Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/198

 MARK IN ENGLAND

On another page I have jotted down some sayings of Mark's relating why he "steadfastly refused" to bull the French and Italian literary markets. That in England it was different, goes without saying, and George Moore once explained Mark's English popularity to me.

"It's his peculiar power of presenting pathetic situations without slush," insisted "the last Victorian" in his manner of finality.

Mark was visibly tickled when I read the Moore estimate from the cuff on which I had jotted it down.

He pondered a short while on "the adjectives," then drawled slowly: "The English are good sports, you know."

Here are a few more opinions of English men of letters which I gathered off and on.

Davison Dalziel, M. P., editor of "The Standard," London: "I agree with 'The Spectator' that Mark Twain is the most popular writer in the English tongue because he added more plentifully and more generously to the gayety of the empire of our language than any other author, living or dead."

Moberly Bell, late editor of "The Times," London (in winter of 1899): "Mark Twain succeeded with us because he is a fearless upholder of all that is clean, honest, noble and straightforward in letters as well as in life. 194