Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete
by
Albert Bigelow Paine
Part 5 out of 29
impromptu kind. Mark hadn't had any yet, and we thought it about
time that his baptism took place.
He was not eager for it; he was averse to violence, but we finally
prevailed upon him to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not
send a reply at once we insisted on Mark sending him another
challenge, by which time he had made himself believe that he really
wanted to fight, as much as we wanted him to do. Laird concluded to
fight, at last. I helped Mark get up some of the letters, and a man
who would not fight after such letters did not belong in Virginia
City--in those days.
Laird's acceptance of Mark's challenge came along about midnight, I
think, after the papers had gone to press. The meeting was to take
place next morning at sunrise.
Of course I was selected as Mark's second, and at daybreak I had him
up and out for some lessons in pistol practice before meeting Laird.
I didn't have to wake him. He had not been asleep. We had been
talking since midnight over the duel that was coming. I had been
telling him of the different duels in which I had taken part, either
as principal or second, and how many men I had helped to kill and
bury, and how it was a good plan to make a will, even if one had not
much to leave. It always looked well, I told him, and seemed to be
a proper thing to do before going into a duel. So Mark made a will
with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, and as soon as it was light
enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near the meeting-
place, and I set up a board for him to shoot at. He would step out,
raise that big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut
his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he didn't hit anything; he
did not come anywhere near hitting anything. Just then we heard
somebody shooting over in the next ravine. Sam said:
"What's that, Steve?"
"Why," I said, "that's Laud. His seconds are practising him over
there."
It didn't make my principal any more cheerful to hear that pistol go
off every few seconds over there. Just then I saw a little mud-hen
light on some sage-brush about thirty yards away.
"Mark," I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to
shoot."
He handed it to me, and I let go at the bird and shot its head off,
clean. About that time Laird and his second came over the ridge to
meet us. I saw them coming and handed Mark back the pistol. We
were looking at the bird when they came up.
"Who did that?" asked Laird's second.
"Sam," I said.
"How far off was it?"
"Oh, about thirty yards."
"Can he do it again?"
"Of course," I said; "every time. He could do it twice that far."
Laud's second turned to his principal.
"Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like
suicide. You'd better settle this thing, now."
So there was a settlement. Laird took back all he had said; Mark
said he really had nothing against Laird--the discussion had been
purely journalistic and did not need to be settled in blood. He
said that both he and Laird were probably the victims of their
friends. I remember one of the things Laird said when his second
told him he had better not fight.
"Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d--d
desperado."
Sam had sent another challenge to a man named Cutler, who had been
somehow mixed up with the muss and had written Sam an insulting
letter; but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before he got
back we had received word from Jerry Driscoll, foreman of the Grand
jury, that the law just passed, making a duel a penitentiary offense
for both principal and second, was to be strictly enforced, and
unless we got out of town in a limited number of hours we would be
the first examples to test the new law.
We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning for San
Francisco we were on the outside seat. Joe Goodman had returned by this
time and agreed to accompany us as far as Henness Pass. We were all in
good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe did not stop when he got to
Henness Pass, but kept on. Now and then he would say, "Well, I had
better be going back pretty soon," but he didn't go, and in the end he
did not go back at all, but went with us clear to San Francisco, and we
had a royal good time all the way. I never knew any series of duels to
close so happily.
So ended Mark Twain's career on the Comstock. He had come to it a weary
pilgrim, discouraged and unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and
fame--elate, triumphant, even if a fugitive.
XLVI
GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO
This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention of both Gillis and
Clemens was to return to the States; but once in San Francisco both
presently accepted places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor,
on the 'Morning Call'.
From 'Roughing It' the reader gathers that Mark Twain now entered into a
life of butterfly idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be
derived from the "half a trunkful of mining stocks," and that presently,
when the mining bubble exploded, he was a pauper. But a good many
liberties have been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly
he expected opulent returns from his mining stocks, and was disappointed,
particularly in an investment in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long
for the large profit which could have been made by selling at the proper
time.
The fact is, he spent not more than a few days--a fortnight at most--in
"butterfly idleness," at the Lick House before he was hard at work on the
'Call', living modestly with Steve Gillis in the quietest place they
could find, never quiet enough, but as far as possible from dogs and cats
and chickens and pianos, which seemed determined to make the mornings
hideous, when a weary night reporter and compositor wanted to rest. They
went out socially, on occasion, arrayed in considerable elegance; but
their recreations were more likely to consist of private midnight orgies,
after the paper had gone to press--mild dissipations in whatever they
could find to eat at that hour, with a few glasses of beer, and perhaps a
game of billiards or pool in some all-night resort. A printer by the
name of Ward--"Little Ward,"--[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in
San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]--
they called him--often went with them for these refreshments. Ward and
Gillis were both bantam game-cocks, and sometimes would stir up trouble
for the very joy of combat. Clemens never cared for that sort of thing
and discouraged it, but Ward and Gillis were for war. "They never
assisted each other. If one had offered to assist the other against some
overgrown person, it would have been an affront, and a battle would have
followed between that pair of little friends."--[S. L. C., 1906.]--
Steve Gillis in particular, was fond of incidental encounters, a
characteristic which would prove an important factor somewhat later in
shaping Mark Twain's career. Of course, the more strenuous nights were
not frequent. Their home-going was usually tame enough and they were
glad enough to get there.
Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he
would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English
or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve
of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish
tendency to mischief he found reprisal in his own fashion. Knowing his
companion's highly organized nervous system he devised means of torture
which would induce him to put out the light. Once he tied a nail to a
string; an arrangement which he kept on the floor behind the bed.
Pretending to be asleep, he would hold the end of the string, and lift it
gently up and down, making a slight ticking sound on the floor, maddening
to a nervous man. Clemens would listen a moment and say:
"What in the nation is that noise"
Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue.
Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently.
"Steve, what is that d--d noise?" he would say.
Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily.
"What's the matter, Sam? What noise? Oh, I guess that is one of those
death-ticks; they don't like the light. Maybe it will stop in a minute."
It usually did stop about that time, and the reading would be apt to
continue. But no sooner was there stillness than it began again--tick,
tick, tick. With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the book would go across
the floor and the light would disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn't
sleep, he would dress and walk out in the street for an hour, while the
cruel Steve slept like the criminal that he was.
At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught. His tortured
room-mate at first reviled him, then threatened to kill him, finally put
him to shame. It was curious, but they always loved each other, those
two; there was never anything resembling an estrangement, and to his last
days Mark Twain never could speak of Steve Gillis without tenderness.
They moved a great many times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory
residence was on a bluff on California Street. Their windows looked down
on a lot of Chinese houses--"tin-can houses," they were called--small
wooden shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and Mark would look
down on these houses, waiting until all the Chinamen were inside; then
one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it down on those tin
can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen would swarm out and
look up at the row of houses on the edge of the bluff, shake their fists,
and pour out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they had retired and
everything was quiet again, their tormentors would throw another bottle.
This was their Sunday amusement.
At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first
Clemens was delighted.
"Just look at it, Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a
thing to disturb us."
But next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis woke this time, to find his
room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden,
holding a big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement.
"Came here, Steve," he said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled
through I can't get a bead on him."
"Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at that range with your profanity."
Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain then let go such a scorching,
singeing blast that the brute's owner sold him next day for a Mexican
hairless dog.
We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home
letter of September 25, 1864, says:
We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodging
five times. We are very comfortably fixed where we are now and have
no fault to find with the rooms or the people. We are the only
lodgers-in a well-to-do private family . . . . But I need change
and must move again.
This was the Minna Street place--the place of the dog. In the same
letter he mentions having made a new arrangement with the Call, by which
he is to receive twenty-five dollars a week, with no more night-work; he
says further that he has closed with the Californian for weekly articles
at twelve dollars each.
XLVII
BOHEMIAN DAYS
Mark Twain's position on the 'Call' was uncongenial from the start. San
Francisco was a larger city than Virginia; the work there was necessarily
more impersonal, more a routine of news-gathering and drudgery. He once
set down his own memories of it:
At nine in the morning I had to be at the police court for an hour
and make a brief history of the squabbles of the night before. They
were usually between Irishmen and Irishmen, and Chinamen and
Chinamen, with now and then a squabble between the two races, for a
change.
During the rest of the day we raked the town from end to end,
gathering such material as we might, wherewith to fill our required
columns; and if there were no fires to report, we started some. At
night we visited the six theaters, one after the other, seven nights
in the week. We remained in each of those places five minutes, got
the merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with that for a
text we "wrote up" those plays and operas, as the phrase goes,
torturing our souls every night in the effort to find something to
say about those performances which we had not said a couple of
hundred times before.
It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery--and almost destitute of
interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man.
On the Enterprise he had been free, with a liberty that amounted to
license. He could write what he wished, and was personally responsible
to the readers. On the Call he was simply a part of a news-machine;
restricted by a policy, the whole a part of a still greater machine--
politics. Once he saw some butchers set their dogs on an unoffending
Chinaman, a policeman looking on with amused interest. He wrote an
indignant article criticizing the city government and raking the police.
In Virginia City this would have been a welcome delight; in San Francisco
it did not appear.
At another time he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a
near-by vegetable stall he borrowed a large cabbage-leaf, came back and
stood over the sleeper, gently fanning him. It would be wasted effort to
make an item of this incident; but he could publish it in his own
fashion. He stood there fanning the sleeping official until a large
crowd collected. When he thought it was large enough he went away. Next
day the joke was all over the city.
Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials
and institutions seems to have appeared--an attack on an undertaker whose
establishment formed a branch of the coroner's office. The management of
this place one day refused information to a Call reporter, and the next
morning its proprietor was terrified by a scathing denunciation of his
firm. It began, "Those body-snatchers" and continued through half a
column of such scorching strictures as only Mark Twain could devise. The
Call's policy of suppression evidently did not include criticisms of
deputy coroners.
Such liberty, however, was too rare for Mark Twain, and he lost interest.
He confessed afterward that he became indifferent and lazy, and that
George E. Barnes, one of the publishers of the Call, at last allowed him
an assistant. He selected from the counting-room a big, hulking youth by
the name of McGlooral, with the acquired prefix of "Smiggy." Clemens had
taken a fancy to Smiggy McGlooral--on account of his name and size
perhaps--and Smiggy, devoted to his patron, worked like a slave gathering
news nights--daytimes, too, if necessary--all of which was demoralizing
to a man who had small appetite for his place anyway. It was only a
question of time when Smiggy alone would be sufficient for the job.
There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco. The personal
and literary associations were worth while. At his right hand in the
Call office sat Frank Soule--a gentle spirit--a graceful versifier who
believed himself a poet. Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those
days. He thought his verses exquisite in their workmanship; a word of
praise from Soule gave him happiness. In a luxurious office up-stairs
was another congenial spirit--a gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four,
who was secretary of the Mint, and who presently became editor of a new
literary weekly, the Californian, which Charles Henry Webb had founded.
This young man's name was Francis Bret Harte, originally from Albany,
later a miner and school-teacher on the Stanislaus, still later a
compositor, finally a contributor, on the Golden Era. His fame scarcely
reached beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little coterie of
writing folk that clustered about the Era office his rank was high. Mark
Twain fraternized with Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He felt
that he had reached the land--or at least the borderland--of Bohemia,
that Ultima Thule of every young literary dream.
San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite literary atmosphere and
a literature of its own. Its coterie of writers had drifted from here
and there, but they had merged themselves into a California body-poetic,
quite as individual as that of Cambridge, even if less famous, less
fortunate in emoluments than the Boston group. Joseph E. Lawrence,
familiarly known as "Joe" Lawrence, was editor of the Golden Era,--[The
Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by
Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]--and his kindness
and hospitality were accounted sufficient rewards even when his pecuniary
acknowledgments were modest enough. He had a handsome office, and the
literati, local and visiting, used to gather there. Names that would be
well known later were included in that little band. Joaquin Miller
recalls from an old diary, kept by him then, having seen Adah Isaacs
Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh
Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr, Artemus Ward, Gilbert Densmore,
W. S. Kendall, and Mrs. Hitchcock assembled there at one time. The Era
office would seem to have been a sort of Mount Olympus, or Parnassus,
perhaps; for these were mainly poets, who had scarcely yet attained to
the dignity of gods. Miller was hardly more than a youth then, and this
grand assemblage impressed him, as did the imposing appointments of the
place.
The Era rooms were elegant--[he says]--,the most grandly carpeted
and most gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen. Even now in my
memory they seem to have been simply palatial. I have seen the
world well since then--all of its splendors worth seeing--yet those
carpeted parlors, with Joe Lawrence and his brilliant satellites,
outshine all things else, as I turn to look back.
More than any other city west of the Alleghanies, San Francisco has
always been a literary center; and certainly that was a remarkable group
to be out there under the sunset, dropped down there behind the Sierras,
which the transcontinental railway would not climb yet, for several
years. They were a happy-hearted, aspiring lot, and they got as much as
five dollars sometimes for an Era article, and were as proud of it as if
it had been a great deal more. They felt that they were creating
literature, as they were, in fact; a new school of American letters
mustered there.
Mark Twain and Bret Harte were distinctive features of this group. They
were already recognized by their associates as belonging in a class by
themselves, though as yet neither had done any of the work for which he
would be remembered later. They were a good deal together, and it was
when Harte was made editor of the Californian that Mark Twain was put on
the weekly staff at the then unexampled twelve-dollar rate. The
Californian made larger pretensions than the Era, and perhaps had a
heavier financial backing. With Mark Twain on the staff and Bret Harte
in the chair, himself a frequent contributor, it easily ranked as first
of San Francisco periodicals. A number of the sketches collected by Webb
later, in Mark Twain's first little volume, the Celebrated Jumping Frog,
Etc., appeared in the Era or Californian in 1864 and 1865. They were
smart, bright, direct, not always refined, but probably the best humor of
the day. Some of them are still preserved in this volume of sketches.
They are interesting in what they promise, rather than in what they
present, though some of them are still delightful enough. "The Killing
of Julius Caesar Localized" is an excellent forerunner of his burlesque
report of a gladiatorial combat in The Innocents Abroad. The Answers to
Correspondents, with his vigorous admonition of the statistical moralist,
could hardly have been better done at any later period. The Jumping Frog
itself was not originally of this harvest. It has a history of its own,
as we shall see a little further along.
The reportorial arrangement was of brief duration. Even the great San
Francisco earthquake of that day did not awaken in Mark Twain any
permanent enthusiasm for the drudgery of the 'Call'. He had lost
interest, and when Mark Twain lost interest in a subject or an
undertaking that subject or that undertaking were better dead, so far as
he was concerned. His conclusion of service with the Call was certain,
and he wondered daily why it was delayed so long. The connection had
become equally unsatisfactory to proprietor and employee. They had a
heart-to-heart talk presently, with the result that Mark Twain was free.
He used to claim, in after-years, with his usual tendency to confess the
worst of himself, that he was discharged, and the incident has been
variously told. George Barnes himself has declared that Clemens resigned
with great willingness. It is very likely that the paragraph at the end
of Chapter LVIII in 'Roughing It' presents the situation with fair
accuracy, though, as always, the author makes it as unpleasant for
himself as possible:
"At last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still
remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign
my berth, and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal."
As an extreme contrast with the supposititious "butterfly idleness" of
his beginning in San Francisco, and for no other discoverable reason, he
doubtless thought it necessary, in the next chapter of that book, to
depict himself as having reached the depths of hard luck, debt, and
poverty.
"I became an adept at slinking," he says. "I slunk from back street to
back street.... I slunk to my bed. I had pawned everything but the
clothes I had on."
This is pure fiction. That he occasionally found himself short of funds
is likely enough--a literary life invites that sort of thing--but that he
ever clung to a single "silver ten-cent piece," as he tells us, and
became the familiar of mendicancy, was a condition supplied altogether by
his later imagination to satisfy what he must have regarded as an
artistic need. Almost immediately following his separation from the
'Call' he arranged with Goodman to write a daily letter for the
Enterprise, reporting San Francisco matters after his own notion with a
free hand. His payment for this work was thirty dollars a week, and he
had an additional return from his literary sketches. The arrangement was
an improvement both as to labor and income.
Real affluence appeared on the horizon just then, in the form of a
liberal offer for the Tennessee land. But alas! it was from a wine-
grower who wished to turn the tract into great vineyards, and Orion had a
prohibition seizure at the moment, so the trade was not made. Orion
further argued that the prospective purchaser would necessarily be
obliged to import horticultural labor from Europe, and that those people
might be homesick, badly treated, and consequently unhappy in those far
eastern Tennessee mountains. Such was Orion's way.
