He received a great welcome when the ship arrived at Tilbury.  A throng of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and when he left the ship the stevedores gave him a round of cheers.  It was the beginning of that almost unheard-of demonstration of affection and honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day during the four weeks of his English sojourn.

In a dictation following his return, Mark Twain said: 

Who began it?  The very people of all people in the world whom I would have chosen:  a hundred men of my own class—­grimy sons of labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the stevedores!  They stood in a body on the dock and charged their masculine lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of me.

J. Y. W. MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him, and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to meet Professor Henderson.  Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met eagerly, for each greatly admired the other.  A throng gathered.  Mark Twain was extricated at last, and hurried away to his apartments at Brown’s Hotel, “a placid, subdued, homelike, old-fashioned English inn,” he called it, “well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year.”

But Brown’s was not placid and subdued during his stay.  The London newspapers declared that Mark Twain’s arrival had turned Brown’s not only into a royal court, but a post-office—­that the procession of visitors and the bundles of mail fully warranted this statement.  It was, in fact, an experience which surpassed in general magnitude and magnificence anything he had hitherto known.  His former London visits, beginning with that of 1872, had been distinguished by high attentions, but all of them combined could not equal this.  When England decides to get up an ovation, her people are not to be outdone even by the lavish Americans.  An assistant secretary had to be engaged immediately, and it sometimes required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for two skilled and busy men to receive callers and reduce the pile of correspondence.

A pile of invitations had already accumulated, and others flowed in.  Lady Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote: 

You know I want to see you and join right hand to right hand.  I must see your dear face again . . . .  You will have no peace, rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and you will end by hating human beings.  Let me come before you feel that way.

Mary Cholmondeley, the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable Reginald Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and urgent invitations.  Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote: