All his impressions of England had been happy ones. He could deliver a gentle satire now and then at certain British institutions—certain London localities and features—as in his speech at the Savage Club,—[September 28, 1872. This is probably the most characteristic speech made by Mark Twain during his first London visit; the reader will find it in full in Appendix L, at the end of last volume.]—but taking the snug island as a whole, its people, its institutions, its fair, rural aspects, he had found in it only delight. To Mrs. Crane he wrote:
If you and Theodore will come over in the spring with Livy and me,
and spend the summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful
that you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land. There is nothing
like it elsewhere on the globe. You should have a season ticket and
travel up and down every day between London and Oxford and worship
nature.
And Theodore can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now
as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the
British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the
customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every
official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the
speech and manners of all the centuries that have dragged their
lagging decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I
would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you
over.
He sailed November 12th, on the Batavia, loaded with Christmas presents for everybody; jewelry, furs, laces; also a practical steam-engine for his namesake, Sam Moffett. Half-way across the Atlantic the Batavia ran into a hurricane and was badly damaged by heavy seas, and driven far out of her course. It was a lucky event on the whole, for she fell in with a water-logged lumber bark, a complete wreck, with nine surviving sailors clinging to her rigging. In the midst of the wild gale a lifeboat was launched and the perishing men were rescued. Clemens prepared a graphic report of the matter for the Royal Humane Society, asking that medals be conferred upon the brave rescuers, a document that was signed by his fellow-passengers and obtained for the men complete recognition and wide celebrity. Closing, the writer said:
As might have been anticipated, if I have been of any service toward
rescuing these nine shipwrecked human beings by standing around the
deck in a furious storm, without an umbrella, keeping an eye on
things and seeing that they were done right, and yelling whenever a
cheer seemed to be the important thing, I am glad and I am
satisfied. I ask no reward. I would do it again under the same
circumstances. But what I do plead for, earnestly and sincerely, is
that the Royal Humane Society will remember our captain and our
life-boat crew, and in so remembering them increase the high honor
and esteem in which the society is held all over the civilized
world.
The Batavia reached New York November 26, 1872. Mark Twain had been absent three months, during which he had been brought to at least a partial realization of what his work meant to him and to mankind.
An election had taken place during his absence—an election which gratified him deeply, for it had resulted in the second presidency of General Grant and in the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom he admired perhaps, but not as presidential material. To Thomas Nast, who had aided very effectually in Mr. Greeley's overwhelming defeat, Clemens wrote:
Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant—I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictures were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year's vast events that man is unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and are proud of you.
Horace Greeley's peculiar abilities and eccentricities won celebrity for him, rather than voters. Mark Twain once said of him:
“He was a great man, an honest man, and served his, country well and was an honor to it. Also, he was a good-natured man, but abrupt with strangers if they annoyed him when he was busy. He was profane, but that is nothing; the best of us is that. I did not know him well, but only just casually, and by accident. I never met him but once. I called on him in the Tribune office, but I was not intending to. I was looking for Whitelaw Reid, and got into the wrong den. He was alone at his desk, writing, and we conversed—not long, but just a little. I asked him if he was well, and he said, 'What the hell do you want?' Well, I couldn't remember what I wanted, so I said I would call again. But I didn't.”
Clemens did not always tell the incident just in this way. Sometimes it was John Hay he was looking for instead of Reid, and the conversation with Greeley varied; but perhaps there was a germ of history under it somewhere, and at any rate it could have happened well enough, and not have been out of character with either of the men.