To
Moncure D. Conway
22 September 1872 • (2nd of 2) • London, England
(MS and transcript: NNC and Conway 1872, UCCL 00811)
slc
The Langham, Sunday.
Dear Sir:
I have worried through, after a fashion—a heavy job, & roughly done—but memory will enable you to read it.1 I have marked the Marble Arch, & the Hyde Park & the Statuary of Leicester Square, ‸“Mabille,”‸ &c, with a star (*) so that you could explain the allusions—an American reader would not understand them. They wouldn’t comprehend anything about it. I have appended one footnote myself to the reference to the Albert Memorial.2
Lost a wad of bank bills out of my vest pocket last night on my way home—£40—suppose I did it taking out my watch—& just as luck goes, in this life, it is an even bet that the least deserving scalawayg in London found it.3
Hoping to be able to g drop in on you before you go out of town or soon after your return, I am
Ys Truly
Samℓ L. Clemens.
[enclosure:] 4
[Mr. Chairman] [&] gentlemen, it affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club which has extended its hospitalities & its cordial welcome to so many of my countrymen. I hope you will excuse these clothes.5 I am going to the theatre: that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.6 Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human nature—not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our depravity (& God knows, & you know we are depraved enough) & all our sophistication, & untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence & simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle innocuous little thing about “Twain” & “one flesh,” & all that sort of thing, I don’t try to crush that man into the earth—no. I feel like saying: “Let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks.” We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named “King” Your Majesty, & we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We can not alter this. It is God that made us so for some good & wise purpose. Let us not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a very good one if I had time to think about it—a week.
I can not express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be limitless. I go about as in a dream—as in a realm of enchantment—where many things are rare & beautiful, & all things are strange & marvelous. Hour after hour I stand—I stand spell-bound, as it were—& gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square.7 I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry the Eighth, & Judge Jeffreys,8 & the preserved Gorilla, & try to make up my mind which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde Park & drive all around it, & then I start to enter it at the Marble Arch—&—am induced to change my mind.9 It is a great benefaction—is Hyde Park. There, in his Hansom cab, the invalid can go—the poor sad child of misfortune—& insert his nose between the railings, & breathe the pure health-giving air of the country & of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn’t obliged to depend upon parks for his country air, he can drive inside—if he owns his vehicle. I drive round & round Hyde Park, & the more I see of the edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens.10 What a wonderful place that is! I never have seen such a curious & interesting variety of wild animals in any garden before—except “Mabille.”11 I never believed before there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can find there—& I don’t believe it yet. I have been to the British Museum.12 I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have nothing to do for—five minutes—if you have never been there. It seems to me the noblest monument that this Nation has yet erected to her greatness. I say to her, our greatness—as a Nation. True, she has built other monuments, & stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the world’s stage, destroying tyrants & delivering Nations, & whose prodigies will still live in memories of men ages after their monuments shall have crumbled to dust—I refer to the Wellington & Nelson columns, &—the Albert [Memorial.
The Library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have read there hours together & hardly made an impression on it. I revere that library. It is the author’s friend. I don’t care how mean a book is, it always takes one copy.13 And then, every day that author goes there to gaze at that book, & is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor toil-worn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons for Sunday!
You will pardon my referring to these things. Everything in this monster city interests me, & I can not keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little confusing to be so parabolic—so to speak. I collar a citizen, & I think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him how far it is to Birmingham, & he says it is twenty-one shillings & sixpence. Now, we know that don’t help a man any who is trying to learn. I find myself down town somewhere, & I want to get some sort of idea of where I am—being usually lost when alone—& I stop a citizen & say: “How far is it to Charing Cross?” “Shilling fare in a cab,” & off he goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin.
But I am trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics & historical reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies. ’Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, & I thank you, for the name of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest & the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who came among you a stranger, & you opened your English hearts to him & gave him welcome & a home—Artemus Ward.14 Asking that you will join me, I give you his memory.15
* Sarcasm.—The Albert Memorial is the finest monument in the world, & celebrates the existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity.] 16
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
On the occasion of his first appearance at the
Club he came attended by his publisher, the genial and clever Mr.
{Edmund} Routledge. Fortunately the chairman
of the evening was the inimitable Toole, the wittiest actor in
London. Mark Twain was given the seat of honor at his side, and when
the repast was over, Toole arose and invited us to fill our glasses.
A large proportion of the fifty or sixty persons present did not
know that any distinguished guest was present until this unusual
invitation to fill glasses was given. The necessity of repairing to
the theaters has made it the rule that there shall be no toasts or
speeches to prolong the dinners, except at the Christmas or
anniversary banquet. All now set themselves to know what was up.
Toole then said: “We have at our table Mark
Twain.” At these words a roar of cheers arose, and for
some moments the din was indescribable. Toole then proceeded in a
penitent way to confess that for a year or two he had been cribbing
from Mark Twain in a way that must now, he feared, suffer a
humiliating exposure. When now and then he had indulged in an
innocent “gag,” he had had friends rush to him
behind the scenes or on the streets with “Toole, that was
capital; your own, I suppose?” Now invariably when he had
been so greeted the thing happened to be Mark Twain’s. So
all he could say was:
“Oh—ah—well—ahem—glad
you liked it.” He could not exactly make out how it was,
but when he did put in a bit of originality, his friends seemed very
rarely to come and inquire whether it was his own or not.
