We sat talking, chiefly we women, after dinner and looking at the sunset. Mr. Clemens lay down with a book and J. went to look over his lecture. I did not go to lecture, but after all were gone I scribbled away at these pages and nearly finished Mr. Appleton’s “Nile Journal.” They returned rather late, it was after ten, bearing a box of delicious strawberries, Mrs. Colt’s gift from her endless greenhouses. They were a sensation; the whole of summer was foreshadowed by their scarlet globes. Some beer was brought for Mr. Clemens (who drinks nothing else, and as he eats but little this seems to answer the double end of nourishment and soothing for the nerves) and he began again to talk. He said it was astonishing what subjects were missed by the Poet Laureate. He thought the finest incident of the Crimean War had been certainly overlooked. That was the going down at sea of the man of war, Berkeley Castle. The ship with a whole regiment, one of the finest of the English army, on board, struck a rock near the Bosphorus. There was no help—the bottom was out and the boats would only hold the crew and the other helpless ones; there was no chance for the soldiers. The Colonel summoned them on deck; he told them the duty of soldiers was to die; they would do their duty as bravely there as if they were on the battle-field. He bade them shoulder arms and prepare for action. The drums beat, flags were flying, the service playing, as they all went down to silent death in the great deep.
Afterward Mr. Clemens described to us the reappearance before his congregation of an old clergyman who had been incapacitated for work during twelve years—coming suddenly into the pulpit just as the first hymn was ended. The younger pastor proposed they should sing the old man’s favorite, “Coronation,” omitting the first verse. He heard nothing of the omission, but beginning at the first verse he sang in a cracked treble the remaining stanza after all the people were still. There was a mingling of the comic and pathetic in this incident which made it consonant with the genius of our host. Our dear little hostess complained of want of air, and I saw she was very tired, so we all went to bed about eleven.
Saturday morning.—Dear J. was up early and out in the beautiful sunshine. I read and scribbled until breakfast at half-past nine. It was a lovely morning, and I had already ventured out of my window and round the house to hear the birds sing and see the face of spring before the hour came for breakfast. When I did go to the drawing-room, however, I found Mr. Clemens alone. He greeted me apparently as cheerfully as ever, and it was not until some moments had passed that he told me they had a very sick child upstairs. From that instant I saw, especially after his wife came in, that they could think of nothing else. They were half-distracted with anxiety. Their messenger could not find the doctor, which made matters worse. However, the little girl did not really seem very sick, so I could not help thinking they were unnecessarily excited. The effect on them, however, was just as bad as if the child were really very ill. The messenger was hardly despatched the second time before Jamie and Mr. Clemens began to talk of our getting away in the next train, whereat he (Mr. C.) said to his wife, “Why didn’t you tell me of that,” etc., etc. It was all over in a moment, but in his excitement he spoke more quickly than he knew, and his wife felt it. Nothing was said at the time, indeed we hardly observed it, but we were intensely amused and could not help finding it pathetic too afterward, when he came to us and said he spent the larger part of his life on his knees making apologies and now he had got to make an apology to us about the carriage. He was always bringing the blood to his wife’s face by his bad behavior, and here this very morning he had said such things about that carriage! His whole life was one long apology. His wife had told him to see how well we behaved (poor we!) and he knew he had everything to learn.
He was so amusing about it that he left us in a storm of laughter, yet at bottom I could see it was no laughing matter to him. He is in dead earnest, with a desire for growth and truth in life, and with such a sincere admiration for his wife’s sweetness and beauty of character that the most prejudiced and hardest heart could not fail to fall in love with him. She looked like an exquisite lily as we left her. So white and delicate and tender. Such sensitiveness and self-control as she possesses are very, very rare.
May Day.—Longfellow, Greene, Alexander Agassiz and Dr. Holmes dined with us. This made summer, Longfellow said at table—that this was May Day enough, it was no matter how cold it was outside. (The wind outside had been raging all day and winter seemed to be giving us a last fling.) Jamie recalled one or two things “Mark Twain” had said which I have omitted. When he lectured a few weeks ago in New York, he said he had just reached the middle of his lecture and was going on with flying colors when he saw in the audience just in front of him a noble gray head and beard. “Nobody told me that William Cullen Bryant was there, but I had seen his picture and I knew that was the old man. I was sure he saw the failure I was making, and all the weak points in what I was saying, and I couldn’t do anything more—that old man just spoiled my work. Then they told me afterward that my lecture was good and all that; I could only say, ‘no, no, that fine old head spoiled all I had to say that night.’”
Longfellow was quite like himself again, but the talk was mainly sustained by Dr. Holmes and Mr. Agassiz. When Dr. Holmes first came in he looked earnestly at the portrait of Sydney Smith. “It reminds me of our famous story-teller, Sullivan,” he said; “it is full of epicureanism. The mouth is made for kisses and canvas-backs.” Later on in the dinner, when Mr. Agassiz was describing the fatigue he suffered after talking Spanish all day while he still understood the language very imperfectly, “Why,” said Holmes, “it’s like playing the piano with mittens on.”
There was something pathetic in the fact of this young man sitting here among his father’s friends, almost in the very place his father had filled so many times—but his speech was manly and wise, from a full brain. They talked of the spectroscope as on the whole the most important discovery the world had known. “Well, what is it?” said Longfellow. “Explain it to us.” (I was glad enough to have him ask.) Agassiz explained quite clearly that it was an instrument to discover the elements which compose the sun, and proceeded to unfold its working in some detail. Two men made the discovery simultaneously, one in India and one in England. This spectroscope has been infinitely improved, however, by every living mind brought to bear upon it, almost, since its first so-called discovery. It is so difficult, Dr. H. said, to tell where an invention began; you could go back until it seemed that no man that ever lived really did it—like some verses, whereupon one of Gray’s was given as an example. The talk turned somewhat upon the manner of putting things, the English manner being so poor and inexpressive compared with the southern natures—the French being the masters of expression.
Longfellow gave a delightful account of the old artist and spiritualist, Kirkup, the discoverer of the Dante portrait, though Greene undertook to say that a certain Wilde was the man. I never heard anybody else have the credit but Kirkup, and certainly England believes it was he.
I think they all had “a good time”; I am sure I did.