XLVIII
THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS
Those who remember Mark Twain's Enterprise letters (they are no longer
obtainable)--[Many of these are indeed now obtainable by a simple Web
search. D.W.]--declare them to have been the greatest series of daily
philippics ever written. However this may be, it is certain that they
made a stir. Goodman permitted him to say absolutely what he pleased
upon any subject. San Francisco was fairly weltering in corruption,
official and private. He assailed whatever came first to hand with all
the fierceness of a flaming indignation long restrained.
Quite naturally he attacked the police, and with such ferocity and
penetration that as soon as copies of the Enterprise came from Virginia
the City Hall began to boil and smoke and threaten trouble. Martin G.
Burke, then chief of police, entered libel suit against the Enterprise,
prodigiously advertising that paper, copies of which were snatched as
soon as the stage brought them.
Mark Twain really let himself go then. He wrote a letter that on the
outside was marked, "Be sure and let Joe see this before it goes in."
He even doubted himself whether Goodman would dare to print it, after
reading. It was a letter describing the city's corrupt morals under the
existing police government. It began, "The air is full of lechery, and
rumors of lechery," and continued in a strain which made even the
Enterprise printers aghast.
"You can never afford to publish that," the foreman said to, Goodman.
"Let it all go in, every word," Goodman answered. "If Mark can stand it,
I can!"
It seemed unfortunate (at the time) that Steve Gillis should select this
particular moment to stir up trouble that would involve both himself and
Clemens with the very officials which the latter had undertaken to
punish. Passing a saloon one night alone, Gillis heard an altercation
going on inside, and very naturally stepped in to enjoy it. Including
the barkeeper, there were three against two. Steve ranged himself on the
weaker side, and selected the barkeeper, a big bruiser, who, when the
fight was over, was ready for the hospital. It turned out that he was
one of Chief Burke's minions, and Gillis was presently indicted on a
charge of assault with intent to kill. He knew some of the officials in
a friendly way, and was advised to give a straw bond and go into
temporary retirement. Clemens, of course, went his bail, and Steve set
out for Virginia City, until the storm blew over.
This was Burke's opportunity. When the case was called and Gillis did
not appear, Burke promptly instituted an action against his bondsman,
with an execution against his loose property. The watch that had been
given him as Governor of the Third House came near being thus sacrificed
in the cause of friendship, and was only saved by skilful manipulation.
Now, it was down in the chain of circumstances that Steve Gillis's
brother, James N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted hermit, a pocket-miner of the
halcyon Tuolumne district--the Truthful James of Bret Harte--happened to
be in San Francisco at this time, and invited Clemens to return with him
to the far seclusion of his cabin on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful
retreat were always rest and refreshment for the wayfarer, and more than
one weary writer besides Bret Harte had found shelter there. James
Gillis himself had fine literary instincts, but he remained a pocket-
miner because he loved that quiet pursuit of gold, the Arcadian life, the
companionship of his books, the occasional Bohemian pilgrim who found
refuge in his retreat. It is said that the sick were made well, and the
well made better, in Jim Gillis's cabin on the hilltop, where the air was
nectar and the stillness like enchantment. One could mine there if he
wished to do so; Jim would always furnish him a promising claim, and
teach him the art of following the little fan-like drift of gold specks
to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up the hillside. He regularly
shared his cabin with one Dick Stoker (Dick Baker, of 'Roughing It'),
another genial soul who long ago had retired from the world to this
forgotten land, also with Dick's cat, Tom Quartz; but there was always
room for guests.
In 'Roughing It', and in a later story, "The Californian's Tale," Mark
Twain has made us acquainted with the verdant solitude of the Tuolumne
hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise where once a vast population had
gathered when placer-mining had been in its bloom, a dozen years before.
The human swarm had scattered when the washings failed to pay, leaving
only a quiet emptiness and the few pocket-miners along the Stanislaus and
among the hills. Vast areas of that section present a strange appearance
to-day. Long stretches there are, crowded and jammed and drifted with
ghostly white stones that stand up like fossils of a prehistoric life--
the earth deposit which once covered them entirely washed away, every
particle of it removed by the greedy hordes, leaving only this vast
bleaching drift, literally the "picked bones of the land." At one place
stands Columbia, regarded once as a rival to Sacramento, a possible State
capital--a few tumbling shanties now--and a ruined church.
It was the 4th of December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at Jim Gillis's
cabin. He found it a humble habitation made of logs and slabs, partly
sheltered by a great live-oak tree, surrounded by a stretch of grass.
It had not much in the way of pretentious furniture, but there was a
large fireplace, and a library which included the standard authors.
A younger Gillis boy, William, was there at this time, so that the family
numbered five in all, including Tom Quartz, the cat. On rainy days they
would gather about the big, open fire and Jim Gillis, with his back to
the warmth, would relate diverting yarns, creations of his own, turned
out hot from the anvil, forged as he went along. He had a startling
imagination, and he had fostered it in that secluded place. His stories
usually consisted of wonderful adventures of his companion, Dick Stoker,
portrayed with humor and that serene and vagrant fancy which builds as it
goes, careless as to whither it is proceeding and whether the story shall
end well or ill, soon or late, if ever. He always pretended that these
extravagant tales of Stoker were strictly true; and Stoker--"forty-six
and gray as a rat"--earnest, thoughtful, and tranquilly serene, would
smoke and look into the fire and listen to those astonishing things of
himself, smiling a little now and then but saying never a word. What did
it matter to him? He had no world outside of the cabin and the hills, no
affairs; he would live and die there; his affairs all had ended long ago.
A number of the stories used in Mark Twain's books were first told by Jim
Gillis, standing with his hands crossed behind him, back to the fire, in
the cabin on jackass Hill. The story of Dick Baker's cat was one of
these; the jaybird and Acorn story of 'A Tramp Abroad' was another; also
the story of the "Burning Shame," and there are others. Mark Twain had
little to add to these stories; in fact, he never could get them to sound
as well, he said, as when Jim Gillis had told them.
James Gillis's imagination sometimes led him into difficulties. Once a
feeble old squaw came along selling some fruit that looked like green
plums. Stoker, who knew the fruit well enough, carelessly ventured the
remark that it might be all right, but he had never heard of anybody
eating it, which set Gillis off into eloquent praises of its delights,
all of which he knew to be purely imaginary; whereupon Stoker told him if
he liked the fruit so well, to buy some of it. There was no escape after
that; Jim had to buy some of those plums, whose acid was of the hair-
lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the rest of the day he stewed them,
adding sugar, trying to make them palatable, tasting them now and then,
boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness. He gave the
others a taste by and by--a withering, corroding sup--and they derided
him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened. He ate that fearful
brew, and though for days his mouth was like fire he still referred to
the luscious health-giving joys of the "Californian plums."
Jackass Hill was not altogether a solitude; here and there were
neighbors. Another pocket-miner; named Carrington, had a cabin not far
away, and a mile or two distant lived an old couple with a pair of pretty
daughters, so plump and trim and innocent, that they were called the
"Chapparal Quails." Young men from far and near paid court to them, and
on Sunday afternoons so many horses would be tied to their front fence as
to suggest an afternoon service there. Young "Billy" Gillis knew them,
and one Sunday morning took his brother's friend, Sam Clemens, over for a
call. They went early, with forethought, and promptly took the girls for
a walk. They took a long walk, and went wandering over the hills, toward
Sandy Bar and the Stanislaus--through that reposeful land which Bret
Harte would one day light with idyllic romance--and toward evening found
themselves a long way from home. They must return by the nearest way to
arrive before dark. One of the young ladies suggested a short cut
through the Chemisal, and they started. But they were lost, presently,
and it was late, very late, when at last they reached the ranch. The
mother of the "Quails" was sitting up for them, and she had something to
say. She let go a perfect storm of general denunciation, then narrowed
the attack to Samuel Clemens as the oldest of the party. He remained
mildly serene.
"It wasn't my fault," he ventured at last; "it was Billy Gillis's fault."
"No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It
was you."
"But do you realize, ma'am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven't you got
a bite for us to eat?"
"No, sir, not a bite--for such as you."
The offender's eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a
corner.
"Isn't that a guitar over there?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, it is; what of it?"
The culprit walked over, and taking it up, tuned the strings a little and
struck the chords. Then he began to sing. He began very softly and sang
"Fly Away, Pretty Moth," then "Araby's Daughter." He could sing very
well in those days, following with the simpler chords. Perhaps the
mother "Quail" had known those songs herself back in the States, for her
manner grew kindlier, almost with the first notes. When he had finished
she was the first to ask him to go on.
"I suppose you are just like all young folks," she said. "I was young
myself once. While you sing I'll get some supper."
She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and cooked
whatever she could find for the belated party.
