And Lady Cork answered:
"Sir, we have nothing to conceal from Your Royal Highness."
There was, of course, an intimacy which put the Prince on his honour.
Mark Twain was staying at Nauheim, some twelve miles away. He had driven into Homburg and was wandering about the place when he was pointed out to the Prince, and was presented. Mark Twain had at the time no very great care about his personal appearance, and was very shabbily dressed. He was the "Tramp Abroad." At first I don't think he much interested the Prince. His slowness of speech and his unusual intonations were not altogether prepossessing. However, when he had taken his leave the Prince seemed to think he wished to see him again and said:
"I should like to ask him to dinner. Do you think he has a dining jacket?"
The risk, whatever it might be, was taken, the invitation was sent, and Mark came to dinner, dining jacket and all. But he did not care to adapt himself to the circumstances; considering, perhaps, that the circumstances ought to adapt themselves to him. The meeting was not a great success, and, so far as I know, was never repeated. Socially speaking, the Mississippi Pilot was an intransigeant at times, and this was one of the times. He could not, I suppose, overcome his drawling manner of speech nor reduce his interminable stories to dinner-table limits. He had the air of usurping more than his share of the conversation and of the time, which he certainly did not mean to. Intentions, unluckily, count for little. Men are judged by what they do, and the general impression was not as favourable to Mark on this occasion as it would have been if he had been better known. Among all Princes and Potentates there was never one more willing to make allowances or less exacting in respect to trivial matters than Mark's host. But, after all, he was Prince of Wales and the future King of England, and if you were not prepared to recognize that, it was open to you to stay away.
Mark Twain, at any rate, was not one of the Americans who followed the Prince to Homburg. He met the Prince almost by accident, and returned from Nauheim by the Prince's invitation for this not very successful dinner. His Republicanism was perhaps of a rebellious kind, and possibly, though without desiring to, he gave the Prince to understand as much. Some of Mark's compatriots went far in the opposite direction, especially one or two American women. There was a handsome American girl who had found means to be presented to the Prince; no difficult matter for a pretty woman at any time. Then she sent him a photograph of himself and begged him to sign it. As I was passing the Prince one afternoon in the street he stopped me and pulled a parcel out of his pocket, saying:
"This is a photograph Miss X. sent me to sign, and I have signed it, and I was just going to leave it for her at the hotel. But I am afraid to. I don't know what she may not ask me next. Would you mind leaving it for me?"
The Prince did not see, but as I went in I saw, on the porch, the girl herself. She must have looked on at what happened and I am not at all sure she did not hear what the Prince said. None the less, she accepted the signed photograph joyfully, and it always had a place of honour in New York. "Wasn't it kind of His Royal Highness to give it to me?" queried this beautiful being, not knowing that the true story had been told me. When I made my report to the Prince I remarked casually that Miss X. had been sitting on the veranda and might have seen what took place. "I hope she heard also," exclaimed the Prince. But he did not quite mean that. At any rate, he relented afterward and was seen to be talking to the girl, whose eyes he could not but admire.