News came to Vienna of the death of Orion Clemens, at the age of
seventy-two. Orion had died as he had lived--a gentle dreamer, always
with a new plan. He had not been sick at all. One morning early he had
seated himself at a table, with pencil and paper, and was putting down
the details of his latest project, when death came--kindly, in the moment
of new hope. He was a generous, upright man, beloved by all who
understood him.
The Clemenses remained two winters in Vienna, spending the second at the
Hotel Krantz, where their rooms were larger and finer than at the
Metropole, and even more crowded with notabilities. Their salon acquired
the name of the "Second Embassy," and Mark Twain was, in fact, the most
representative American in the Austrian capital. It became the fashion
to consult him on every question of public interest, his comments,
whether serious or otherwise, being always worth printing. When European
disarmament was proposed, Editor William T. Stead, of the "Review of
Reviews," wrote for his opinion. He replied:
"DEAR MR. STEAD,--The Tsar is ready to disarm. I am
ready to disarm. Collect the others; it should not be
much of a task now. MARK TWAIN."
He refused offers of many sorts. He declined ten thousand dollars for a
tobacco endorsement, though he liked the tobacco well enough. He
declined ten thousand dollars a year for five years to lend his name as
editor of a humorous periodical. He declined another ten thousand for
ten lectures, and another offer for fifty lectures at the same rates
--that is, one thousand dollars per night. He could get along without
these sums, he said, and still preserve some remnants of his
self-respect.
It was May, 1899, when Clemens and his family left Vienna. They spent a
summer in Sweden on account of the health of Jean Clemens, and located
in London apartments--30 Wellington Court--for the winter. Then followed
a summer at beautiful Dollis Hill, an old house where Gladstone had often
visited, on a shady hilltop just outside of London. The city had not
quite enclosed the place then, and there were spreading oaks, a pond with
lily-pads, and wide spaces of grassy lawn. The place to-day is converted
into a public garden called Gladstone Park. Writing to Twichell in
mid-summer, Clemens said:
"I am the only person who is ever in the house in the daytime, but I
am working, and deep in the luxury of it. But there is one
tremendous defect. Levy is all so enchanted with the place and so
in love with it that she doesn't know how she is going to tear
herself away from it."
However, there was one still greater attraction than Dollis Hill, and
that was America--home. Mark Twain at sixty-five and a free man once
more had decided to return to his native land. They closed Dollis Hill
at the end of September, and October 6, 1900, sailed on the Minnehaha for
New York, bidding good-by, as Mark Twain believed, and hoped, to foreign
travel. Nine days later, to a reporter who greeted him on the ship, he
said:
"If I ever get ashore I am going to break both of my legs so I can't
get away again."