an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our
petition would have been, “It has been in print.”
It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry every time
I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape
I have had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew,
with all my heart! I’m willing that he
should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming
over his cold victuals—cheerfully willing
to that—but no more. If I had had
him near when his letter came, I would have got out
my tomahawk and gone for him. He didn’t
tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow.
I wish to goodness you were here this moment—nobody
in our parlor but Livy and me,—and a very
good view of London to the fore. We have a luxuriously
ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd
floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place
and our parlor having a noble array of great windows
looking out upon both streets (Portland Place and
the crook that joins it to Regent Street.)
9 P.M. Full twilight—rich sunset
tints lingering in the west.
I am not going to write anything—rather
tell it when I get back. I love
you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I’ve
got, anyway. And I
mean to keep that fresh all the time.
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.
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
