The plans for the new house were drawn forthwith by that gentle architect Edward Potter, whose art to-day may be considered open to criticism, but not because of any lack of originality. Hartford houses of that period were mainly of the goods-box form of architecture, perfectly square, typifying the commercial pursuits of many of their owners. Potter agreed to get away from this idea, and a radical and even frenzied departure was the result. Certainly his plans presented beautiful pictures, and all who saw them were filled with wonder and delight. Architecture has lavished itself in many florescent forms since then, but we may imagine that Potter's “English violet” order of design, as he himself designated it, startled, dazzled, and captivated in a day, when most houses were mere habitations, built with a view to economy and the largest possible amount of room.
Workmen were put on the ground without delay, to prepare for the builders, and work was rapidly pushed along. Then in May the whole matter was left in the hands of the architect and the carpenters (with Lawyer Charles E. Perkins to stand between Potter and the violent builder, who roared at Potter and frightened him when he wanted changes), while the Clemens household, with Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend of Mrs. Clemens, sailed away to England for a half-year holiday.
XC. A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY
They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young man named Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens had consented to take as an amanuensis. There is a pathetic incident connected with this young man, and it may as well be set down here. Clemens found, a few weeks after his arrival in England, that so great was the tax upon his time that he could make no use of Thompson's services. He gave Thompson fifty dollars, and upon the possibility of the young man's desiring to return to America, advanced him another fifty dollars, saying that he could return it some day, and never thought of it again. But the young man remembered it, and one day, thirty-six years later, after a life of hardship and struggle, such as the life of a country minister is apt to be, he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on his debt. That letter and its inclosure brought only sorrow to Mark Twain. He felt that it laid upon him the accumulated burden of the weary thirty-six years' struggle with ill-fortune. He returned the money, of course, and in a biographical note commented:
How pale painted heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's
heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and
which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound
obscurity, and its hero walks in rags to the end of his days. I had
forgotten Thompson completely, but he flashes before me as vividly
as lightning. I can see him now. It was on the deck of the
Batavia, in the dock. The ship was casting off, with that hubbub
and confusion and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and
shrieking of boatswain whistles, which marked the departure
preparations in those days—an impressive contrast with the solemn
silence which marks the departure preparations of the giant ships of
the present day. Mrs. Clemens, Clara Spaulding, little Susy, and
the nurse-maid were all properly garbed for the occasion. We all
had on our storm-rig, heavy clothes of somber hue, but new and
designed and constructed for the purpose, strictly in accordance
with sea-going etiquette; anything wearable on land being distinctly
and odiously out of the question.
Very well. On that deck, and gliding placidly among those honorable
and properly upholstered groups, appeared Thompson, young, grave,
long, slim, with an aged fuzzy plug hat towering high on the upper
end of him and followed by a gray duster, which flowed down, without
break or wrinkle, to his ankles. He came straight to us, and shook
hands and compromised us. Everybody could see that we knew him. A
nigger in heaven could not have created a profounder astonishment.
However, Thompson didn't know that anything was happening. He had
no prejudices about clothes. I can still see him as he looked when
we passed Sandy Hook and the winds of the big ocean smote us.
Erect, lofty, and grand he stood facing the blast, holding his plug
on with both hands and his generous duster blowing out behind, level
with his neck. There were scoffers observing, but he didn't know
it; he wasn't disturbed.
In my mind, I see him once afterward, clothed as before, taking me
down in shorthand. The Shah of Persia had come to England and Dr.
Hosmer, of the Herald, had sent me to Ostend, to view his Majesty's
progress across the Channel and write an account of it. I can't
recall Thompson after that, and I wish his memory had been as poor
as mine.
They had been a month in London, when the final incident referred to took place—the arrival of the Shah of Persia—and were comfortably quartered at the Langham Hotel. To Twichell Clemens wrote:
We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments on the third floor,
our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place, our parlor having a
noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland
Place and the crook that joins it onto Regent Street).
Nine p.m. full twilight, rich sunset tints lingering in the west.
I am not going to write anything; rather tell it when I get back.
I love you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got
anyway. And I mean to keep that fresh all the time.
Mrs. Clemens, in a letter to her sister, declared: “It is perfectly discouraging to try to write you. There is so much to write about that it makes me feel as if it was no use to begin.”
It was a period of continuous honor and entertainment. If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was little less than royalty now. His rooms at the Langham were like a court. Miss Spaulding (now Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) remembers that Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir Charles Dilke (then at the height of his fame) were among those that called to pay their respects. In a recent letter she says: