he added, “I am happy to say that Mark Twain is present,
and will now give his lecture.” Whereupon the audience roared its
approval.
It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that his triumph that week
was a regal one. For five successive nights and a Saturday matinee the
culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him discourse of their
“fellow savages.” It was a lecture event wholly without precedent. The
lectures of Artemus Ward,--[“Artemus the delicious,” as Charles Reade
called him, came to London in June, 1866, and gave his “piece” in
Egyptian Hall. The refined, delicate, intellectual countenance, the
sweet, gave, mouth, from which one might have expected philosophical
lectures retained their seriousness while listeners were convulsed with
laughter. There was something magical about it. Every sentence was a
surprise. He played on his audience as Liszt did on a piano most easily
when most effectively. Who can ever forget his attempt to stop his
Italian pianist--“a count in his own country, but not much account in
this”--who went on playing loudly while he was trying to tell us an
“affecting incident” that occurred near a small clump of trees shown
on his panorama of the Far West. The music stormed on-we could see only
lips and arms pathetically moving till the piano suddenly ceased, and
we heard-it was all we heard “and, she fainted in Reginald's arms.”
His tricks have been at tempted in many theaters, but Artemus Ward was
inimitable. And all the time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway,
Autobiography.)]--who had quickly become a favorite in London, had
prepared the public for American platform humor, while the daily doings
of this new American product, as reported by the press, had aroused
interest, or curiosity, to a high pitch. On no occasion in his own
country had he won such a complete triumph. The papers for a week
devoted columns of space to appreciation and editorial comment. The
Daily News of October 17th published a column-and-a-half editorial on
American humor, with Mark Twain's public appearance as the general text.
The Times referred to the continued popularity of the lectures:
They can't be said to have more than whetted the public appetite, if
we are to take the fact which has been imparted to us, that the
holding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms has been inadequate to
the demand made upon it every night by Twain's lecturing, as a
criterion. The last lecture of this too brief course was delivered
yesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort every part
of the principal apartment of the Hanover Square Rooms....
At the close of yesterday's lecture Mark Twain was so loudly applauded
that he returned to the stage, and, as soon as the audience gave him a
chance of being heard, he said, with much apparent emotion:
“Ladies and Gentlemen,--I won't keep you one single moment in this
suffocating atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this is the last
lecture I shall have the honor to deliver in London until I return
from America, four weeks from now. I only wish to say (here Mr.
Clemens faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am very
grateful. I do not wish to appear pathetic, but it is something
magnificent for a stranger to come to the metropolis of the world
and be received so handsomely as I have been. I simply thank you.”
The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week, under the head
of “Cracking jokes,” gave three pages, to praise of the literary and
lecture methods of the new American humorist. With the promise of speedy
return, he left London, gave the lecture once in Liverpool, and with his
party (October 21st) set sail for home.
In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and wrote him:
We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-two
hundred miles of restless water between us now, besides the railway
stretch. And yet you are so present with us, so close to us, that a
span and a whisper would bridge the distance.
So it would seem that of all the many memories of that eventful
half-year, that of Dr. Brown was the most present, the most tender.