25 October 1872 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00823)
Livy darling, I have been bumming around in a vagrant sort of way, today, through the Seven Dials & such places. Nothing remarkable, except a street of second-hand Ⓐemendation shoes —every cellar full, & more displayed on the sidewalk. Scrawny people & dirty & ragged ones rather abundant, but they’re no sight.1explanatory note
The truth is, there are no sights for me—I have seen them all before, in other places. It does seem to me that there is nothing under the sun that does is not a familiar old friend to my eye. Consequently I do just as little sightseeing as possible, but try to see as many people as I can. If I could take notes of all I hear said, I should make a most interesting book—but of course these things are interminable—only a shorthand reporter could siezeⒶemendation them.
I don’t get letters from you, my child, any oftener than you do from me, I believe—so there, now.
I am using a note-book a little, now, & journalizing when I can.2explanatory note
Between you & me, & the gatepost, Stanley lacks a deal of being a
gentleman—tho
I say it that shouldn’t, seeing we have been intimate & I have been of
assistance to him & he has been of assistance to me.3explanatory note In the first place he denies his nationality—denies it strongly—swears he is
an American. Now that is bad.
And be as AsⒶemendation soon as he opensed his mouth to talk I in private, I felt that he was a
foreigner—the moment he spoke a dozen sentences in public, I knew he was a foreigner. Nobody
here appears to know it for certain, but he will be detected at once, in America.
Now, my dear, he has been honored here as very
few p strangers were ever honored in England, & yet he shows the meanest ungrateful spirit.
Because
everybody did not rise up at first & believe in him (a thing not to be expected till he had
fully proved himself,) he has ever since resented it. At last when E all England, with the Queen at the head came
forward & frankly owned their error, he was not great-souled enough to say let bygones
be bygones, but continued to go
about snarlingⒶemendation at England & the English.4explanatory note
I think the most tremendous piece of manliness of modern times was the conduct of the Royal Geographical Society last Monday. After all the blackguarding that Stanley has S heaped upon them at dinners & on railway platforms, they came forward superbly & said your achievement merits the Victoria Medal, & you shall have it—& they gave him a grand dinner—& although there were but 119 plates, you should have seen the sort of men they were & heard their names called.5explanatory note In the ante-room, when the company were assembling, every time I was introduced to a man his name nearly took my breath away. They were the renowned men of Great Britain’s army, navy & schools of science; & every broad ribbon that encircled their necks & every star & cross that blazed upon their breasts was a memento of some great thing their brains had done. Titled they were—most a great many of them—men of ancient family & noble blood, but it was their brains that gave them celebrity. Well, you must know that here, men are seated at table strictly according to their rank—so the idiot son of an earl would sit above the Speaker of the House of Commons—& so on. But as Americans have no rank, it is proper to place us either above or below the nobles. Courtesy rather forbids the latter, & so we get good com◇ seats. They usually set the table in this form: The chairman sits where the cross is. The President of the Geographical Society, Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson,6explanatory note sat there; Stanley & the Lord Mayor of London7explanatory note & a lot of lords & Admirals & generals on his right; & our Secretary of legation8explanatory note on his left; then the famous Sir Bartle Frere;9explanatory note then our Ex-Secretary McCo ullough;10explanatory note then some more s grandees. I sat opposite the President (•) & was flanked by various dignitaries. Now you see, I could look into Stanley’s & Rawlinson’s faces, & mark every expression. And when Sir Henry R. stood up & made the most manly & magnificent apology to Stanley for himself & for the Society that ever I listened to, I thought the man rose to the very pinnacle of human nobility;11explanatory note & if I had been Stanley I would have made Rome howl with an app a burying of the hatchet that should have been yet grander & more magnanimous or I would have perished on the spot. But that spaniel got up & wagged his unwilling tail through a reluctant acceptance of the apology12explanatory note & then went right on & opened the old sore & flung the same old taunts out of his wounded self-love that made him make such a poor little shabby dog of himself at the Brighton dinner!13explanatory note And now again he is at it in Glasgow yesterday.14explanatory note I am really & truly gla◇dⒶemendation this fellow is not American—though indeed he must have learned his puppyism with us. He did a stupendous thing in Africa, but he will blacken his fair renown forever & come to be treated with contempt yet.
Don’t let any of this Stuff get into print, Livy darling. Every day I get invitations to lecture in the cities & towns of England & Scotland—& the gratifying feature of it is that they come not from speculators or cheap societies, but from self-elected committees of gentlemen, who want to give me their hospitality in return for the pleasure & they say my pen has given them. When gentlemen condescend in this way in England, it means a very great deal. An English gentleman never does a thing that may in the slightest degree detract from his dignity.