Toole’s deferential gravity and innocent look is always
amusing, but his fooling in this speech was unusually funny. When
Mark Twain arose, the contrast between him and the clever, comic
actor beside him was singular. The one is small, with a jolly,
blooming countenance, full of quickness, eye ever on the alert; the
American tall, thin, grave, with something of the look of a young
divinity student fallen among worldlings. (Conway 1872) According to a “private letter”
quoted in the New York Tribune, “Mark
was the guest of Mr. Lee.” Nearby sat Watts Phillips
(1825–74), a dramatist and novelist; Andrew Halliday
(1830–77), an essayist and dramatist; and Tom Hood
(“Mark Twain at the Savage Club,” 8 Oct 72,
8).
Being one of the Savages, I have the happiness of laying
before your readers Twain’s speech, of which the Londoners
are in hopeless ignorance, but, alas, it loses much by being transferred
to paper. In its proper setting, related to its immediate environment,
and delivered with a solemn and dry suavity, quite indescribable, it
struck others present besides myself as the best after-dinner speech we
had ever heard. The speaker had on full evening
dress—swallow-tail coat, white cravat, and all
that,—to wear which to the club dinner calls down upon the
wearer considerable chaff, until it be meekly apologized for. This fact
will explain the opening sentences of Twain’s speech, which
were uttered with deprecating lowliness. (Conway 1872)
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, when the
admission is 5 fr., many handsome, richly dressed women of the
‘demimonde’ and exquisites of the boulevards
assemble here, while on the other evenings, when the admission is 3
fr., and women enter without payment, the society is still less
respectable. (Baedeker 1874, 51) In chapter 14 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens
mentioned having made a brief visit to the Jardin Mabille in 1867.
Yet all those brilliant articles in
“Punch,” all those unforgettable dinners,
lasted but six months, and the entertainments in Egyptian Hall only
seven weeks. When it was learned that the most delightful of men was
wasting away under rapid consumption even while he was charming us,
the grief was inexpressible. (Conway 1904, 2:136–37) Conway conducted Ward’s funeral in March 1867:
“The chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery was filled to its utmost
capacity. All the chief actors and actresses, writers of plays, literary
men and women, were present, and sorrow was in every face.”
From that time Conway “enjoyed the friendship of many
connected with the stage, and became a member of the Savage
Club” (Conway, 2:137). In the early paragraphs of his
Cincinnati Commercial article Conway reminisced
about Ward and compared Clemens to him, suggesting that Clemens was
“not simply a humorist, like Artemus, ... but a shrewd
observer, capable of making grave criticisms on general
subjects” (Conway 1872). Clemens had delivered a lecture on
Ward during his 1871–72 tour (2 Jan 72 to Redpath,
n. 1; L4, 478–82).
In deep silence, and with much feeling, the
company present rose and drank to this sentiment. Then, after some
moments, the new-comer was heartily cheered, and the members went up
to make his acquaintance. Soon after Mark Twain went off to the
Gayety Theater with some friends, and saw Byron’s play,
“Good News,” and “Ali
Baba,” (a new extravaganza,) in both of which Toole
appeared, and in the latter of which he had the most absurd gag,
crying out: “As Mark Twain says in the
‘Jumping Frog,’ ‘Lie on, Macduff,
and thingumbobbed be he,’” &c.
Afterward the party supped with Mr. Straight, M.P. I am sorry to learn from a note received from
Mark Twain to-day that the pleasant evening did not end so happily
after all. On returning to his hotel (the Langham) he discovered
that he had dropped—he thinks on taking out his
watch—a roll of bank notes amounting to forty pounds. He
only fears that the meanest scalawag in London may have found them.
(Conway 1872)
After speaking of Hyde Park he got off a satire so
bold that it quite escaped the Englishmen. “I admired
that magnificent monument {i.e. to the Prince
Consort} which will stand in all its beauty when the name
it bears has crumbled into dust.” The impression was that
this was a tribute to Albert the Good, and I had my laugh arrested
by the solemnity of those around me. Indeed, one or two Americans
present with whom I spoke considered it a mere slip, and that Mark
meant to say that the Prince’s fame would last after the
monument had crumbled. (Conway 1904, 2:143) The 175-foot-high monument to Albert, prince consort of
England (1819–61), on the south side of Kensington Gardens,
had just been completed in July 1872, except for the statue of the
prince, which was added in 1876. Designed by George Gilbert Scott, the
memorial took ten years to plan and construct, at a cost of one hundred
and twenty thousand pounds. Its Gothic canopy is inlaid with polished
stones, mosaics, and enamels. The base comprises seven tiers of
statuary, executed by ten different artists and sculptors (Weinreb and Hibbert,
11–12). Clemens described the monument at some length in his
journal (Mark
Twain’s 1872 English Journals).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L5, 172–178; numerous newspapers, including “Mark
Twain in London,” Newark (N.J.) Advertiser, 14 Oct 72, 2; Cleveland Leader, 15
Oct 72, 3; Cleveland Herald, 19 Oct 72; MTS 1910, 417–21; MTB, 3:1630–32; MTS 1923, 37–41; Fatout 1976, 69–72; all enclosure
only.
Provenance:The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s
death in 1907.
Emendations and textual notes:
[¶] Mr. Chairman & gentlemen, it • [no ¶] “Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,” he began, “it
& • and [here and hereafter]
Memorial.* . . . [¶] *Sarcasm . . . obscurity. • Memorial. [¶] [Sarcasm . . . obscurity.] [footnote moved to bottom of page to accord with SLC’s usual style]
