Lovingly
MARK.
P. S.—Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy's Diary, and smoking.
Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period. Mark Twain,
now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with
honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a
court. Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais,
and Charles Kingsley hastened to call. Kingsley and others gave him
dinners. Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: “It is perfectly
discouraging to try to write you.”
The continuous excitement presently told on her. In July all
further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little
family to Scotland, for quiet and rest. They broke the journey at
York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter
remaining from this time.
Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y.:
For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed and caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this moment.
Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month. Mrs.
Clemens's health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband,
knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr.
John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only
a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all
became deeply attached. Little Susy, now seventeen months old,
became his special favorite. He named her Megalops, because of her
great eyes.
Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London.
Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to
a week's engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife
and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more
extended course. Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen's
Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his
lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before
had brought him his first success. The great hall, the largest in
London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared
that Mark Twain had no more than “whetted the public appetite” for
his humor. Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his
little party, sailed for home. Half-way across the ocean he wrote
the friend they had left in Scotland:
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873.