I am not going to write anything--rather tell it when I get back. I love
you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got, anyway. And I
mean to keep that fresh all the time.
Lovingly
MARK.
P. S.--Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy's Diary, and smoking.
Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period. Mark Twain,
now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with
honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a
court. Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais,
and Charles Kingsley hastened to call. Kingsley and others gave him
dinners. Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: “It is perfectly
discouraging to try to write you.”
The continuous excitement presently told on her. In July all
further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little
family to Scotland, for quiet and rest. They broke the journey at
York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter
remaining from this time.
*****
Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y.:
For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with
its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no
wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories
far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three
hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the
ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St.
Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the
heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance;
the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured
windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of
streets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial,
all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times;
the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and their
bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than
thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old
stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary
tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed
by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed
and caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiers
placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked
the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than the
Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this moment.
Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month. Mrs.
Clemens's health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband,
knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr.
John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only
a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all
became deeply attached. Little Susy, now seventeen months old,
became his special favorite. He named her Megalops, because of her
great eyes.
Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London.
Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to
a week's engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife
and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more
extended course. Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen's
Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his
lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before
had brought him his first success. The great hall, the largest in
London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared
that Mark Twain had no more than “whetted the public appetite” for
his humor. Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his
little party, sailed for home. Half-way across the ocean he wrote
the friend they had left in Scotland:
*****
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873.
OUR DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--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.
The first three days were stormy, and wife, child, maid, and Miss
Spaulding were all sea-sick 25 hours out of the 24, and I was sorry
I ever started. However, it has been smooth, and balmy, and sunny and
altogether lovely for a day or two now, and at night there is a broad
luminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which the
spirits of the sea are traveling up and down all through the secret
night and having a genuine good time, I make no doubt.
Today they discovered a “collie” on board! I find (as per advertisement
which I sent you) that they won't carry dogs in these ships at any
price. This one has been concealed up to this time. Now his owner has to
pay L10 or heave him overboard. Fortunately the doggie is a performing
doggie and the money will be paid. So after all it was just as well you
didn't intrust your collie to us.
A poor little child died at midnight and was buried at dawn this
morning--sheeted and shotted, and sunk in the middle of the lonely ocean
in water three thousand fathoms deep. Pity the poor mother.
With our love.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain was back in London, lecturing again at the Queen's
Concert Rooms, after barely a month's absence. Charles Warren
Stoddard, whom he had known in California, shared his apartment at
the Langham, and acted as his secretary--a very necessary office,
for he was besieged by callers and bombarded with letters.
He remained in London two months, lecturing steadily at Hanover
Square to full houses. It is unlikely that there is any other
platform record to match it. One letter of this period has been
preserved. It is written to Twichell, near the end of his
engagement.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 5 1874.
MY DEAR OLD JOE,--I knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass if
I came away; and so you have--if you have stopped smoking. However,
I have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, and that the
judiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you back
again.
I wish you had written me some news--Livy tells me precious little. She
mainly writes to hurry me home and to tell me how much she respects me:
but she's generally pretty slow on news. I had a letter from her along
with yours, today, but she didn't tell me the book is out. However, it's
all right. I hope to be home 20 days from today, and then I'll see her,
and that will make up for a whole year's dearth of news. I am right down
grateful that she is looking strong and “lovelier than ever.” I only
wish I could see her look her level best, once--I think it would be a
vision.
I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the Royal
Academy Exhibition of Landseer's paintings. They fill four or five
great salons, and must number a good many hundreds. This is the only
opportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong to
the queen and she keeps them in her private apartments. Ah, they're
wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights and dusks in “The
Challenge” and “The Combat;” and in that long flight of birds across
a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise--for no man can ever
tell tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning
mist breathing itself up from the water). And there is such a grave
analytical profundity in the faces of “The Connoisseurs;” and such
pathos in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowy
waste, with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is not
asleep. And the way he makes animals absolute flesh and blood--insomuch
that if the room were darkened ever so little and a motionless living
animal placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which.
I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest
a cartoon for Punch. It was this. In one of the Academy salons (in the
suite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on a
pedestal in the centre of the room. I suggest that some of Landseer's
best known animals be represented as having come down out of their
frames in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in
mourning attitudes.
Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you and shall be powerful
glad to see you and Harmony. I am not going to the provinces because I
cannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in Hanover
Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect
of that prodigious place, and wonder that I could fill it so long.
I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to and
enjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it can
ever come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.
I have read the novel--[The Gilded Age, published during his absence,
December, 1873.]--here, and I like it. I have made no inquiries about
it, though. My interest in a book ceases with the printing of it.
With a world of love,
SAML.
XIII. LETTERS 1874. HARTFORD AND ELMIRA. A NEW STUDY. BEGINNING “TOM
SAWYER.” THE SELLERS PLAY.
Naturally Redpath would not give him any peace now. His London success
must not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and with
great brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional
appearances, wiring at last this final defiant word:
*****
Telegram to James Redpath, in Boston:
HARTFORD, March 3, 1874.
JAMES REDPATH,--Why don't you congratulate me?
I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday
night.