Well, to resumeⒶtextual note from Ashcroft’s notes:

“ Monday, July 1 Ⓐtextual note. Dined with Sidney Lee at the Garrick ClubⒺexplanatory note, and called at Mrs. Macmillan’s, to see Lady JerseyⒺexplanatory note, on the way home.”

It was a distinguished company at the dinner, and once more I encountered J. M. Barrie; also once more he sat on the other side of the table and out of conversing distance. The same thing happened in London twice, seven years ago, and once in New YorkⒺexplanatory note since then. I have never had five minutes’ talk with him that wasn’t broken off by an interruption; after the interruption he always dissolves mysteriously and disappears. I should like to have one good unbroken talk with that gifted Scot some day before I die.

The Garrick was familiar to me; I had often fed there in bygoneⒶtextual note years as guest of Henry Irving, Toole, and other actors—all dead now. It could have been there, but I think it was at Bateman’s, thirty-five years ago, that I told Irving and Wills, the playwright, about the whitewashing of the fence by Tom SawyerⒺexplanatory note, and thereby captured a chapter on cheap terms; for I wrote it out when I got back to the hotel while it was fresh in my mind.

[begin page 103] Sidney Lee’s dinner was in a room which I was sure I had not seen for thirty-five years, yet I recognized it, and could dreamily see about me the forms and faces of the small company of that long-forgottenⒶtextual note occasion. Anthony Trollope was the host, and the dinner was in honor of Joaquin Miller, who was on the top wave of his English notoriety at that time. There were three other guests; one is obliterated, butⒶtextual note I remember two of them—Tom Hughes and Leveson-GowerⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note. No trace of that obliterated guest remains with me—I mean the other Ⓐtextual note obliterated guest, for I was an obliterated guest also. I don’t remember that anybody ever addressed a remark to either of us; no, that is a mistake—Tom Hughes addressed remarks to us occasionally; it was not in his nature to forget or neglect any stranger. Trollope was voluble and animated, and was but vaguely aware that any other person was present exceptingⒶtextual note him of the noble blood, Leveson-GowerⒶtextual note. Trollope and Hughes addressed their talk almost altogether to Leveson-GowerⒶtextual note, and there was a deferential something about it that almost made me feel that I was at a religious service;Ⓐtextual note that Leveson-GowerⒶtextual note was the acting deity, and that the illusion would be perfect if somebody would do a hymn or pass the contribution-box. All this was most curious and unfamiliar and interesting. Joaquin Miller did his full share of the talking, but he was a discordant note, a disturber and degrader of the solemnities. He was affecting the picturesque and untamed costume of the wild Sierras at the time, to the charmed astonishment of conventional London, and was helping out the effects with the breezy and independent and aggressive manners of that far away and romantic region. He and Trollope talked all the time, and both at the same time, Trollope pouring forth a smooth and limpid and sparkling stream of faultless English, and Joaquin discharging into itⒶtextual note his muddy and tumultuousⒶtextual note mountain torrent, and— Well,Ⓐtextual note there was never anything just like it except the Whirlpool Rapids under Niagara Falls.

It was long ago, long ago!Ⓐtextual note and not even an echo of that turbulence was left in this room where it had once made so much noise and display. Trollope is dead; Hughes is dead; Leveson-GowerⒶtextual note is dead; doubtless the obliterated guest is dead; Joaquin Miller is white-headed, and mute and quietⒶtextual note in his dear mountainsⒺexplanatory note.

I arrived at Mr. Macmillan’s a little after ten o’clock, and found there a number of old friends besides Lord and Lady Jersey, and several strangers;Ⓐtextual note one of whom had a special interest for me because he was of the blood of that fine creature and prized friend of forty years ago, “Charley,” tenth Lord FairfaxⒺexplanatory note, citizen of Maryland by birth and rearing, citizen of Nevada and San Francisco by adoption, a man whom I have said many praiseful and admiring things about in an earlier chapter of this Biography. This handsome young gentleman at the Macmillans’ was either English or had been away from America long enough to acquire the English stamp.

I think that the successor of “Charley” of San Francisco was the last American lord, and was followed by a successor who moved to England and remained, thus leaving the great republic without a single hereditary lord, and extinguishingⒶtextual note a distinction which the country had enjoyed for several generations. This present young bearer of the title was the successor of “Charley’s” successor.Ⓐtextual note

[begin page 104]

