July 10 Wednesday – Ashcroft’s notes: “Went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attended banquet in the Town Hall in the evening” [MTB 1399]. Note: “Tay Pay” was T.P. O’Connor.
Insert Cartoon. Caption: “Mark Twain and the Jumping John Bull Frog have been having a good time together” [The Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, July 9, 1907, p. 9].
The Evening Standard and London St. James’s Gazette reported on Sam’s departure for Liverpool.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain, accompanied by his private secretary [Ashcroft] and Mr. T.P. O’Connor, M.P., left Euston to-day by the Liverpool express.
Mr. Clemens will dine to-night with the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Liverpool, and will be back in town to-morrow.
The railway authorities placed at his disposal what was formerly the Prince of Wales’s saloon, and had made in it a bed for him in case he desired to rest on the way down.
A large number of people assembled on the platform, but the famous humorist retired at once to his compartment, his secretary pleading that he had suffered a sleepless night and could see no one [MTFWE 106: July 10, p.9].
….
The London Morning Leader speculated that the Punch dinner was responsible for Sam’s “sleepless night.”:
MARK TWAIN’S NEW JOKE.
It must have been the jokes. A humorist amongst humorists would have to stand a lot. If the guest of the evening could only be persuaded to repeat the chestnuts that were tried on him!
Some people said they were so bad that they provoked the “restless night,” the very shame of which led our American visitor to take refuge in a railway carriage and draw the blinds; others (you can always find charitable people) declared that the jokes he heard at the “Punch” dinner were of such exceptional wit and brilliancy that Mark Twain rose from the table and sought his hotel overwhelmed and bewildered by them, and racked his brains the night long as to how he could work them off on the next interviewer.
Probably the truth is the author of “The Innocents Abroad” was feeling like the Colonial Premiers after they had been in the country a fortnight. He was looking very well, and wore a light dust-coat for traveling as a compliment to the summer, which was certainly not with us yesterday [MTFWE 107: July 11, p.3].
Sam, Ralph Ashcroft, and T.P. O’Connor reached Liverpool at 4 p.m. Sam remained in bed on the special rail car until it was time to attend the dinner; he did not attend the actual dinner with the Lord Mayor, John Japp. Sam wrote in his Oct. 2, 1907 A.D.:
The Lord Mayor was admirably hospitable; he sent his state carriage for me, with a most gorgeously clad captain and crew, consisting of coachman and footmen; and he received me at the municipal palace in his state costume, with his sword at his side and his cocked hat in his hand. The banquet was just over when he conducted me into the banqueting-hall, so the speechmaking began at once. After the usual toasts to the King and the President, and the reading of the usual letters and telegrams, the rest of the business of the evening was proceeded with [MTFWE 113].
The London Tribune, July 11, p.7 ran “Mark Twain’s Visit to Liverpool,” in part:
On entering the banqueting-room he received a great ovation from the 200 guests, amongst whom were the Bishop of Liverpool, Mr. T.P. O’Connor, M.P., the Hon. J.L. Griffiths, Mr. Robert Gladstone, and Vice-Chancellor Dale.
———
Mr. T.P. O’Connor, M.P., in proposing the toast of the evening, described Mark Twain as the most honoured and respected guest that England has had for many a year.
A telegram from Sir Rupert Boyce, in which the sender referred to the loss of the Ascot Gold Cup and the robbery of the regalia at Dublin, furnished Mark Twain with his first point when, amidst ringing cheers, he rose to respond. “I don’t know,’ he said, “what will become of my reputation if I don’t get out of the country. What is there to connect me with the robbery in Dublin Castle? I say nothing about the Ascot Cup. I was going to Dublin, but, fortunately for the rags of my reputation I could not get there. I should like to know if the Regalia were kept in a reliable safe, because, with the reputation I have now, circumstantial evidence should point to the fact that I would not merely have carried off the Regalia but the safe as well. (Laughter.)
