The Savage Club would inevitably want to entertain him on its own account, and their dinner of July 6th was a handsome, affair. He felt at home with the Savages, and put on white for the only time publicly in England. He made them one of his reminiscent speeches, recalling his association with them on his first visit to London, thirty-seven years before. Then he said:
That is a long time ago, and as I had come into a very strange land,
and was with friends, as I could see, that has always remained in my
mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into
contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad to
be here, and to see you all, because it is very likely that I shall
not see you again. I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It
keeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they
do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can
appreciate it higher than I do.
The club gave him a surprise in the course of the evening. A note was sent to him accompanied by a parcel, which, when opened, proved to contain a gilded plaster replica of the Ascot Gold Cup. The note said:
Dere Mark, i return the Cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shut
about it. 'Tis 2 pretty 2 melt, as you want me 2; nest time I work
a pinch ile have a pard who don't make after-dinner speeches.
There was a postcript which said: “I changed the acorn atop for another nut with my knife.” The acorn was, in fact, replaced by a well-modeled head of Mark Twain.
So, after all, the Ascot Cup would be one of the trophies which he would bear home with him across the Atlantic.
Probably the most valued of his London honors was the dinner given to him by the staff of Punch. Punch had already saluted him with a front-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge, a picture in which the presiding genius of that paper, Mr. Punch himself, presents him with a glass of the patronymic beverage with the words, “Sir, I honor myself by drinking your health. Long life to you—and happiness—and perpetual youth!”
Mr. Agnew, chief editor; Linley Sambourne, Francis Burnand, Henry Lucy, and others of the staff welcomed him at the Punch offices at 10 Bouverie Street, in the historic Punch dining-room where Thackeray had sat, and Douglas Jerrold, and so many of the great departed. Mark Twain was the first foreign visitor to be so honored—in fifty years the first stranger to sit at the sacred board—a mighty distinction. In the course of the dinner they gave him a pretty surprise, when little joy Agnew presented him with the original drawing of Partridge's cartoon.
Nothing could have appealed to him more, and the Punch dinner, with its associations and that dainty presentation, remained apart in his memory from all other feastings.
Clemens had intended to return early in July, but so much was happening that he postponed his sailing until the 13th. Before leaving America, he had declined a dinner offered by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool.