No letters written between 14 and 20 November 1873 have been found (except for the second portion of the 10 and 17 November letter to Olivia). The City of Chester arrived at Queenstown at 6 p.m. on 17 November, and presumably docked at Liverpool the following day (“Ship News,” London Morning Post, 18 Nov 73, 3). It is not known whether Clemens stayed in that city one night, or immediately took the train for London, but by the evening of 19 November he had settled into his room at the Langham Hotel, where Stoddard joined him. In an 1876 letter asking William Dean Howells to recommend Stoddard for a consulship, Clemens wrote:
Poor, sweet, pure-hearted, good-intentioned, impotent Stoddard, I have known him 12 years, now, & in all that time he has never been fit for anything but a consul. When I was at the Langham Hotel in London I hired him for 3 months, at $15 a week & board & lodging, to sit up nights with me & dissipate. At the end of the time he wouldn’t take a cent. I had to finally smuggle it to him through Dolby after leaving England. (21 Sept 76, MH-H, in MTHL , 1:154)
Stoddard described his weeks as Clemens’s companion and secretary in a 1903 collection of autobiographical sketches. After a late breakfast, the two enjoyed
a lazy stroll through the London parks, or an hour in some picture-gallery, or a saunter among the byways of the city in search of the picturesque. ... The lazy hour before dinner was perhaps the pleasantest in the day—an exception to the general rule. There was chat or long intervals of dreamy silence by the fireside, or music at the piano, when to my amazement Mark would sing jubilee songs or “Ben Bowline” with excellent effect, accompanying himself and rolling his vowels in the Italian style.
After Clemens’s evening lecture, they returned to the Langham for cock-tails and talk:
How the hours flew by, marked by the bell clock of the little church over the way! One—two—three in the morning, chimed on a set of baby bells, and still we sat by the sea-coal fire and smoked numberless peace-pipes, and told droll stories, and took solid comfort in our absolute seclusion. I could have written his biography at the end of the season. I believe I learned much of his life that is unknown even to his closest friends—of his boyhood, his early struggles, his hopes, his aims. I trust I am betraying no confidence when I state that a good deal of the real boy is blended with the “Story of Tom Sawyer.” (Stoddard 1903, 64–65, 70)
Ina Coolbrith, a poet and close friend of Stoddard’s, explained that it was one of Stoddard’s duties “to help entertain Mr. Clemens and keep him cheerful”:
It was not required of Mr. Stoddard that he furnish any conversation—it was simply his duty to be, or at least to seem, amused at the conversation of Mr. Clemens and Mr. Dolby. This duty however he did not adequately perform. Instead of laughing boisterously at the conversation, he merely chuckled now and then, and in no wise earned his salary in this respect. It was expected of him that he should at least keep awake and listen. Again he failed. He did not listen and he did not keep awake. He went to sleep and interrupted the conversation with a species of snore which he had acquired in some foreign part. Aside from these trifling defects, Mr. Clemens found him a most delightful companion and comrade. (Coolbrith)
Stoddard himself wrote about the difficulty he had staying awake:
And this thing kept up—Mark’s speech getting slower and slower, and I growing sleepier and sleepier, until it was impossible for me to keep awake. Then I had to go to bed. “Mark, I’m going to bed. I cannot possibly keep awake,” and to bed I’d go. As soon as I got into bed he’d come and sit right down by my side, his glass in his hand, now talking so slowly that the syllables came about every half minute and the last picture I’d have as I dropped off to sleep was of Mark bending over me, glass in hand, uttering the second syllable of a word he began a full minute ago. It was wonderfully funny.
Very, very often these nightly talks became a lament. He was always afraid of dying in the poorhouse. The burden of his woe was that he would grow old and lose the power of interesting an audience, and become unable to write, and then what would become of him? He had trained himself to do nothing else. He could not work with his hands. There could be no escape. The poorhouse was his destiny. And he’d drink cocktails and grow more and more gloomy and blue until he fairly wept at the misery of his own future. (James, 669–70)
For further reminiscences, see also Stoddard 1908, 262–63.