I had not seen Sidney Lee since 1902, when he made a flying visit to our side of the ocean and was banqueted by Andrew Carnegie, one night, in his new palace at 92d streetⒶtextual note and Fifth AvenueⒺexplanatory note. He is not now a bashful man, but is as much at his ease in company as is anybody, whereas when he came to America that time there was only one other man on our soil who could successfully compete with him in bashfulness, and that was Joel Uncle Remus Harris. Sidney Lee’s bashfulness spread out and covered the whole NorthernⒶtextual note half of the United States, and Harris’s crowded the SouthernⒶtextual note half; there was no room in the republic for another man of this pattern. There were twenty men at Carnegie’s; in the drawing-room, before dinner, they were introduced to Mr. Lee, one by one, and they were all struck by his extreme bashfulness. They were strangely bashful themselves at the dinner, yet there was no man present who had not been a long time before the public and accustomed to foregathering with all sorts of people under all sorts of conditions. That dinner afforded the strangest and most unaccountable exhibitions of timidity I have ever witnessed; I have never seen anything like it among grown-up men, either before or since then, in my long pilgrimage. Was Mr. Lee the cause of it? Or was it Mrs. Carnegie? I have asked myself that conundrum many a time, but have never yet been able to answer it to my satisfaction. Mrs. Carnegie was the only lady present. I took her out, and sat at her right, at the centreⒶtextual note of the table; opposite me, across the table, sat Mr. Carnegie with Mr. Lee at his right; next to Lee sat John BurroughsⒺexplanatory note, the naturalist; next to Burroughs satⒶtextual note Carl SchurzⒺexplanatory note, great soldier and statesman; next to Schurz sat Melville StoneⒺexplanatory note, head of the Associated Press of the planet; next to Stone sat Horace WhiteⒺexplanatory note, old and famous and able journalist. At Carnegie’s left sat Mr. Howells; at Mr. Howells’s left sat Gilder, of the Century Ⓐtextual note; and so on—I will not try to name the rest of the assemblage. When the feast was finished and the black coffee and cigars installed, Mr. Carnegie—smiley and complacent little man!—rose in his place to speak. His smiliness, his complacency, his ease, his confidence—supports which had never failed him in his life, before, upon such an occasion—withered quickly away and vanished before he had uttered a word; it was a new and surprising and most interesting thing to see. Carnegie was in a bad stage-frightⒶtextual note; everybody saw it, yet nobody was entirely able to believeⒶtextual note it, I suppose. When he began to speak, the words came hesitatingly—gaspingly, one may fairly say—Ⓐtextual noteand with disastrous spaces between; he at once began to advertise his fright and his nervousness by that couple of age-worn indications which the distressed novice has unconsciously resorted to at banquets since the beginning of time: first he took up his wine-glasses one at a time, as a player takes up chessmen, and made a new arrangement of them on the cloth; then he took them up again, one at a time, and grouped them in a new way; again he took them up, and again changed the grouping—all this with a painful attention to detail that was most uncomfortable to witness, so charged was it with doubt and miserable anxiety; next he resorted to that other ancient sign, the fussing with his napkin. He folded it, kneaded it with his knuckles;Ⓐtextual note he turned it around [begin page 105] this way, then that way, then the other way, always kneading it and always stammering incoherently along. There was but four feet of table-cloth between him and me, yet his voice was so weak and his syllables so mumbled, so slurred, and so vacantly delivered, that I did not catch any more than half the words of any sentence; and when he sat down I was wholly ignorant of the matter of his speech, and even of the purpose of it. I knew he was introducing Mr. Lee, because I knew his speech could have no object other than that, but I got not a thing out of his remarks that I could not have gotten out of them if he had delivered them with the sign language of the deaf and dumb—a language with which I have no acquaintance. I noticed another thing: his hand quaked and quivered all the time that he was fumbling with his glasses and his napkin.

Sidney Lee got up and shivered—stood shivering the most of a minute, but not all of it—uttered three or four quite inaudible sentences, and sat down still alive but not noticeably so.

Mr. Carnegie got up and performed again with napkin and glasses, and with palsied lips and extinguished voice, and resumed his seat. I had not caught a word that I could understand. Apparently he had been introducing John Burroughs, for Burroughs got up and began to rock on his base, and quiver, and swallow the dry swallow which indicates distress and which compels the compassion of all witnesses. What he said was confused and disjointed, and marred with hesitations and repetitions, but one could at least hear it. He wandered hopelessly and helplessly for a minute or two, hunting for a text, skirmishing for an idea; then I spoke across and came to his rescue with the suggestion that he discard the conventions and step boldly out upon familiar ground and talk shop. I said that in a time gone by he had published an article in which he had offered the theory, with reservations, that the reason an oak forest always grew up in the place previously occupied by a pine forest when the pine forest had been removed, was because the squirrels had used the carpet of pine-needles as a hiding-place for acorns, and had forgotten them and left them there, with the result that when the pines were removed the sun had a chance to warm the acorns and make them sprout—and asked him to say whether he had since established the correctness of his theory. This text turned his language loose and he had no further trouble with his speech.

Carl Schurz, that marvelously ready and fluent and felicitousⒶtextual note handler of our great English tongue on its highest planes, followed Burroughs and furnished us another surprise. He had never been frightened before, in all the history of his long and illustrious public career, but he was frightened now; all his noble and charming and exquisite phrasing was gone, and he stumbled pathetically along over a bumping corduroy road of disjointed commonplaces and poverties of expression, and soon reached the edge of his difficult world and fell over it and subsided, a defeated man.

Melville Stone rose, stammered, wandered, straggled, got lost, andⒶtextual note was quickly vanquishedⒶtextual note and added to the muster-rollⒶtextual note of the failures.

The very same fate befell Horace White.

Then Howells got up and bent over the table with his left hand supporting his curve, while he arranged and re-arranged his wine-glasses with his right, and gasped and stuttered [begin page 106] and dripped disconnected and puerile words all around; next he turned to his napkin for help and heavily bore down upon it and pitilessly rolled it, unrolled it, and rolled it again, and presently cut an uncompleted sentence in two with something like a despairing gasp, and wilted into his seat, a target for everybody’s heartfelt compassion.

Gilder followed, and failed; when he got through, any stranger could have told by the look of his napkin that it had been helping a scared man make a speech.

Mr. HornblowerⒺexplanatory note, a celebrated advocate, followed Gilder. He tried to talk—indeed he made what could be justly called a heroicⒶtextual note effort to do it—but he soon gave it up. He said he would frankly confess that his trouble was that he was frightened; that he was frightened to speechlessness; that he could not divine why, and was wholly unable to account for his curious and novel condition, but that the fact remained as stated:Ⓐtextual note he was frightened,Ⓐtextual note and couldn’t go on. He said he could not remember ever having had a like experience since he had made his success at the bar. Then he sat down looking thankful that his ordeal was over.

I forgot to say that I followed Sidney Lee—but the omission is of no consequence; I was in the conflict before that deadly and mysterious contagion of fright had got well started, and so I escaped infection.