Part 29 (1/2)
[_Dictated July 26, 1907_] In an article entitled ”England's Ovation to Mark Twain,” Sydney Brooks--but never mind that, now
I was in Oxford by seven o'clock that evening (June 25, 1907), and trying on the scarlet gohich the tailor had been constructing, and found it right--right and surpassingly beco we asseowned,street to the Sheldonian Theatre, between solid walls of the populace, very much hurrah'd and lith and distinction and picturesqueness, with the Chancellor, Lord Curzon, late Viceroy of India, in his rich robe of black and gold, in the lead, followed by a pair of trim little boy train-bearers, and the train-bearers followed by the young Prince Arthur of Connaught, as to be made a DCL The detachment of DCL's were followed by the Doctors of Science, and these by the Doctors of Literature, and these in turn by the Doctors of Music Sidney Colvin marched in front offollowed us; General Booth, of the Salvation Army, was in the squadron of DCL's
Our journey ended, ere halted in a fine old hall whence we could see, through a corridor of soth, the massed audience in the theatre Here for a little time we moved about and chatted and made acquaintanceshi+ps; then the DCL's were suh that corridor and the shouting began in the theatre It would be some time before the Doctors of Literature and of Science would be called for, because each of those DCL's had to have a couple of Latin speeches made over hiius Professor of Civil Law, the other by the Chancellor After a while I asked Sir Williaet shot He said, ”Yes,” but that whoever did it and got caught would be fined a guinea, and perhaps hanged later He said he knew of a place where we could accomplish at least as much as half of a smoke before any informers would be likely to chance upon us, and he was ready to show the way to any who
By request he led the way, and Kipling, Sir Norle and stood under one of its exits--an archway of an to take coraphers soon arrived, but they were courteous and friendly and gave us no trouble, and we gave theraphed us at their diligent leisure, while we smoked and talked We were there more than an hour; then we returned to headquarters, happy, content, and greatly refreshed
Presently we filed into the theatre, under a very satisfactory hurrah, and waited in a crih the middle, until each of us in his turn should be called to stand before the Chancellor and hear ourand I wrote autographs until soood kind soul interfered in our behalf and procured for us a rest
I will now save what is left of raph from Sydney Brooks's ”Ovation”
Let those stars take the place of it for the present Sydney Brooks has done it well It makes me proud to read it; as proud as I was in that old day, sixty-two years ago, when I lay dying, the centre of attraction, with one eye piously closed upon the fleeting vanities of this life--an excellent effect--and the other open a crack to observe the tears, the sorrow, the admiration--all for me--all forlife--until Oxford!
Most Americans have been to Oxford and will rees it is, with its crooked lanes, its gray and stately piles of ancient architecture and its nity and unkinshi+p with the noise and fret and hurry and bustle of these es Oxford was not perfect until Pageant day arrived and furnished certain details which had been for generations lacking These details began to appear at roups and squadrons of the three thousand five hundred costuan to ooze and drip and streah house doors, all over the old town, and wend toward the ed with costumes which Oxford had froone centuries--fashi+ons of dress which marked off centuries as by dates, and mile-stoned theend and tradition, when Arthur was a fact and the Round Table a reality In this rich coe and brilliantly colored fashi+ons in dress the dress-changes of Oxford for twelve centuries stood livid and realized to the eye; Oxford as a dreaes was complete now as it had never, in our day, before been co old buildings, and the picturesque throngs drifting past thely soon!--the only persons that seerotesquely and offensively and cri clothed in the ugly and odious fashi+ons of the twentieth century; they were a bitterness to the feelings, an insult to the eye
The es seemed perfect, both as to portraiture and costu thenizable ht me suddenly face to face with Henry VIII, a person who for sixty years; but when he put out his hand with royal courtliness and grace and said, ”Welcoer, to my century and to the hospitalities of ave hihth has been over-abused, and that most of us, if we had been situated as he was, do with as liraveyard as he forced himself to put up with I feel now that he was one of the nicestisbaleful prejudices than is any aument drawn from tales and histories If I had a child I would naardless of sex