Well, I must get at my journal—so good night & the pleasantest of dreams, my darling wife.
in ink: Mrs. S.L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn in upper left corner: America. | flourish postmarked: london • w 7 oc26 72 and new york nov 6 paid allⒶemendation
Seven Dials was a circular area, between Soho Square and Drury Lane, from which radiated seven streets. A column in the center, removed in 1773, had contained a clock with seven faces (or only six, according to at least one authority). The surrounding district, a notorious slum that Dickens described in Sketches by Boz (1836–37), was largely cleared away when Charing Cross Road was built in the 1880s (Kent, 577–78; Weinreb and Hibbert, 139, 779).
Clemens’s notebook, as opposed to his journal (i.e. Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journalsclick to open link), is not known to survive.
Clemens had met journalist and explorer Henry M. Stanley (1841–1904) in 1867, as he recalled in 1906: “I knew Stanley well for thirty-seven years—from the day that he stenographically reported a lecture of mine in St. Louis, for a local newspaper, until his death in 1904” (AD, 20 Nov 1906, CU-MARK). Stanley reported Clemens’s Sandwich Islands lecture in the St. Louis Missouri Democrat for 28 March 1867 (1 Feb 94 to Frank Fuller, CtY; Henry M. Stanley). The mutual assistance Clemens mentioned has not been explained; it seems unlikely that Stanley’s article, although complimentary, was part of it, since Clemens consistently objected to newspaper dissemination of his lectures.
Stanley was born John Rowlands, in Wales. His reluctance to acknowledge his nationality resulted from the unhappy circumstances of his childhood. His mother abandoned him at birth, and his father died a short time later. He was cared for by his maternal grandfather, passed into foster care at his grandfather’s death, and then, at age six, was sent to a workhouse, where he was brutally treated, but managed nevertheless to receive some education. He ran away at age fifteen, after attacking the sadistic schoolmaster, and in 1859 emigrated to New Orleans. There he was adopted by a merchant, Henry Morton Stanley, whose name he assumed. His successful career as a journalist began during the Civil War. In 1869 he received an assignment from the New York Herald to search for the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had disappeared in Africa several years earlier. After enduring great hardship, he succeeded in November 1871, and returned to England on 1 August 1872 expecting praise and recognition. Instead, he was greeted by the jealousy and disbelief of the British geographical establishment. The popular press discredited and abused him, even alleging that he was a fraud and that the letters he had brought from Livingstone were forgeries. Some newspapers treated Stanley more fairly, however, and his achievement was soon universally acknowledged. On 16 August Stanley spoke in Brighton at a meeting of the Geographical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, receiving an “exceptionally hearty and enthusiastic” response. The London Morning Post reported, “The men of science in England have fully and formally recognised the success and applauded the energetic services of the now unquestioned discoverer of Dr. Livingstone” (“London, Monday, August 19, 1872,” 19 Aug 72, 4). On 27 August Queen Victoria sent Stanley a gold snuffbox set with diamonds, and on 10 September she granted him a ten-minute audience at Dunrobin, in northern Scotland, the seat of the duke of Sutherland. Stanley, however, remained permanently bitter about his initial rejection (Hird, 15–20, 27, 33–34, 44, 68–89, 105–19; Farwell, 81–85; Anstruther, 148–55; “The British Association,” London Morning Post, 17 Aug 72, 2). Clemens noted in his English journal on 15 September, “Been around to see Stanley. He dined with the Queen last Saturday,” and commented on the effect of the queen’s approval (Mark Twain's 1872 English Journalsclick to open link).
The Royal Geographical Society honored Stanley with a banquet at Willis’s Rooms, St. James Square, on the evening of 21 October. The attendance was low, as the president explained, because many of the members had not yet returned from their country residences. Although the rules of the society stipulated that the Victoria Medal be awarded in the spring, they were set aside for Stanley, an honor never before paid to an explorer. Stanley had some cause for complaint against the society, however. Its president, Sir Henry Rawlinson (see the next note), had launched a rival expedition in February 1872, ostensibly to ensure Livingstone’s safety, but in reality hoping to precede Stanley and thus prevent him from receiving credit. When Rawlinson was forced in May 1872 to acknowledge Stanley’s success, he mistakenly announced that Livingstone had rescued Stanley from starvation, and not the other way around. The British public, already confused by conflicting reports, was confirmed in regarding Stanley as a somewhat ridiculous figure (Anstruther, 122–32, 141–44, 156; Hird, 106; London Morning Post: “The Livingstone Relief Expedition,” 16 Aug 72, 6; “Dinner to Mr. Stanley,” 22 Oct 72, 2).
Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810–95), president of the Royal Geographical Society since the spring of 1871, had served with the British Army in India and Persia, where he became interested in oriental studies. He had been the British consul general in Persia, and a two-time member of Parliament. In addition, he was a renowned Assyriologist and one of the first scholars to decipher the cuneiform alphabet.
London’s lord mayor for 1871–72 was Sir Sills John Gibbons (1809–76), a hop merchant (Boase, 1:1137). When his term expired in November, he would be replaced by Sir Sydney Waterlow.
