July 5 Friday – Ashcroft’s notes: “Dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth. Forty or fifty guests; two or three hundred came in afterward” [MTB 1399; MTFWE 108]. Note: Earl and Countess of Portsmouth (Newton and Beatrice Wallop). London’s Daily Telegraph, July 6, p.12, “LONDON DAY BY DAY” reported the event plus what the Countess had called a “small party” when inviting Sam.
July 4 Thursday – London. Ashcroft’s notes: “Lunched at Sir James Knowles’s; attended the banquet in celebration of Independence Day at the Hotel Cecil” [MTFWE 91].
July 3 Wednesday – Ashcroft’s note: “Wednesday, July 3. Luncheon with George Bernard Shaw; dined with Moberly Bell” [MTFWE 88].
In London, Sam lunched with Mr. and Mrs. George Bernard Shaw at their flat in Adelphi Terrace. Also at the luncheon were Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Prof. Archibald Henderson, who had sailed over with Sam to gather biographical information on Shaw [London Tribune, July 4, p.6; London Daily Mail, July 4, p.5].
Sam’s A.D. of Aug. 23, 1907 covered the Shaw luncheon:
July 2 Tuesday – Ashcroft’s note: “Lunched with Henniker-Heaton, M.P., at the House of Commons; dined with Mr. and Mrs. Harry Brittain at the Savoy” [MTFWE 85].
The London Evening News, July 2, p.1, reported on Sam’s doings for the day.
MARK TWAIN AT WESTMINSTER.
Smoking the cigar which would seem never to go out, Dr. Mark Twain drove in a taximo to his photographer-in-ordinary, Mr. H. Walter Barnett, of Knightsbridge.
July 1 Monday – Clara Clemens and Isabel Lyon were on board the Red Cross liner Rosalind from New York off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia when it collided with the coast steamer Senlac. The Rosalind was not damaged, but the other vessel was, all passengers escaping to the Rosalind. “Miss Clemens says that, instead of going to St. John’s, as she intended, she will return to New York” [NY Times, July 2, p.2, “Steamer Run Down by Liner Rosalind”]. See IVL’s journal entry below.
July to August – Sam wrote a sketch unpublished until 2009: “The Force of ‘Suggestion’” [Who Is Mark Twain? xxvi, 51-54].
July – Sometime after his return to Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick [MTP].
In London Sam inscribed a photograph of himself in front of the House of Parliament, to I. Benjamin Stone [MTP].
June 30 Sunday – At Brown’s Hotel In London Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Katonah, N.Y.
June 29 Saturday – The London Times on July 1, ran “Mark Twain and the Savage Club” about the Lord Mayor of London giving a dinner with Mark Twain as guest, Saturday night (June 29) at the Savage Club. But first, Sam had to travel to Stratford for a luncheon and be trapped by Marie Corelli. Sam’s own words are the best account of the event, which he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of:
June 28 Friday – Though all 27 days Sam spent in England were busy, Sam labeled this day as especially so. From Sam’s A.D. for July 30:
June 27 Thursday – Sam attended the Oxford Pageant. The Oxford Chronicle, June 28, p.16, “Yesterday at the Pageant” reported Sam’s appearance at 3:45 p.m. The London Daily Express, reported on the gala event, (June 28, p. 1, “Pageant in the Mist”) and on Mark Twain’s attendance:
The first performance of the Oxford Pageant began yesterday [June 27] in a blaze of glory, and closed—amid cheers—in a Scotch mist.