Mark Twain, A Biography 1907-1910 | Page 8

that. I kept the remark
unuttered and saved her Majesty the vexation of hearing it the
ten-thousand-and-oneth time.
All that report about my proposal to buy Windsor Castle and its
grounds was a false rumor. I started it myself.
One newspaper said I patted his Majesty on the shoulder--an
impertinence of which I was not guilty; I was reared in the most
exclusive circles of Missouri and I know how to behave. The King
rested his hand upon my arm a moment or two while we were chatting,
but he did it of his own accord. The newspaper which said I talked with
her Majesty with my hat on spoke the truth, but my reasons for doing it
were good and sufficient--in fact unassailable. Rain was threatening,
the temperature had cooled, and the Queen said, "Please put your hat on,
Mr. Clemens." I begged her pardon and excused myself from doing it.
After a moment or two she said, "Mr. Clemens, put your hat on"--with
a slight emphasis on the word "on" "I can't allow you to catch cold
here." When a beautiful queen commands it is a pleasure to obey, and
this time I obeyed--but I had already disobeyed once, which is more
than a subject would have felt justified in doing; and so it is true, as

charged; I did talk with the Queen of England with my hat on, but it
wasn't fair in the newspaper man to charge it upon me as an
impoliteness, since there were reasons for it which he could not know
of.
Nearly all the members of the British royal family were there, and there
were foreign visitors which included the King of Siam and a party of
India princes in their gorgeous court costumes, which Clemens admired
openly and said he would like to wear himself.
The English papers spoke of it as one of the largest and most
distinguished parties ever given at Windsor. Clemens attended it in
company with Mr. and Mrs. J. Henniker Heaton, and when it was over
Sir Thomas Lipton joined them and motored with them back to
Brown's.
He was at Archdeacon Wilberforce's next day, where a curious
circumstance developed. When he arrived Wilberforce said to him, in
an undertone:
"Come into my library. I have something to show you."
In the library Clemens was presented to a Mr. Pole, a plain-looking
man, suggesting in dress and appearance the English tradesman.
Wilberforce said:
"Mr. Pole, show to Mr. Clemens what you have brought here."
Mr. Pole unrolled a long strip of white linen and brought to view at last
a curious, saucer-looking vessel of silver, very ancient in appearance,
and cunningly overlaid with green glass. The archdeacon took it and
handed it to Clemens as some precious jewel. Clemens said:
"What is it?"
Wilberforce impressively answered:
"It is the Holy Grail."
Clemens naturally started with surprise.
"You may well start," said Wilberforce; "but it's the truth. That is the
Holy Grail."
Then he gave this explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol,
had developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had
dreamed several times with great vividness the location of the true
Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the
matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or
a goblet, or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole

seemed a man of integrity, and it was clear that the churchman believed
the discovery to be genuine and authentic. Of course there could be no
positive proof. It was a thing that must be taken on trust. That the
vessel itself was wholly different from anything that the generations
had conceived, and was apparently of very ancient make, was opposed
to the natural suggestion of fraud.
Clemens, to whom the whole idea of the Holy Grail was simply a
poetic legend and myth, had the feeling that he had suddenly been
transmigrated, like his own Connecticut Yankee, back into the
Arthurian days; but he made no question, suggested no doubt.
Whatever it was, it was to them the materialization of a symbol of faith
which ranked only second to the cross itself, and he handled it
reverently and felt the honor of having been one of the first permitted to
see the relic. In a subsequent dictation he said:
I am glad I have lived to see that half-hour--that astonishing half- hour.
In its way it stands alone in my life's experience. In the belief of two
persons present this was the very vessel which was brought by night
and secretly delivered to Nicodemus, nearly nineteen centuries ago,
after the Creator of the universe had delivered up His life on the cross
for the redemption of the human race; the