with ladies just ladies. I will be the only lady of my sex present, and
I shall put on this gown and make those ladies look dim.
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS
ADDRESS AT THE PILGRIMS’ CLUB LUNCHEON, GIVEN IN HONOR OF Mr.
CLEMENS AT THE SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 25, 1907.
Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in introducing
Mr. Clemens said: “We all love Mark Twain, and we are here to
tell him so. One more point–all the world knows it, and that
is why it is dangerous to omit it–our guest is a distinguished
citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his
‘Huckleberry Finn’ and his ‘Tom Sawyer’ are what ‘Robinson
Crusoe’ and ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’ have been to us. They
are racy of the soil. They are books to which it is impossible
to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the
classics–reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do
not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and
depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords.
I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence
will think of Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself,
will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to
forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical
mumblings and jumblings. Let us therefore be content to say to
our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves
and for our children, to say what he has been to us. I
remember in Liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which I
still preserve, of the celebrated ‘Jumping Frog.’ It had a few
words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those
days was called ‘the wild humorist of the Pacific slope,’ and a
few lines later down, ‘the moralist of the Main.’ That was
some forty years ago. Here he is, still the humorist, still
the moralist. His humor enlivens and enlightens his morality,
and his morality is all the better for his humor. That is one
of the reasons why we love him. I am not here to mention any
book of his–that is a subject of dispute in my family circle,
which is the best and which is the next best–but I must put in
a word, lest I should not be true to myself–a terrible thing–
for his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of
manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity of thanking
him. But you can all drink this toast, each one of you with
his own intention. You can get into it what meaning you like.
Mark Twain is a man whom English and Americans do well to
honor. He is the true consolidator of nations. His delightful
humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national
prejudices. His truth and his honor, his love of truth, and
his love of honor, overflow all boundaries. He has made the
world better by his presence. We rejoice to see him here.
Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty,
honest human affection!”
Pilgrims, I desire first to thank those undergraduates of Oxford. When a
man has grown so old as I am, when he has reached the verge of seventy-
two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the dreamland of his
life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young hearts up yonder.
And so I thank them out of my heart. I desire to thank the Pilgrims of
New York also for their kind notice and message which they have cabled
over here. Mr. Birrell says he does not know how he got here. But he
will be able to get away all right–he has not drunk anything since he
came here. I am glad to know about those friends of his, Otway and
Chatterton–fresh, new names to me. I am glad of the disposition he has
shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in
London, I hope to have a talk with them. For a while I thought he was