The return to New York marked the beginning of a new era in my relations
with Mark Twain. I have not meant to convey up to this time that there
was between us anything resembling a personal friendship. Our relations
were friendly, certainly, but they were relations of convenience
and mainly of a business, or at least of a literary nature. He was
twenty-six years my senior, and the discrepancy of experience and
attainments was not measurable. With such conditions friendship must
be a deliberate growth; something there must be to bridge the dividing
gulf. Truth requires the confession that, in this case, the bridge took
a very solid, material form, it being, in fact, nothing less than a
billiard-table.--[Clemens had been without a billiard-table since 1891,
the old one having been disposed of on the departure from Hartford.]
It was a present from Mrs. Henry H. Rogers, and had been intended for
his Christmas; but when he heard of it he could not wait, and suggested
delicately that if he had it “right now” he could begin using it sooner.
So he went one day with Mr. Rogers to the Balke-Collender Company, and
they selected a handsome combination table suitable to all games--the
best that money could buy. He was greatly excited over the prospect,
and his former bedroom was carefully measured, to be certain that it
was large enough for billiard purposes. Then his bed was moved into the
study, and the bookcases and certain appropriate pictures were placed
and hung in the billiard-room to give it the proper feeling.
The billiard-table arrived and was put in place, the brilliant green
cloth in contrast with the rich red wallpaper and the bookbindings and
pictures making the room wonderfully handsome and inviting.
Meantime, Clemens, with one of his sudden impulses, had conceived the
notion of spending the winter in Egypt, on the Nile. He had gone so far,
within a few hours after the idea developed, as to plan the time of his
departure, and to partially engage a traveling secretary, so that he
might continue his dictations. He was quite full of the idea just at the
moment when the billiard table was being installed. He had sent for a
book on the subject--the letters of Lady Duff-Gordon, whose daughter,
Janet Ross, had become a dear friend in Florence during the Viviani
days. He spoke of this new purpose on the morning when we renewed the
New York dictations, a month or more following the return from Dublin.
When the dictation ended he said:
“Have you any special place to lunch to-day?”