XLIX
THE JUMPING FROG
It was the rainy season, the winter of 1864 and 1865, but there were many
pleasant days, when they could go pocket-hunting, and Samuel Clemens soon
added a knowledge of this fascinating science to his other acquirements.
Sometimes he worked with Dick Stoker, sometimes with one of the Gillis
boys. He did not make his fortune at pocket-mining; he only laid its
corner-stone. In the old note-book he kept of that sojourn we find that,
with Jim Gillis, he made a trip over into Calaveras County soon after
Christmas and remained there until after New Year's, probably
prospecting; and he records that on New Year's night, at Vallecito, he
saw a magnificent lunar rainbow in a very light, drizzling rain. A lunax
rainbow is one of the things people seldom see. He thought it an omen of
good-fortune.
They returned to the cabin on the hill; but later in the month, on the
they crossed over into Calaveras again, and began pocket-hunting not far
from Angel's Camp. The note-book records that the bill of fare at the
Camp hotel consisted wholly of beans and something which bore the name of
coffee; also that the rains were frequent and heavy.
January 27. Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the
pocket-claim--had to rush back.
They had what they believed to be a good claim. Jim Gillis declared the
indications promising, and if they could only have good weather to work
it, they were sure of rich returns. For himself, he would have been
willing to work, rain or shine. Clemens, however, had different views on
the subject. His part was carrying water for washing out the pans of
dirt, and carrying pails of water through the cold rain and mud was not
very fascinating work. Dick Stoker came over before long to help.
Things went a little better then; but most of their days were spent in
the bar-room of the dilapidated tavern at Angel's Camp, enjoying the
company of a former Illinois River pilot, Ben Coon,--[This name has been
variously given as "Ros Coon," "Coon Drayton," etc. It is given here as
set down in Mark Twain's notes, made on the spot. Coon was not (as has
been stated) the proprietor of the hotel (which was kept by a Frenchman),
but a frequenter of it.]--a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed by the
stove, or old slow, endless stories, without point or application.
Listeners were a boon to him, for few came and not many would stay. To
Mark Twain and Jim Gillis, however, Ben Coon was a delight. It was
soothing and comfortable to listen to his endless narratives, told in
that solemn way, with no suspicion of humor. Even when his yarns had
point, he did not recognize it. One dreary afternoon, in his slow,
monotonous fashion, he told them about a frog--a frog that had belonged
to a man named Coleman, who trained it to jump, but that failed to win a
wager because the owner of a rival frog had surreptitiously loaded the
trained jumper with shot. The story had circulated among the camps, and
a well-known journalist, named Samuel Seabough, had already made a squib
of it, but neither Clemens nor Gillis had ever happened to hear it
before. They thought the tale in itself amusing, and the "spectacle of a
man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever
smiling was exquisitely absurd." When Coon had talked himself out, his
hearers played billiards on the frowsy table, and now and then one would
remark to the other:
"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog," and perhaps the other would answer:
"I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you."
Out on the claim, between pails of water, Clemens, as he watched Jim
Gillis or Dick Stoker "washing," would be apt to say, "I don't see no
p'ints about that pan o' dirt that's any better'n any other pan o' dirt,"
and so they kept it up.
Then the rain would come again and interfere with their work. One
afternoon, when Clemens and Gillis were following certain tiny-sprayed
specks of gold that were leading them to pocket--somewhere up the long
slope, the chill downpour set in. Gillis, as usual, was washing, and
Clemens carrying water. The "color" was getting better with every pan,
and Jim Gillis believed that now, after their long waiting, they were to
be rewarded. Possessed with the miner's passion, he would have gone on
washing and climbing toward the precious pocket, regardless of
everything. Clemens, however, shivering and disgusted, swore that each
pail of water was his last. His teeth were chattering and he was wet
through. Finally he said, in his deliberate way:
"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable."
Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt.
"Bring one more pail, Sam," he pleaded.
"Oh, hell, Jim, I won't do it; I'm freezing!"
"Just one more pail, Sam," he pleaded.
"No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in that
pan."
Gillis tore a page out of his note-book, and hastily posted a thirty-day
claim notice by the pan of dirt, and they set out for Angel's Camp. It
kept on raining and storming, and they did not go back. A few days later
a letter from Steve Gillis made Clemens decide to return to San
Francisco. With Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker he left Angel's and walked
across the mountains to Jackass Hill in the snow-storm--"the first I ever
saw in California," he says in his notes.
In the mean time the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth
they had left standing on the hillside, and exposed a handful of nuggets-
pure gold. Two strangers, Austrians, had come along and, observing it,
had sat down to wait until the thirty-day claim notice posted by Jim
Gillis should expire. They did not mind the rain--not with all that gold
in sight--and the minute the thirty days were up they followed the lead a
few pans farther and took out--some say ten, some say twenty, thousand
dollars. In either case it was a good pocket. Mark Twain missed it by
one pail of water. Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one
remembers that vaster nugget of Angel's Camp--the Jumping Frog. Jim
Gillis always declared, "If Sam had got that pocket he would have
remained a pocket-miner to the end of his days, like me."
In Mark Twain's old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog story--a
mere casual entry of its main features:
Coleman with his jumping frog--bet stranger $50--stranger had no
frog, and C. got him one:--in the mean time stranger filled C.'s
frog full of shot and he couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won.
It seemed unimportant enough, no doubt, at the time; but it was the
nucleus around which was built a surpassing fame. The hills along the
Stanislaus have turned out some wonderful nuggets in their time, but no
other of such size as that.
L
BACK TO THE TUMULT
FROM the note-book:
February 25. Arrived in Stockton 5 P.m. Home again home again at
the Occidental Hotel, San Francisco--find letters from Artemus Ward
asking me to write a sketch for his new book of Nevada Territory
Travels which is soon to come out. Too late--ought to have got the
letters three months ago. They are dated early in November.
He was sorry not to oblige Ward, sorry also not to have representation in
his book. He wrote explaining the circumstance, and telling the story of
his absence. Steve Gillis, meantime, had returned to San Francisco, and
settled his difficulties there. The friends again took up residence
together.
Mark Twain resumed his daily letters to the Enterprise, without further
annoyance from official sources. Perhaps there was a temporary truce in
that direction, though he continued to attack various abuses--civic,
private, and artistic--becoming a sort of general censor, establishing
for himself the title of the "Moralist of the Main." The letters were
reprinted in San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had
the temerity to answer them, but most of his victims maintained a
discreet silence. In one of these letters he told of the Mexican oyster,
a rather tough, unsatisfactory article of diet, which could not stand
criticism, and presently disappeared from the market. It was a mistake,
however, for him to attack an Alta journalist by the name of Evans.
Evans was a poet, and once composed an elegy with a refrain which ended:
Gone, gone, gone--
Gone to his endeavor;
Gone, gone, gone,
Forever and forever.
In the Enterprise letter following its publication Mark Twain referred to
this poem. He parodied the refrain and added, "If there is any criticism
to make on it I should say there is a little too much 'gone' and not
enough 'forever.'"
It was a more or less pointless witticism, but it had a humorous quotable
flavor, and it made Evans mad. In a squib in the Alta he retaliated:
Mark Twain has killed the Mexican oyster. We only regret that the
act was not inspired by a worthier motive. Mark Twain's sole reason
for attacking the Mexican oyster was because the restaurant that
sold them refused him credit.
A deadly thrust like that could not be parried in print. To deny or
recriminate would be to appear ridiculous. One could only sweat and
breathe vengeance.
"Joe," he said to Goodman, who had come over for a visit, "my one object
in life now is to make enough money to stand trial and then go and murder
Evans."
He wrote verses himself sometimes, and lightened his Enterprise letters
with jingles. One of these concerned Tom Maguire, the autocrat manager
of San Francisco theaters. It details Maguire's assault on one of his
actors.
Tom Maguire,
Roused to ire,
Lighted on McDougal;
Tore his coat,
Clutched his throat,
And split him in the bugle.
For shame! oh, fie!
Maguire, why
Will you thus skyugle?
Why curse and swear,
And rip and tear
The innocent McDougal?
Of bones bereft,
Almost, you've left
Vestvali, gentle Jew gal;
And now you've smashed
And almost hashed
The form of poor McDougall
Goodman remembers that Clemens and Gillis were together again on
California Street at this time, and of hearing them sing, "The Doleful
Ballad of the Rejected Lover," another of Mark Twain's compositions. It
was a wild, blasphemous outburst, and the furious fervor with which Mark
and Steve delivered it, standing side by side and waving their fists, did
not render it less objectionable. Such memories as these are set down
here, for they exhibit a phase of that robust personality, built of the
same primeval material from which the world was created--built of every
variety of material, in fact, ever incorporated in a human being--equally
capable of writing unprintable coarseness and that rarest and most tender
of all characterizations, the 'Recollections of JOAN of ARC'.
LI
THE CORNER-STONE
Along with his Enterprise work, Clemens continued to write occasionally
for the Californian, but for some reason he did not offer the story of
the jumping frog. For one thing, he did not regard it highly as literary
material. He knew that he had enjoyed it himself, but the humor and
fashion of its telling seemed to him of too simple and mild a variety in
that day of boisterous incident and exaggerated form. By and by Artemus
Ward turned up in San Francisco, and one night Mark Twain told him his
experiences with Jim Gillis, and in Angel's Camp; also of Ben Coon and
his tale of the Calaveras frog. Ward was delighted.
"Write it," he said. "There is still time to get it into my volume of
sketches. Send it to Carleton, my publisher in New York."--[This is in
accordance with Mr. Clemens's recollection of the matter. The author can
find no positive evidence that Ward was on the Pacific coast again in
1865. It seems likely, therefore, that the telling of the frog story and
his approval of it were accomplished by exchange of letters.]--
Clemens promised to do this, but delayed fulfilment somewhat, and by the
time the sketch reached Carleton, Ward's book was about ready for the
press. It did not seem worth while to Carleton to make any change of
plans that would include the frog story. The publisher handed it over to
Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet, saying:
"Here, Clapp, here's something you can use in your paper." Clapp took it
thankfully enough, we may believe.
"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"--[This was the original title.]--
appeared in the Saturday Press of November 18, 1865, and was immediately
copied and quoted far and near. It brought the name of Mark Twain across
the mountains, bore it up and down the Atlantic coast, and out over the
prairies of the Middle West. Away from the Pacific slope only a reader
here and there had known the name before. Now every one who took a
newspaper was treated to the tale of the wonderful Calaveras frog, and
received a mental impress of the author's signature. The name Mark Twain
became hardly an institution, as yet, but it made a strong bid for
national acceptance.
As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous happenings for a
considerable time. The telegraph did not carry such news in those days,
and it took a good while for the echo of his victory to travel to the
Coast. When at last a lagging word of it did arrive, it would seem to
have brought disappointment, rather than exaltation, to the author. Even
Artemus Ward's opinion of the story had not increased Mark Twain's regard
for it as literature. That it had struck the popular note meant, as he
believed, failure for his more highly regarded work. In a letter written
January 20, 1866, he says these things for himself:
I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was
back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is
vanity and little worth--save piloting.
To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused
for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out
a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and
His Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but
to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to
appear in his book.
But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally
speaking, and it could be no credit to either of us to appear
between its covers.
This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco
Alta:
"Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called
"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," has set all New York in a roar,
and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty
times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and
near. It is voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the
'Californian' afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not let
him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the
California press."
The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to
the Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.
It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the
intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop's Fables.--[The resemblance
of the frog story to the early Greek tales must have been noted by Prof.
Henry Sidgwick, who synopsized it in Greek form and phrase for his book,
Greek Prose Composition. Through this originated the impression that the
story was of Athenian root. Mark Twain himself was deceived, until in
1899, when he met Professor Sidgwick, who explained that the Greek
version was the translation and Mark Twain's the original; that he had
thought it unnecessary to give credit for a story so well known. See The
Jumping Frog, Harper & Bros., 1903, p. 64.]--It contains a basic idea
which is essentially ludicrous, and the quaint simplicity of its telling
is convincing and full of charm. It appeared in print at a time when
American humor was chaotic, the public taste unformed. We had a vast
appreciation for what was comic, with no great number of opportunities
for showing it. We were so ready to laugh that when a real opportunity
came along we improved it and kept on laughing and repeating the cause of
our merriment, directing the attention of our friends to it. Whether the
story of "Jim Smiley's Frog," offered for the first time today, would
capture the public, and become the initial block of a towering fame, is
another matter. That the author himself underrated it is certain. That
the public, receiving it at what we now term the psychological moment,
may have overrated it is by no means impossible. In any case, it does
not matter now. The stone rejected by the builder was made the corner-
stone of his literary edifice. As such it is immortal.
In the letter already quoted, Clemens speaks of both Bret Harte and
himself as having quit the 'Californian' in future expecting to write for
Eastern papers. He adds:
Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers
in this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret
Harte, I think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants
me to club a lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and
publish a book. I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the
trouble. But I want to know whether we are going to make anything
out of it, first. However, he has written to a New York publisher,
and if we are offered a bargain that will pay for a month's labor we
will go to work and prepare the volume for the press.
Nothing came of the proposed volume, or of other joint literary schemes
these two had then in mind. Neither of them would seem to have been
optimistic as to their future place in American literature; certainly in
their most exalted moments they could hardly have dreamed that within
half a dozen years they would be the head and front of a new school of
letters--the two most talked-of men in America.
LII
A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
Whatever his first emotions concerning the success of "Jim Smiley's Frog"
may have been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian into
American literature gave the author an added prestige at home as well as
in distant parts. Those about him were inclined to regard him, in some
degree at least, as a national literary figure and to pay tribute
accordingly. Special honors began to be shown to him. A fine new
steamer, the Ajax, built for the Sandwich Island trade, carried on its
initial trip a select party of guests of which he was invited to make
one. He did not go, and reproached himself sorrowfully afterward.
If the Ajax were back I would go quick, and throw up my correspondence.
She had fifty-two invited guests aboard--the cream of the town--gentlemen
and ladies, and a splendid brass band. I could not accept because there
would be no one to write my correspondence while I was gone.
In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous. He was restless, and the
Ajax excursion, which he had been obliged to forego, made him still more
dissatisfied. An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of the islands
was a matter of great commercial interest to California, while the life
and scenery there, picturesquely treated, would appeal to the general
reader. He was on excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul Morrill,
of the Sacramento Union; he proposed to them that they send him as their
special correspondent to report to their readers, in a series of letters,
life, trade, agriculture, and general aspect of the islands. To his vast
delight, they gave him the commission. He wrote home joyously now:
I am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the cataracts and
volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters, for which they
pay as much money as I would get if I stayed at home.
He adds that on his return he expects to start straight across the
continent by way of the Columbia River, the Pend Oreille Lakes, through
Montana and down the Missouri River. "Only two hundred miles of land
travel from San Francisco to New Orleans."
So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on.
He sailed by the Ajax on her next trip, March 7 (1866), beginning his
first sea voyage--a brand-new experience, during which he acquired the
names of the sails and parts of the ship, with considerable knowledge of
navigation, and of the islands he was to visit--whatever information
passengers and sailors could furnish. It was a happy, stormy voyage
altogether. In 'Roughing It' he has given us some account of it.
It was the 18th of March when he arrived at Honolulu, and his first
impression of that tranquil harbor remained with him always. In fact,
his whole visit there became one of those memory-pictures, full of golden
sunlight and peace, to be found somewhere in every human past.
The letters of introduction he had brought, and the reputation which had
preceded him, guaranteed him welcome and hospitality. Officials and
private citizens were alike ready to show him their pleasant land, and he
fairly reveled in its delicious air, its summer warmth, its soft repose.
Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep,
he quotes in his note-book, and adds:
Went with Mr. Damon to his cool, vine-shaded home; no careworn or
eager, anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a
contrast with California and the Washoe!
And in another place:
They live in the S. I.--no rush, no worry--merchant goes down to his
store like a gentleman at nine--goes home at four and thinks no more
of business till next day. D--n San F. style of wearing out life.
He fitted in with the languorous island existence, but he had come for
business, and he lost not much time. He found there a number of friends
from Washoe, including the Rev. Mr. Rising, whose health had failed from
overwork. By their direction, and under official guidance, he set out on
Oahu, one of the several curious horses he has immortalized in print,
and, accompanied by a pleasant party of ladies and gentlemen, encircled
the island of that name, crossed it and recrossed it, visited its various
battle-fields, returning to Honolulu, lame, sore, sunburnt, but
triumphant. His letters home, better even than his Union correspondence,
reveal his personal interest and enthusiasms.
I have got a lot of human bones which I took from one of these
battle-fields. I guess I will bring you some of them. I went with
the American Minister and took dinner this evening with the King's
Grand Chamberlain, who is related to the royal family, and though
darker than a mulatto he has an excellent English education, and in
manners is an accomplished gentleman. He is to call for me in the
morning; we will visit the King in the palace, After dinner they
called in the "singing girls," and we had some beautiful music, sung
in the native tongue.
It was his first association with royalty, and it was human that he
should air it a little. In the same letter he states: "I will sail in a
day or two on a tour of the other islands, to be gone two months."
'In Roughing It' he has given us a picture of his visits to the islands,
their plantations, their volcanoes, their natural and historic wonders.
He was an insatiable sight-seer then, and a persevering one. The very
name of a new point of interest filled him with an eager enthusiasm to be
off. No discomfort or risk or distance discouraged him. With a single
daring companion--a man who said he could find the way--he crossed the
burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea (then in almost constant
eruption), racing across the burning lava floor, jumping wide and
bottomless crevices, when a misstep would have meant death.
By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never stopped quicker in my life.
I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said
we must not try to go on until we found it again, for we were surrounded
with beds of rotten lava, through which we could easily break and plunge
down 1,000 feet. I thought Boo would answer for me, and was about to say
so, when Marlette partly proved his statement, crushing through and
disappearing to his arm-pits.
They made their way across at last, and stood the rest of the night
gazing down upon a spectacle of a crater in quivering action, a veritable
lake of fire. They had risked their lives for that scene, but it seemed
worth while.
His open-air life on the river, and the mining camps, had prepared Samuel
Clemens for adventurous hardships. He was thirty years old, with his
full account of mental and physical capital. His growth had been slow,
but he was entering now upon his golden age; he was fitted for conquest
of whatever sort, and he was beginning to realize his power.
LIII
ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE "HORNET" DISASTER
It was near the end of June when he returned to Honolulu from a tour of
all the islands, fairly worn out and prostrated with saddle boils. He
expected only to rest and be quiet for a season, but all unknown to him
startling and historic things were taking place in which he was to have a
part--events that would mark another forward stride in his career.
The Ajax had just come in, bringing his Excellency Anson Burlingame, then
returning to his post as minister to China; also General Van Valkenburg,
minister to Japan; Colonel Rumsey and Minister Burlingame's son, Edward,
--[Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner's
Magazine.]--then a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had read
"The Jumping Frog," and was enthusiastic about Mark Twain and his work.
Learning that he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party sent
word that they would call on him next morning.
Clemens felt that he must not accept this honor, sick or well. He
crawled out of bed, dressed and shaved himself as quickly as possible,
and drove to the American minister's, where the party was staying. They
had a hilariously good time. When he returned to his hotel he sent them,
by request, whatever he had on hand of his work. General Van Valkenburg
had said to him:
"California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will
be, too, no doubt."
There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy.
But a still greater event was imminent. On that very day (June 21, 1866)
there came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of
an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short, ten-day
rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days! A vessel,
the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned "on the line," and
since early in May, on that meager sustenance, they had been battling
with hundreds of leagues of adverse billows, seeking for land.
A few days following the first report, eleven of the rescued men were
brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized
the great news importance of the event. It would be a splendid beat if
he could interview the castaways and be the first to get their story to
his paper. There was no cable in those days; a vessel for San Francisco
would sail next morning. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he
must not miss it. Bedridden as he was, the undertaking seemed beyond his
strength.
But just at this time the Burlingame party descended on him, and almost
before he knew it he was on the way to the hospital on a cot, escorted by
the heads of the joint legations of China and Japan. Once there, Anson
Burlingame, with his splendid human sympathy and handsome, courtly
presence, drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of their long
privation and struggle, that had stretched across forty-three distempered
days and four thousand miles of sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was
to listen and make the notes.
He put in the night-writing against time. Next morning, just as the
vessel for the States was drifting away from her dock, a strong hand
flung his bulky envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel arrived
his great beat was sure. It did arrive, and the three-column story on
the front page of the Sacramento Union, in its issue of July 19th, gave
the public the first detailed history of the terrible Hornet disaster and
the rescue of those starving men. Such a story occupied a wider place in
the public interest than it would in these crowded days. The telegraph
carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a sensation.
Mark Twain always adored the name and memory of Anson Burlingame. In his
letter home he tells of Burlingame's magnanimity in "throwing away an
invitation to dine with princes and foreign dignitaries" to help him.
"You know I appreciate that kind of thing," he says; which was a true
statement, and in future years he never missed an opportunity of paying
an instalment on his debt of gratitude. It was proper that he should do
so, for the obligation was a far greater one than that contracted in
obtaining the tale of the Hornet disaster. It was the debt which one
owes to a man who, from the deep measure of his understanding, gives
encouragement and exactly needed and convincing advice. Anson Burlingame
said to Samuel Clemens:
"You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is
the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior
intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate
with inferiors; always climb."
Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he
rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel.
"Come to Pekin next winter," he said, "and visit me. Make my house your
home. I will give you letters and introduce you. You will have
facilities for acquiring information about China."
It is not surprising then that Mark Twain never felt his debt to Anson
Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame came more than once to the hotel,
for Clemens was really ill now, and they discussed plans for his future
betterment.
He promised, of course, to visit China, and when he was alone put in a
good deal of time planning a trip around the world which would include
the great capitals. When not otherwise employed he read; though there
was only one book in the hotel, a "blue and gold" edition of Dr.
Holmes's Songs in Many Keys, and this he soon knew almost by heart, from
title-page to finis.
He was soon up and about. No one could remain ill long in those happy
islands. Young Burlingame came, and suggested walks. Once, when Clemens
hesitated, the young man said:
"But there is a Scriptural command for you to go."
"If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens.
"Very well. The Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go
with him, Twain.'"
The command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens quoted the witticism
later (in his first lecture), and it was often repeated in after-years,
ascribed to Warner, Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin was as here set
down.
Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says:
Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.--danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van
Valkenburg's room and talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed
Burlingame until 3 A.M.
From which we may conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days
later. the legation party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the
19th Clemens himself set out by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco.
They were becalmed and were twenty-five days making the voyage. Captain
Mitchell and others of the wrecked Hornet were aboard, and he put in a
good deal of time copying their diaries and preparing a magazine article
which, he believed, would prove his real entrance to the literary world.
The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day, and became a
regular playground at sea. Sundays they had services and Mark Twain led
the choir.
"I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in heaven than I
have down here," he says in his notes. "If they don't, a thunderbolt
will knock this vessel endways." It is perhaps worthy of mention that on
the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another "splendidly
colored, lunar rainbow." That he regarded this as an indication of
future good-fortune is not surprising, considering the events of the
previous year.
It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry
of that day says:
Home again. No--not home again--in prison again, end all the wild
sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary with
toil and care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at
sea again!
There were compensations, however. He went over to Sacramento, and was
abundantly welcomed. It was agreed that, in addition to the twenty
dollars allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made for the
Hornet report.
"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked.
"Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100
a column."
There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he
took it to the business office for payment.
"The cashier didn't faint," he wrote, many years later, "but he came
rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they only laughed in
their jolly fashion, and said it was a robbery, but 'no matter, pay it.
It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a newspaper."--["My Debut
as a Literary Person."--Collected works.]--
Though inferior to the descriptive writing which a year later would give
him a world-wide fame, the Sandwich Island letters added greatly to his
prestige on the Pacific coast. They were convincing, informing; tersely
--even eloquently--descriptive, with a vein of humor adapted to their
audience. Yet to read them now, in the fine nonpareil type in which they
were set, is such a wearying task that one can only marvel at their
popularity. They were not brilliant literature, by our standards to-day.
Their humor is usually of a muscular kind, varied with grotesque
exaggerations; the literary quality is pretty attenuated. Here and there
are attempts at verse. He had a fashion in those days of combining two
or more poems with distracting, sometimes amusing, effect. Examples of
these dislocations occur in the Union letters; a single stanza will
present the general idea:
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
The turf with their bayonets turning,
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold,
And our lanterns dimly burning.
Only a trifling portion of the letters found their way into his Sandwich
Island chapters of 'Roughing It', five years later. They do, however,
reveal a sort of transition stage between the riotous florescence of the
Comstock and the mellowness of his later style. He was learning to see
things with better eyes, from a better point of view. It is not
difficult to believe that this literary change of heart was in no small
measure due to the influence of Anson Burlingame.
MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
By Albert Bigelow Paine
VOLUME I, Part 2: 1866-1875
LIV
THE LECTURER
It was not easy to take up the daily struggle again, but it was
necessary.--[Clemens once declared he had been so blue at this period
that one morning he put a loaded pistol to his head, but found he lacked
courage to pull the trigger.]--Out of the ruck of possibilities (his
brain always thronged with plans) he constructed three or four resolves.
The chief of these was the trip around the world; but that lay months
ahead, and in the mean time ways and means must be provided. Another
intention was to finish the Hornet article, and forward it to Harper's
Magazine--a purpose carried immediately into effect. To his delight the
article found acceptance, and he looked forward to the day of its
publication as the beginning of a real career. He intended to follow it
up with a series on the islands, which in due time might result in a book
and an income. He had gone so far as to experiment with a dedication for
the book--an inscription to his mother, modified later for use in 'The
Innocents Abroad'. A third plan of action was to take advantage of the
popularity of the Hawaiian letters, and deliver a lecture on the same
subject. But this was a fearsome prospect--he trembled when he thought
of it. As Governor of the Third House he had been extravagantly received
and applauded, but in that case the position of public entertainer had
been thrust upon him. To come forward now, offering himself in the same
capacity, was a different matter. He believed he could entertain, but he
lacked the courage to declare himself; besides, it meant a risk of his
slender capital. He confided his situation to Col. John McComb, of the
Alta California, and was startled by McComb's vigorous endorsement.
"Do it, by all means!" urged McComb. "It will be a grand success--I know
it! Take the largest house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket."
Frightened but resolute, he went to the leading theater manager the same
Tom Maguire of his verses--and was offered the new opera-house at half
rates. The next day this advertisement appeared:
MAGUIRE'S ACADEMY OF MUSIC
PINE STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
MARK TWAIN
(HONOLULU CORRESPONDENT OF THE SACRAMENTO UNION)
WILL DELIVER A
LECTURE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC
ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCT. 2d
(1866)
In which passing mention will be made of Harris, Bishop Staley, the
American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and characteristics
of the natives duly discussed and described. The great volcano of
Kilauea will also receive proper attention.
A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
is in town, but has not been engaged
ALSO
A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS
will be on exhibition in the next block
MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS
were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned
A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION
may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever
they please.
Dress Circle, $1.00 Family Circle, 50c
Doors open at 7 o'clock The Trouble to begin at 8 o'clock
The story of that first lecture, as told in Roughing It, is a faithful
one, and need only be summarized here.
Expecting to find the house empty, he found it packed from the footlights
to the walls. Sidling out from the wings--wobbly-kneed and dry of
tongue--he was greeted by a murmur, a roar, a very crash of applause that
frightened away his remaining vestiges of courage. Then, came reaction--
these were his friends, and he began to talk to them. Fear melted away,
and as tide after tide of applause rose and billowed and came breaking at
his feet, he knew something of the exaltation of Monte Cristo when he
declared "The world is mine!"
It was a vast satisfaction to have succeeded. It was particularly
gratifying at this time, for he dreaded going back into newspaper
harness. Also; it softened later the disappointment resulting from
another venture; for when the December Harper appeared, with his article,
the printer and proof-reader had somehow converted Mark Twain into "Mark
Swain," and his literary dream perished.
As to the literary value of his lecture, it was much higher than had,
been any portion of his letters, if we may judge from its few remaining
fragments. One of these--a part of the description of the great volcano
Haleakala, on the island of Maui--is a fair example of his eloquence.
It is somewhat more florid than his later description of the same scene
in Roughing It, which it otherwise resembles; and we may imagine that its
poetry, with the added charm of its delivery, held breathless his
hearers, many of whom believed that no purer eloquence had ever been
uttered or written.
It is worth remembering, too, that in this lecture, delivered so long
ago, he advocated the idea of American ownership of these islands,
dwelling at considerable length on his reasons for this ideal.
--[For fragmentary extracts from this first lecture of Mark Twain and
news comment, see Appendix D, end of last volume.]--
There was a gross return from his venture of more than $1,200, but with
his usual business insight, which was never foresight, he had made an
arrangement by which, after paying bills and dividing with his manager,
he had only about one-third of, this sum left. Still, even this was
prosperity and triumph. He had acquired a new and lucrative profession
at a bound. The papers lauded him as the "most piquant and humorous
writer and lecturer on the Coast since the days of the lamented John
Phoenix." He felt that he was on the highroad at last.
Denis McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San Francisco, and was
willing to become his manager. Denis was capable and honest, and Clemens
was fond of him. They planned a tour of the near-by towns, beginning
with Sacramento, extending it later even to the mining camps, such as Red
Dog and Grass Valley; also across into Nevada, with engagements at Carson
City, Virginia, and Gold Hill. It was an exultant and hilarious
excursion--that first lecture tour made by Denis McCarthy and Mark Twain.
Success traveled with them everywhere, whether the lecturer looked across
the footlights of some pretentious "opera-house" or between the two
tallow candles of some camp "academy." Whatever the building, it was
packed, and the returns were maximum.
Those who remember him as a lecturer in that long-ago time say that his
delivery was more quaint, his drawl more exaggerated, even than in later
life; that his appearance and movements on the stage were natural, rather
than graceful; that his manuscript, which he carried under his arm,
looked like a ruffled hen. It was, in fact, originally written on sheets
of manila paper, in large characters, so that it could be read easily by
dim light, and it was doubtless often disordered.
There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one place, when
the lecture was over, an old man came to him and said:
"Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"
At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting of a lady tight-rope
walker and her husband. It was a small place, and the tight-rope
attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband had formerly been a
compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt there was a bond of
brotherhood between him and Mark Twain.
"Look here," he said. "Let's combine our shows. I'll let my wife do the
tight-rope act outside and draw a crowd, and you go inside and lecture."
The arrangement was not made.
Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to be
introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find
the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected
failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short notice.
He went down into the audience and captured an old fellow, who ducked and
dodged but could not escape. Denis led him to the stage, a good deal
frightened.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this is the celebrated Mark Twain from
the celebrated city of San Francisco, with his celebrated lecture about
the celebrated Sandwich Islands."
That was as far as he could go; but it was far enough. Mark Twain never
had a better introduction. The audience was in a shouting humor from the
start.
Clemens himself used to tell of an introduction at another camp, where
his sponsor said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first
is that he's never been in jail, and the second is I don't know why."
But this is probably apocryphal; there is too much "Mark Twain" in it.
When he reached Virginia, Goodman said to him:
"Sam, you do not need anybody to introduce you. There's a piano on the
stage in the theater. Have it brought out in sight, and when the curtain
rises you be seated at the piano, playing and singing that song of yours,
'I Had an Old Horse Whose Name Was Methusalem,' and don't seem to notice
that the curtain is up at first; then be surprised when you suddenly find
out that it is up, and begin talking, without any further preliminaries."
This proved good advice, and the lecture, thus opened, started off with
general hilarity and applause.
LV
HIGHWAY ROBBERY
His Nevada, lectures were bound to be immensely successful. The people
regarded him as their property over there, and at Carson and Virginia the
houses overflowed. At Virginia especially his friends urged and begged
him to repeat the entertainment, but he resolutely declined.
"I have only one lecture yet," he said. "I cannot bring myself to give
it twice in the same town."
But that irresponsible imp, Steve Gillis, who was again in Virginia,
conceived a plan which would make it not only necessary for him to
lecture again, but would supply him with a subject. Steve's plan was
very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of his funds by a friendly
highway robbery, and let an account of the adventure furnish the new
lecture.
In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain has given a version of this mock robbery
which is correct enough as far as it goes; but important details are
lacking. Only a few years ago (it was April, 1907), in his cabin on
jackass Hill, with Joseph Goodman and the writer of this history present,
Steve Gillis made his "death-bed" confession as is here set down:
"Mark's lecture was given in Piper's Opera House, October 30, 1866. The
Virginia City people had heard many famous lectures before, but they were
mere sideshows compared with Mark's. It could have been run to crowded
houses for a week. We begged him to give the common people a chance; but
he refused to repeat himself. He was going down to Carson, and was
coming back to talk in Gold Hill about a week later, and his agent, Denis
McCarthy, and I laid a plan to have him robbed on the Divide between Gold
Hill and Virginia, after the Gold Hill lecture was over and he and Denis
would be coming home with the money. The Divide was a good lonely place,
and was famous for its hold-ups. We got City Marshal George Birdsall
into it with us, and took in Leslie Blackburn, Pat Holland, Jimmy
Eddington, and one or two more of Sam's old friends. We all loved him,
and would have fought for him in a moment. That's the kind of friends
Mark had in Nevada. If he had any enemies I never heard of them.
