He was not reading many books at this time—he was inclined rather to be lazy, as he said, and to loaf during the afternoons; but I remember that he read aloud 'After the Wedding' and 'The Mother'—those two beautiful word-pictures by Howells—which he declared sounded the depths of humanity with a deep-sea lead. Also he read a book by William Allen White, 'In Our Town', a collection of tales that he found most admirable. I think he took the trouble to send White a personal, hand-written letter concerning them, although, with the habit of dictation, he had begun, as he said, to “loathe the use of the pen.”
There were usually some sort of mild social affairs going on in the neighborhood, luncheons and afternoon gatherings like those of the previous year, though he seems to have attended fewer of them, for he did not often leave the house. Once, at least, he assisted in an afternoon entertainment at the Dublin Club, where he introduced his invention of the art of making an impromptu speech, and was assisted in its demonstration by George de Forest Brush and Joseph Lindon Smith, to the very great amusement of a crowd of summer visitors. The “art” consisted mainly of having on hand a few reliable anecdotes and a set formula which would lead directly to them from any given subject.
Twice or more he collected the children of the neighborhood for charades and rehearsed them, and took part in the performance, as in the Hartford days. Sometimes he drove out or took an extended walk. But these things were seldom.
Now and then during the summer he made a trip to New York of a semi-business nature, usually going by the way of Fairhaven, where he would visit for a few days, journeying the rest of the way in Mr. Rogers's yacht. Once they made a cruise of considerable length to Bar Harbor and elsewhere. Here is an amusing letter which he wrote to Mrs. Rogers after such a visit:
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,—In packing my things in your house yesterday
morning I inadvertently put in some articles that was laying around,
I thinking about theology & not noticing, the way this family does
in similar circumstances like these. Two books, Mr. Rogers' brown
slippers, & a ham. I thought it was ourn, it looks like one we used
to have. I am very sorry it happened, but it sha'n't occur again &
don't you worry. He will temper the wind to the shorn lamb & I will
send some of the things back anyway if there is some that won't
keep.
CCXLVI. DUBLIN, CONTINUED
In time Mark Twain became very lonely in Dublin. After the brilliant winter the contrast was too great. He was not yet ready for exile. In one of his dictations he said:
The skies are enchantingly blue. The world is a dazzle of sunshine.
Monadnock is closer to us than usual by several hundred yards. The
vast extent of spreading valley is intensely green—the lakes as
intensely blue. And there is a new horizon, a remoter one than we
have known before, for beyond the mighty half-circle of hazy
mountains that form the usual frame of the picture rise certain
shadowy great domes that are unfamiliar to our eyes....
But there is a defect—only one, but it is a defect which almost
entitles it to be spelled with a capital D. This is the defect of
loneliness. We have not a single neighbor who is a neighbor.
Nobody lives within two miles of us except Franklin MacVeagh, and he
is the farthest off of any, because he is in Europe....
I feel for Adam and Eve now, for I know how it was with them. I am
existing, broken-hearted, in a Garden of Eden.... The Garden of
Eden I now know was an unendurable solitude. I know that the advent
of the serpent was a welcome change—anything for society....
I never rose to the full appreciation of the utter solitude of this
place until a symbol of it—a compact and visible allegory of it
—furnished me the lacking lift three days ago. I was standing alone
on this veranda, in the late afternoon, mourning over the stillness,
the far-spreading, beautiful desolation, and the absence of visible
life, when a couple of shapely and graceful deer came sauntering
across the grounds and stopped, and at their leisure impudently
looked me over, as if they had an idea of buying me as bric-a-brac.
Then they seemed to conclude that they could do better for less
money elsewhere, and they sauntered indolently away and disappeared
among the trees. It sized up this solitude. It is so complete, so
perfect, that even the wild animals are satisfied with it. Those
dainty creatures were not in the least degree afraid of me.
This was no more than a mood—though real enough while it lasted—somber, and in its way regal. It was the loneliness of a king—King Lear. Yet he returned gladly enough to solitude after each absence.