Meantime, [I have been invited by Oxford University to receive an honorary degree on the 26th of June, and shall sail on that quest on the 8th]. I have made no effort to conceal the fact that I am vain of this distinction. Sometimes they catch an illustrious American who has wandered to the English shores on his own affairs, and Oxford transfigures him with a degree, but [I am one of the very few that have been] sent for from over the ocean.
"18 May 1907: Paragraph 4," in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3. 2015
June 8, 1907: Sam departed for England, arrived June 18.
June 26 Wednesday – The big day in Oxford, England: The Encoeonia (conferring of degrees) took place at the Sheldonian Theater in the morning.
July 13, 1907: Sam departs England. Arrived in New York July 22nd.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin notes an instance of failure on the part of Mark Twain to stand up for an eminently qualified black student:
Two days later, an exhausted Mark Twain found himself embroiled in “a small storm, which could easily grow into a large one”. That spring for the first time, the American Rhodes Scholarship committee had selected an African American as a Rhodes Scholar. The white American Rhodes Scholars at Oxford refused to welcome him to their ranks. Officials connected with the Rhodes Scholarship assured Twain that the white students “would willingly listen to me and give respectful attention to any advice I might offer”. Although Twain detested Cecil Rhodes, he sincerely admired the scholarship program Rhodes had created and agreed to “do my best to convince them that their position was not wise, and not just”. He urged the students to “fulfill the contractual agreement they had made to accept any student elected to membership”. They remained unmoved. Beyond that, Twain tells us, he “refrained from any reference to the matter in dispute and confined my talk to other and cheerfuler things”. The white Rhodes Scholars — at the insistence of Southerners in their ranks — continued to ostracize their black colleague, even making sure he was not invited to the one grand event to which all other Americans at Oxford — whether they were Rhodes Scholars or not — were invited, Thanksgiving Dinner at Oxford’s American Club.
The black student — Alain Locke — had long dreamed of attending Magdalen College, and had designated it as his first choice when he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in the spring of 1907. He wouldn't learn until the following fall that Magdalen, along with five other Oxford colleges, had refused to accept him. When the Rhodes Scholarship committee finally placed him in Hertford College, two other Rhodes Scholars assigned to Hertford — one from North Carolina and one from Ohio — requested to be reassigned somewhere else. Years later, Locke would distinguish himself as the leading philosopher of the Harlem Renaissance.