Benjamin Moran (1820–86) was born in Pennsylvania and in his early years wanted to be a writer. He had lived in England since 1853, and since that time worked for the American legation—first as a clerk, later as assistant secretary of legation, and, since 1864, as secretary. He described Clemens’s appearance at the dinner in his journal: “Among the celebrities of the day who were present was ‘Mark Twain.’ He is a wiry man, with brown, crisp, wiry hair; a narrow forehead, Roman nose, and sinister expression, and does not seem to know more than as much as would hurt him” (Moran, 33:203).
Sir Henry Bartle Frere (1815–84) was born in Wales and went to India in 1834. He earned distinction as a competent colonial administrator, serving as governor of Bombay from 1862 to 1867. He returned to England in 1867 when appointed a member of the Indian council. He was about to leave for Zanzibar, where late in 1872 he negotiated a treaty with the sultan of Zanzibar to suppress the slave trade, a mission given new urgency by Livingstone’s recently published reports from Africa (“Sir Bartle Frere’s Mission,” London Morning Post, 28 Oct 72, 6). Frere would succeed Sir Henry Rawlinson as president of the Royal Geographical Society in 1873.
Hugh McCulloch (1808–95) was born in Maine. He was trained as a lawyer, but in 1835 began a distinguished career as a banker in Indiana. From 1863 to 1865 he was comptroller of currency in Washington, and then served as secretary of the treasury (1865–69). He was now a partner in the London banking house of Jay Cooke, McCulloch and Company.
Rawlinson called Stanley’s journey “one of the most brilliant exploits in the whole history of African travel,” and claimed that “the memory of it would remain to after ages as an example of what a man could do when his heart was in the right place, and when he was animated by a high sense of duty and loyalty.” He then referred to the incident of the previous May (see note 5), explaining that at the time he was
aware that ample supplies had already been sent from the coast to Dr. Livingstone, and therefore he thought he was quite authorised in saying that if the two travellers met at Ujiji, Livingstone would relieve Stanley, rather than Stanley Livingstone. With the full knowledge he now possessed and which the public possessed a few months after, he saw that he was wrong, and he regretted extremely that he had made use of that expression. (Cheers.) He was now convinced that Livingstone was destitute of supplies, and that Mr. Stanley arrived at a most fortunate time for his relief. He would say more: he had a strong feeling that to Mr. Stanley Dr. Livingstone owed his life. (“Dinner to Mr. Stanley,” London Morning Post, 22 Oct 72, 2)
Stanley’s remarks, as reported in the London Morning Post, were not as negative as Clemens suggested. His speech was primarily devoted to praising Livingstone, especially his heroic efforts to abolish the African slave trade. He said he had come
home with this account of the great traveller, and, as he had foreseen, and had told Dr. Livingstone—his story was doubted. ... He (Mr. Stanley) had ... found every one as it were in a cloud. Everybody seemed to have some particular delusion on the subject of the great African traveller, but now all that was cleared away, and this was a time for a general shaking of hands.
Stanley then “thanked the Geographical Society—first, for the present banquet; next, for the medal they had conferred upon him; and next for the hearty reception they had accorded him” (“Dinner to Mr. Stanley,” 22 Oct 72, 2).
Clemens alluded to an unfortunate incident that occurred on 17 August at a dinner in Brighton hosted by the Brighton and Sussex Medico-Chirurgical Society. Despite his warm reception the previous day by the Geographical Section, Stanley had been affronted by some of the remarks of the president, who, “with questionable taste,” claimed that Stanley’s route “was an open track easily travelled by caravans,” and, at the conclusion of the meeting, “went out of his way to observe that they did not want sensational reports, but correct scientific observations” (“The British Association,” London Morning Post, 20 Aug 72, 2). At the 17 August dinner, therefore, Stanley was quick to take offense when, responding to the toast to “The Visitors,” he heard a guest give a “derisive laugh.” He at once abandoned the “humorous and cheerful style in which he had been speaking,” and protested that “he had not come there to be laughed at, and that he had had quite enough gratuitous sneering of late without their adding to it”:
Alluding to the insinuations which had been made against him at the meeting of the Geographical Section on the previous day, that he had indulged rather too much in “sensationalism,” he assured them that it was not to get the thanks of England or the English people that he had gone out to discover Livingstone, but as a matter of professional duty. They might call it what they liked; but if the finding of Livingstone in the heart of Africa after he had been given up for lost had not something of the “sensational” in it, then he did not know the meaning of the word. But why was it that his statements were questioned? Was it because he was an American, and for that reason that he should be rewarded with gratuitous sneering? ... If that was to be the way in which he was to be treated he would at once withdraw from their company. No sooner had Mr. Stanley said these words than he left the room, and repaired to his apartments. (“The British Association,” London Morning Post, 20 Aug 72, 2)
At a banquet in Glasgow on 23 October, Stanley complained of his treatment at Brighton, saying it “harasses my feelings every time I think of it” (Farwell, 86).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). Clemens’s drawing is photographically reproduced.
L5 , 119–204; LLMT , 363, brief paraphrase.
See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.