Mark Twain Speaking

174. Interview

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 174 · 585 Mark Twain sailedfor home on the Minnetonka onJuly 13. Two days out the ship collided with the bark Sterling, but neither was seriously damaged. The Times reported,July 23, that Mark Twain, aroused by the collision, "grabbed his bath robe, and rushed to the deck to see what the trouble was. Some ofthe passengerssay that he thought he hadgrabbedhis bath robe, but that in reality he had put on his Oxford gown in the darkness." Arriving in New York on the twenty-second, he was met by a crowd ofnewsmen whofired a barrage ofquestions . Interview Dockside, New York, July 22, 1907 Doctor Twain, if you please. That is the only title I am using now. Just how myoId friends are going to get away from calling me "Mark" is something they will have to work out for themselves, and when they see me in my new cap and gown they will be bound to fall. My dinner with the King? Did he enjoy it? How do I like America? What do I think of the English women? Did I get away with the Ascot Cup? The Dublin jewels, too? What's the best story I heard in England ? Who--one minute, boys. Give me a chance to think. I haven't had any practice for nine days, and you remind me of work. Well, the King enjoyed the dinner and that is enough. I like America very much. I was prepared for that question and nearly all the others, but being a good Christian I do not dread the worst. As to English women, I will not commit myselfjust now. This is so sudden. I must have time to consider these great questions. As to the Ascot Cup, I don't mind taking you all into my confidence. Sh! It's on board this ship, and I expect to go ashore with it if I have any luck and use diplomacy. Oh, yes, I have the cup on board, and I hope some of you reporters are slick enough to help me smuggle it in through the Custom House. It would be too bad to give it up after getting so close to home with it. But I didn't get the Dublin jewels. The idea is absurd. Wasn't the safe left? With the character they gave me over on the other side I 586 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING should certainly not have left the safe. I would have taken both. The best story I heard in England is not one that I am going to tell now. I get thirty cents a word for stories. My rate is the same forjokes-no rebate. Did the King crack ajoke at the dinner? Yes; but I'm keeping that, too. I've got a place in the country, you know, that I have to pay rent for. No, I wasn't interviewed much in London, but my secretary was. Someone has asked me if anybody else ever succeeded in getting a joke through the English hide. Now, that does not suggest a broad view ofthe situation. Humor isn't a thing of race or nationality. So much depends upon the environment of a joke. To be good it must absorb its setting. The American joke does this, so does the English. Believe it or not, I have met English jokes that were funny. I had not the slightest trouble in getting inine through their heads. [He was asked if he objected to telling his age.] Not in the least. I shall be seventy-two in November. I do not mind it. Every year that I gain furnishes a new privilege, and all I want to dodge is second childhood . At two o'clock in the morning I feel as old as any man. At that time you must know that life in every person is at its lowest. At that hour I feel as sinful, too, as possible. But the rest of the time I feel as though I were not over twenty-five years old. You know one gets back both youth and courage by six o'clock in the morning. Text / Composite, based upon: "Mark Twain Home in Good Humor," Times, July 23, 1907; "Mark Twain Home, Captive ofLittle Girl," World, July 23, 1907. My dinner with the King / It is not clear whether a dinner with King Edward, and perhaps others members of the royal family, was fact or fiction. The London papers...