“I hope you won’t mind me being frivolous, because I have followed out my instincts this afternoon. I have slept and rested, and when I am rested and am feeling good I can’t help being frivolous. It is when I am worn out, weary, and discouraged that the time comes for me to take hold of the great international questions and handle them. According to ‘Tay Pay’ I have been everything. At last I am an Ambassador. I like the position. I do not mind being so without salary, because salary limits your energies. I had rather be free and doing ambassadorial work after my own fashion. I intend to keep up this ambassadorial business right along, and whenever I see a chance to cement good feeling between the old Mother-country and its oldest child I shall put in my word and do my ambassadorial work.”
Paine writes of the event:
Clemens was too tired to be present while the courses were being served, but arrived rested and fresh to respond to his toast. Perhaps because it was his farewell speech in England, he made that night the most effective address of his four weeks’ visit — one of the most effective of his whole career: He began by some light reference to the Ascot Cup and the Dublin Jewels and the State Regalia, and other disappearances that had been laid to his charge, to amuse his hearers, and spoke at greater length than usual, and with even greater variety. Then laying all levity aside, he told them, like the Queen of Sheba, all that was in his heart.
. . . Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing to my own home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest honor that has ever fallen to my share of this life’s prizes. It is the very one I would have chosen, as outranking all and any others, the one more precious to me than any and all others within the gift of man or state. During my four weeks’ sojourn in England I have had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has flowed serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through all these twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honor—the heartfelt grip of the hand, and the welcome that does not descend from the pale-gray matter of the brain, but rushes up with the red blood from the heart. It makes me proud and sometimes it makes me humble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop engaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to hear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day a majestic Indiaman came plowing by with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hull burdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail, “Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?” In a deep and thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking-trumpet, “The Begum, of Bengal—142 days out from Canton — homeward bound! What ship is that?” Well, it just crushed that poor little creature’s vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, “Only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point—with nothing to speak of!” Oh, what an eloquent word that “only,” to express the depths of his humbleness! That is just my case. During just one hour in the twenty- four—not more—I pause and reflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of your English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble. Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware; but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am a stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas and laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am the Begum, of Bengal, 142 days out from Canton— homeward bound! [MTB 1401-2]. Note: see Gribben 172-3. See also T.P. O’Connor’s write up of the speech and reaction cited in July 19.
Percy Spalding wrote from London to ask Ashcroft if he might see Sam on “two small matters” before he left England [MTP].
William H. Clemens wrote from Southampton to Sam, having the “same name” as Sam (not Will Clemens); could Sam send a brief letter to be auctioned for a new church [MTP].
John H. Barker wrote from Tottenham to Sam, offended by a paragraph clipped and pasted to his letter in the Morning Leader, “a mean & paltry rag published somewhere in London.” The paragraph conjoins the “craze for stealing exhibition jewelry” with Sam’s leaving London this day for Liverpool [MTP].
Mrs. Peter Brocklebank wrote from Cheshire to Sam: “Do you remember my husband & me at Florence where we own the little villa San Leonardo? Is every moment of tomorrow engaged?” [MTP].
Lily Forster wrote from Liverpool to ask Sam to send his autograph [MTP].
Joe Fuller wrote from Hastings to congratulate Sam on “winning the Harper Award of Merit” [MTP].
George J. Jolliffe for the Salvation Army, London wrote to invite Sam to a tea on July 15 at 4:45 p.m.: Crystal Palace, Sydenham [MTP].
Sidney Lee wrote from Kensington to thank Sam for the signed photo [MTP].
Georgiana Langattock wrote from Rutland Gate, S.W. to Sam, “quite in love with the photo youhave so kindly sent…” Best wishes [MTP].
Francesco Pirazzini wrote from NYC to Sam: “I hope you have not forgotten your daughters teacher. I am now in New York…” He’d traveled to NY to see his father but he’d passed away. Would Sam recommend him to his friends? [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: I went to see Ferris Greenslet about the Aldrich or the M.T. letters. He said in the course of our pleasant chat, and apropos of the King’s wonderful reception in England and the love they bore him, that Howells too commanded a great deal of love that he is a rare creature and mellows like old wine. He showed me a great letter from the King written away back in the 70’s and said that not to be able to use that letter in his Biography of Aldrich would be as bad as to lose an eye or a tooth. I found a darling “old” shop there and got a porringer there and Santa gave me a big one. Boston is charming. In the evening we walked in the Common [MTP 82]. Note: a porringer is a shallow bowl or cup with a handle.