Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“Letters to the Editor” (1944)

[282] === “Letters to the Editor” (1944) George Bernard Shaw In early May 1907 Twain accepted an invitation to receive an honorary Litt. D. from Oxford University. He sailed from New York on 8 June and arrived in London on 18 June. By chance, George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was introduced to him at St. Pancras station upon his arrival. See also Scharnhorst 612–14. on one of the visits to London made by my biographer, Archibald Henderson , I met him at the railway station, and found that Mark had come over in the same boat and was in the same train. There was a hasty introduction amid the scramble for luggage which our queer English way of handling passengers’ baggage involves; and after a word or two I tactfully took myself and Henderson off. Some days later Clemens walked into our flat in Adelphia Terrace. Our parlor-maid, though she did not know who he was, was so overcome by his personality that she admitted him unquestioned and unannounced, like the state of the Commandant. Whether it was on that occasion or a later one that he lunched with us, I cannot remember, but he did lunch with us, and told us stories of that old Mississippi storekeeper. He presented me with one of his books, and autographed the inside of the cloth case on the ground that when he autographed fly leaves they were taken out and sold. He had a complete gift of intimacy which enabled us to treat one another as if we had known one another all our lives, as indeed I had known him through his early books, which I read and reveled in before I was twelve years old. George Bernard Shaw, “Letters to the Editor,” Saturday Review of Literature, 12 August 1944, 15. ...