January 31 Friday – At Baroda Station, some 245 miles north of Bombay, Sam was treated to a “ride on a lurching elephant, without a mahout at the controls” [Parsons “MT India” 80]. Clara recalled this as in Colombo, but her later recollections of time and place were often faulty, and the Clemens party had less than 24 hours in Colombo with Sam mostly in bed.
Father seated on an elephant defies description. There was something funny about the sight to me; and Father, suspecting what I was giggling about, said, “What are you laughing at, you sassmill?”
“If you could see yourself, Father, you would laugh, too. The elephant looks so unreal with all his important trappings and you have such a troubled air, as if you realized your hat did not match the blue-and-red harness.”
Father never minded being laughed at unless something else had gone wrong with him. So he replied he did not believe the picture could be any stranger than his feelings, the driver of the beast seemed so far off. What could he do if the elephant decided to run? Nobody could answer this question, so he decided to forget it and enjoy the picturesque little streets and unfamiliar architecture. [MFMT 154].
Parsons writes,
By seven, Friday morning, they alighted at Baroda Station….At that hour the shy sun and the wan lights were dispiriting, but the officials, the servants, and the impressive carriage sent by the Gaikwar of Baroda, who invited the lecturer, were picturesque and reassuring. A drive through park and forest brought the strangers to Baroda on the Viswamitri River. The time-encrusted city was hearty in odor, ringing with sound, pullulating with life. Sightseeing, planned and unplanned, took the Twain party on to villages tranced in silence, glaringly new, Indo-Saracenic Laxmi Vilas Palace, and such wonders as two salute cannon, one silver and the other gold, weighing 280 pounds each. Somehow Twain missed the Maharaja’s £3,000,000 display of jewelry, but he was treated to a ride on a lurching elephant, without a mahout at the controls [“MT India” 80].
At 4:30 p.m. Sam gave his “At Home” lecture in Durbar Hall of the Laxmi Vilas Palace to the Gaikwar of Baroda and 200 guests (Rodney gives 300 guests and calls this “The Great Hall of the Palace” [182].) They left Baroda at 10 p.m. and Sam slept all the way back to Bombay, arriving at 7 a.m. on Feb. 1. Parsons writes that the return had to be that night so Sam might begin the 866 mile trip to Allahabad. “As the train crossed the mountain range of the Western Ghats in the dark, that enemy of rest, the temperature, dropped from summer to winter” [Parsons “MT India” 81].