April 4 Thursday – In London, Sam left his calling card with a note for Chatto & Windus, his English publishers. “please pay S. Gardener & Co £13:5.0. & charge to me. / S.L. Clemens / Apl. 4/95” [MTP].

Sam described his dinner with Henry M. Stanley and a crowd of “thirty or forty”:

Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a grand mansion in the midst of the official world right off Downing street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and fame there to meet me — thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more than a hundred came in after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight. There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons, Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches. I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong I would dearly love to spend a season in London — provided I had no work on hand; or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture there a month or two when I return from Australia.

There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife of His Excellency Admiral Bridge [Sir Cyprian Bridge], Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me in that part of the world and would be glad to do it; and would yacht me and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would find him ready [Apr. 7 to Rogers].