June 13 Thursday – After mailing his letter of the prior day to Liverpool and learning that Sam went to London, not Liverpool, H.H. Rogers wrote again from Vichy, France, essentially repeating his news and plans of the prior letter, signing “Admiral” [MTHHR 628].
Isabel Lyon’s journal summary: Lyon went to Redding but refused to allow a female to drive her from Branchville to the new house site, as she’d been in two accidents prior with female drivers. Finally a male was there to drive her:
Lounsbury came along and we drove up to the site of the King’s house, to find that the new one is a great blunder. Oh, dreadful. I stopped work until I could consult Santa and J.H. [John Howells] and next week we are going up again. AB came up and was as distressed as I was over the position. He took me down to his house for luncheon, a trout out of his brook, and then we went up to my house to meet Gene Adams and consult about the repairs and alterations in my house. Oh, it’s so darling, and it is going to be beautiful. It was a day full of good things, in spite of “Bess” and the bad site of the house. I was taken there by Allah and just in time [MTP TS 69].
Professor John Rhys (1840-1915) “Principal of Jesus College, Oxford” sent a small card: “I am writing to the curators for the tickets for Lockyer’s ladies and for Mr. Clemens’s daughter: they will send them here I expect in time and we shall see that the one for Mr. Clemens reaches you [unknown person]. By the way, will you see about Mr. Clemens’s gown for the degree?” [MTP].
On board the S.S. Minneapolis, Sam had his younger fans (unidentified). See insert: [Richards’ 1912 Zeichner and Geseichnete].
The London Tribune, page 1, trumpeted Sam’s upcoming arrival. In part:
MARK TWAIN’S VISIT.
HIS POPULARITY AMONG ENGLISH READERS.
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The news that Mark Twain is on his way to this country to receive an honorary degree from the University of Oxford creates widespread interest and awakens many pleasing recollections. For nearly forty years the genial American humorist has been popular in this country, yet, although he is in his seventy-second year, and began his literary career before many of his competitors of the present day were born, he remains as brimful of fun as ever. His books, too, remain as popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably there is not a discount bookseller in England who does not keep some, at least, of his works in stock, alongside those of Scott and Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot.