aceful hilltop, just
outside of London. It was literally within a stone's-throw of the city
limits, yet it was quite rural, for the city had not overgrown it then,
and it retained all its pastoral features--a pond with lily-pads, the
spreading oaks, the wide spaces of grassy lawn. Gladstone, an intimate
friend of the owner, had made it a favorite retreat at one period of
his life, and the place to-day is converted into a public garden called
Gladstone Park. The old English diplomat used to drive out and sit in
the shade of the trees and read and talk and translate Homer, and pace
the lawn as he planned diplomacy, and, in effect, govern the English
empire from that retired spot.

Clemens, in some memoranda made at the moment, doubts if Gladstone was
always at peace in his mind in this retirement.

"Was he always really tranquil within," he says, "or was he only
externally so--for effect? We cannot know; we only know that his rustic
bench under his favorite oak has no bark on its arms. Facts like this
speak louder than words."

The red-brick residential wave of London was still some distance away in
1900. Clemens says:

The rolling sea of green grass still stretches away on every hand,
splotches with shadows of spreading oaks in whose black coolness
flocks of sheep lie peacefully dreaming. Dreaming of what? That
they are in London, the metropolis of the world, Post-office
District, N. W.? Indeed no. They are not aware of it. I am aware
of it, but that is all. It is not possible to realize it. For
there is no suggestion of city here; it is country, pure & simple,
& as still & reposeful as is the bottom of the sea.

They all loved Dollis Hill. Mrs. Clemens wrote as if she would like to
remain forever in that secluded spot.

It is simply divinely beautiful & peaceful;... the great old
trees are beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you
find such trees as in England.... Jean has a hammock swung
between two such great trees, & on the other side of a little pond,
which is full of white & yellow pond-lilies, there is tall grass &
trees & Clara & Jean go there in the afternoons, spread down a rug
on the grass in the shade & read & sleep.

They all spent most of their time outdoors at Dollis Hill under those
spreading trees.

Clemens to Twichell in midsummer wrote:

I am the only person who is ever in the house in the daytime, but I
am w