Do you remember Charles the First?--and his broad slouch with the pluure? and his body clothed in velvet doublet with lace sleeves, and his legs in leather, with long rapier at his side and his spurs on his heels? I encountered him at the next corner, and knew him in a moment--knew him as perfectly and as vividly as I should know the Grand Chain in the Mississippi if I should see it from the pilot-house after all these years He bent his body and gave his hat a sweep that fetched its pluavehas been ned; I shall understand hiret hi these fifty or sixty years
He did soht better have been left undone, and which cast a shadow upon his name--we all know that, we all concede it--but our error has been in regarding the them by that name, whereas I perceive now that they were only indiscretions At every few steps I met persons of deathless name whom I had never encountered before outside of pictures and statuary and history, and these wereencounters I had hand-shakes with Henry the Second, who had not been seen in the Oxford streets for nearly eight hundred years; and with the Fair Rosamond, whoh I had thought differently about it before; and with Shakespeare, one of the pleasantest foreigners I have ever gotten acquainted with; and with Roger Bacon; and with Queen Elizabeth, who talked five ood opinion of her andthe Scottish Mary, if she really did it, which I now doubt; and with the quaintly and anciently clad young King Harold Harefoot, of near nine hundred years ago, who ca a pipe, but at once checked up and got off to shake with me; and also I met a bishop who had lost his way because this was the first time he had been inside the walls of Oxford for as much as twelve hundred years or thereabouts By this ties and their best-known people that if I had met Adam I should not have been either surprised or e auto-leaf, it would have seeht and harmonious
MARK TWAIN
(_To be Continued_)
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY--XXIV
BY MARK TWAIN
_Froraphy of Me_ [1885-6]
Mamma and papa have returned frohtful visit Mr Frank Stockton was down in Virginia and could not reach Onteora in tie was ill and couldn't go to Onteora, but Mrs General Custer was there, andwoman
[_Dictated October 9, 1906_] Onteora was situated high up in the Catskill Mountains, in the centre of a far-reaching solitude I do not ion holly uninhabited; there were farenerous distances apart Their occupants were descendants of ancestors who had built the houses in Rip Van Winkle's time, or earlier; and those ancestors were not more primitive than were this posterity of theirs The city people were as foreign and unfae to them as monkeys would have been, and they would have respected the ant summer-resorters The resorters were a puzzle to thee and their interests so trivial They drove the resorters over the mountain roads and listened in shamed surprise at their bursts of enthusiasm over the scenery The farmers had had that scenery on exhibition from their mountain roosts all their lives, and had never noticed anything remarkable about it By way of an incident: a pair of these pri about the resorters, one day, and in the course of their talk this remark was dropped:
”I was a-drivin' a passel of 'em round about yisterday evenin', quiet ones, you know, still and solemn, and all to wunst they busted out to ed hell was to pay Nohat do you reckon it was? It wa'n't anything but jest one of them common damned yaller sunsets”
In those days--
[_Tuesday, October 16, 1906_]Warner is gone Stockton is gone I attended both funerals Warner was a near neighbor, from the autumn of '71 until his death, nineteen years afterward It is not the privilege of the regate--but I think he could count his by the score It is seldoes as Warner was There was a charm about his spirit, and his ways, and his words, that won all that came within the sphere of its influence Our children adopted him while they were little creatures, and thenceforth, to the end, he was ”Cousin Charley” to them He was ”Uncle Charley” to the children of more than one other friend Mrs Clemens was very fond of him, and he always called her by her first name--shortened Warner died, as she died, and as I would die--without pre
Uncle Remus still lives, and must be over a thousand years old Indeed, I know that this raph of him in the public prints within the last month or so, and in that picture his aspects are distinctly and strikingly geological, and one can see he is thinking about the mastodons and plesiosaurians that he used to play hen he was young