Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact, all literary London, set themselves the task of giving him a good time.  Whatever place of interest they could think of he was taken there; whatever there was to see he saw it.  Dinners, receptions, and assemblies were not complete without him.  The White Friars’ Club and others gave banquets in his honor.  He was the sensation of the day.  When he rose to speak on these occasions he was greeted with wild cheers.  Whatever he said they eagerly applauded—­too eagerly sometimes, in the fear that they might be regarded as insensible to American humor.  Other speakers delighted in chaffing him in order to provoke his retorts.  When a speaker humorously referred to his American habit of carrying a cotton umbrella, his reply that he followed this custom because a cotton umbrella was the only kind of an umbrella that an Englishman wouldn’t steal, was all over England next day, and regarded as one of the finest examples of wit since the days of Swift.

The suddenness and completeness of his acceptance by the great ones of London rather overwhelmed and frightened him made him timid.  Joaquin Miller writes: 

    He was shy as a girl, although time was already coyly flirting white
    flowers at his temples, and could hardly be coaxed to meet the
    learned and great who wanted to take him by the hand.

Many came to call on him at his hotel, among them Charles Reade and Canon Kingsley.  Kingsley came twice without finding him; then wrote, asking for an appointment.  Reade invited his assistance on a novel.  Indeed, it was in England that Mark Twain was first made to feel that he had come into his rightful heritage.  Whatever may have been the doubts concerning him in America, there was no question in England.  Howells says: 

In England rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him.  Lord mayors, lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts; he was desired in country houses, and his bold genius captivated the favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation.

After that first visit of Mark Twain’s, when Americans in England, referring to their great statesmen, authors, and the like, naturally mentioned the names of Seward, Webster, Lowell, or Holmes, the English comment was likely to be:  “Never mind those.  We can turn out academic Sewards by the dozen, and cultured humorists like Lowell and Holmes by the score.  Tell us of Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain.  We cannot match these; they interest us.”  And it was true.  History could not match them, for they were unique.

Clemens would have been more than human if in time he had not realized the fuller meaning of this triumph, and exulted in it a little to the folks at home.  There never lived a more modest, less pretentious, less aggressive man than Mark Twain, but there never lived a man who took a more childlike delight in genuine appreciation; and, being childlike, it was only human that he should wish those nearest to him to share his happiness.  After one memorable affair he wrote: