June 10 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “Oxford, 9 or 11.45 see next page” [NB 43 TS 15]. Note: next page, lined out: “Oxford: 9 or 11.45 Paddington. Prof. J. Mark Baldwin. Drive straight to 6 Bardwell Rd. Dinner & all night” [NB 43 TS 16].

Fatout gives this date for Sam’s speech (not recorded) at Magdalen College, Oxford. Sam had been unable to attend an earlier planned luncheon (June 7) with James Mark Baldwin, who wrote in his memoirs:

He came at a later date. The dinner was arranged, if I remember right, at Madelaine [sic Magdalen] College, and some Oxford notables were asked to meet him, among them Godley, the humorist, author of the book of humorous verse entitled “Lyra Frivola,” which made a stir at the time…. At the dinner, at which it was expected that the two humorists would vie with each other in sallies of wit, all was as solemn as the tomb. Mark Twain was grave as a veritable deacon, and Godley seemed afraid to open his head. It was only after the coffee that, seated at different tables widely separated from each other, our lions began to roar.

Apropos of a meeting of the Oxford Philosophical Society which Clemens was unable to attend, he produced his bon mot. The question under discussion at the society was, “Is God infallible?” “No,” said Clemens, “not at all, for had he been, once he had the whole human race in the ark, he would have let them drown!” [James M. Baldwin, Between Two Wars, 1926 p.112]. Note: Perhaps the most famous graduate from Magdalen was Samuel Pepys, one of Sam’s favorite authors.

Baldwin also recalled Sam’s proficiency in swearing:

Clemens came out to Oxford from London as my guest, and not finding in his valise the necessary article named above, he stormed about and swore like a trooper. Seldom have I seen such an outburst, even from the most competent of those experts in the art of swearing—the fisherman of the Maine lakes—directed too against the person whose fair hand had packed the bag. He was not the philosopher that James was or the absence of so homely though necessary an article would not have ruffled his spirits. But let no one ever say again that Mark Twain could not be serious! [62].

Sam spent the night, a guest of Baldwin’s [NB 43 TS 16].

Fatout mistakenly cites a dinner speech at the Savage Club on this day [MT Speaking 667], but since Sam spent the night in Oxford, it is clear that Fatout confused this with the year-earlier dinner, on June 9, 1899. Significantly, the only other dinner in 1900 that Mark Twain is mentioned in Watson’s history of the Savage Club is July 7, 1900. However, there is the drawing by Phil May giving “June 1900” as a date, which seems to have been a “prophecy” actually drawn in 1899 (see in June 9, 1899 entry).