"We didn't take in Dan de Quille, or Joe here, because Sam was Joe's
guest, and we were afraid he would tell him. We didn't take in Dan
because we wanted him to write it up as a genuine robbery and make a big
sensation. That would pack the opera-house at two dollars a seat to hear
Mark tell the story.
"Well, everything went off pretty well. About the time Mark was
finishing his lecture in Gold Hill the robbers all went up on the Divide
to wait, but Mark's audience gave him a kind of reception after his
lecture, and we nearly froze to death up there before he came along.
By and by I went back to see what was the matter. Sam and Denis were
coming, and carrying a carpet-sack about half full of silver between
them. I shadowed them and blew a policeman's whistle as a signal to the
boys when the lecturers were within about a hundred yards of the place.
I heard Sam say to Denis:
"'I'm glad they've got a policeman on the Divide. They never had one in
my day.'
"Just about that time the boys, all with black masks on and silver
dollars at the sides of their tongues to disguise their voices, stepped
out and stuck six-shooters at Sam and Denis and told them to put up their
hands. The robbers called each other 'Beauregard' and 'Stonewall
Jackson.' Of course Denis's hands went up, and Mark's, too, though Mark
wasn't a bit scared or excited. He talked to the robbers in his regular
fashion. He said:
"'Don't flourish those pistols so promiscuously. They might go off by
accident.'
"They told him to hand over his watch and money; but when he started to
take his hands down they made him put them up again. Then he asked how
they expected him to give them his valuables with his hands up in the
sky. He said his treasures didn't lie in heaven. He told them not to
take his watch, which was the one Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters had
given him as Governor of the Third House, but we took it all the same.
"Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them up again.
Once he said:
"'Don't you fellows be so rough. I was tenderly reared.'
"Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen minutes
after we were gone--this was to give us time to get back to Virginia and
be settled when they came along. As we were going away Mark called:
"'Say, you forgot something.'
"'What is it?'
"Why, the carpet-bag.'
"He was cool all the time. Senator Bill Stewart, in his Autobiography,
tells a great story of how scared Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart
was three thousand miles from Virginia by that time, and later got mad at
Mark because he made a joke about him in 'Roughing It'.
"Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were gone, but
Mark said:
"'No, Denis, I'm used to obeying orders when they are given in that
convincing way; we'll just keep our hands up another fifteen minutes or
so for good measure.'
"We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street when Mark and Denis came
along. We knew they would come in, and we expected Mark would be
excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He told us they had
been robbed, and asked me if I had any money. I gave him a hundred
dollars of his own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody.
Then we adjourned to the Enterprise office, where he offered a reward,
and Dan de Quille wrote up the story and telegraphed it to the other
newspapers. Then somebody suggested that Mark would have to give another
lecture now, and that the robbery would make a great subject. He entered
right into the thing, and next day we engaged Piper's Opera House, and
people were offering five dollars apiece for front seats. It would have
been the biggest thing that ever came to Virginia if it had come off.
"But we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy Baldwin into the joke. We
took in Joe here, too, and gave him the watch and money to keep, which
made it hard for Joe afterward. But it was Sandy Baldwin that ruined us.
He had Mark out to dinner the night before the show was to come off, and
after he got well warmed up with champagne he thought it would be a smart
thing to let Mark into what was really going on.
"Mark didn't see it our way. He was mad clear through."
At this point Joseph Goodman took up the story. He said:
"Those devils put Sam's money, watch, keys, pencils, and all his things
into my hands. I felt particularly mean at being made accessory to the
crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had grave doubts as to how
he would take it when he found out the robbery was not genuine.
"I felt terribly guilty when he said:
"'Joe, those d--n thieves took my keys, and I can't get into my trunk.
Do you suppose you could get me a key that would fit my trunk?'
"I said I thought I could during the day, and after Sam had gone I took
his own key, put it in the fire and burnt it to make it look black. Then
I took a file and scratched it here and there, to make it look as if I
had been fitting it to the lock, feeling guilty all the time, like a man
who is trying to hide a murder. Sam did not ask for his key that day,
and that evening he was invited to judge Baldwin's to dinner. I thought
he looked pretty silent and solemn when he came home; but he only said:
"'Joe, let's play cards; I don't feel sleepy.'
"Steve here, and two or three of the other boys who had been active in
the robbery, were present, and they did not like Sam's manner, so they
excused themselves and left him alone with me. We played a good while;
then he said:
"'Joe, these cards are greasy. I have got some new ones in my trunk.
Did you get that key to-day?'
"I fished out that burnt, scratched-up key with fear and trembling. But
he didn't seem to notice it at all, and presently returned with the
cards. Then we played, and played, and played--till one o'clock--two
o'clock--Sam hardly saying a word, and I wondering what was going to
happen. By and by he laid down his cards and looked at me, and said:
"'Joe, Sandy Baldwin told me all about that robbery to-night. Now, Joe,
I have found out that the law doesn't recognize a joke, and I am going to
send every one of those fellows to the penitentiary.'
"He said it with such solemn gravity, and such vindictiveness, that I
believed he was in dead earnest.
"I know that I put in two hours of the hardest work I ever did, trying to
talk him out of that resolution. I used all the arguments about the boys
being his oldest friends; how they all loved him, and how the joke had
been entirely for his own good; I pleaded with him, begged him to
reconsider; I went and got his money and his watch and laid them on the
table; but for a time it seemed hopeless. And I could imagine those
fellows going behind the bars, and the sensation it would make in
California; and just as I was about to give it up he said:
"'Well, Joe, I'll let it pass--this time; I'll forgive them again; I've
had to do it so many times; but if I should see Denis McCarthy and Steve
Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow, and I could save them by turning
over my hand, I wouldn't do it!'
"He canceled the lecture engagement, however, next morning, and the day
after left on the Pioneer Stage, by the way of Donner Lake, for
California. The boys came rather sheepishly to see him off; but he would
make no show of relenting. When they introduced themselves as
Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, etc., he merely said:
"'Yes, and you'll all be behind the bars some day. There's been a good
deal of robbery around here lately, and it's pretty clear now who did
it.' They handed him a package containing the masks which the robbers
had worn. He received it in gloomy silence; but as the stage drove away
he put his head out of the window, and after some pretty vigorous
admonition resumed his old smile, and called out: 'Good-by, friends;
good-by, thieves; I bear you no malice.' So the heaviest joke was on his
tormentors after all."
This is the story of the famous Mark Twain robbery direct from
headquarters. It has been garbled in so many ways that it seems worth
setting down in full. Denis McCarthy, who joined him presently in San
Francisco, received a little more punishment there.
"What kind of a trip did you boys have?" a friend asked of them.
Clemens, just recovering from a cold which the exposure on the Divide had
given him, smiled grimly:
"Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it for a spree."
He lectured again in San Francisco, this time telling the story of his
Overland trip in 1861, and he did the daring thing of repeating three
times the worn-out story of Horace Greeley's ride with Hank Monk, as
given later in 'Roughing It'. People were deadly tired of that story out
there, and when he told it the first time, with great seriousness, they
thought he must be failing mentally. They did not laugh--they only felt
sorry. He waited a little, as if expecting a laugh, and presently led
around to it and told it again. The audience was astonished still more,
and pitied him thoroughly. He seemed to be waiting pathetically in the
dead silence for their applause, then went on with his lecture; but
presently, with labored effort, struggled around to the old story again,
and told it for the third time. The audience suddenly saw the joke then,
and became vociferous and hysterical in their applause; but it was a
narrow escape. He would have been hysterical himself if the relief had
not came when it did.
--[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story and on Mr. Greeley's
eccentricities is furnished by Mr. Goodman:
When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just before I
started. "Mr. Goodman," he said, "you tell Horace Greeley that I want to
come East, and ask him to send me a pass." "All right, Hank," I said,
"I will." It happened that when I got to New York City one of the first
men I met was Greeley. "Mr. Greeley," said, "I have a message for you
from Hank Monk." Greeley bristled and glared at me. "That--rascal?" he
said, "He has done me more injury than any other man in America."]
LVI
BACK TO THE STATES
In the mean time Clemens had completed his plan for sailing, and had
arranged with General McComb, of the Alta California, for letters during
his proposed trip around the world. However, he meant to visit his
people first, and his old home. He could go back with means now, and
with the prestige of success.
"I sail to-morrow per Opposition--telegraphed you to-day," he wrote on
December 14th, and a day later his note-book entry says:
Sailed from San Francisco in Opposition (line) steamer America,
Capt. Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866. Pleasant sunny day, hills
brightly clad with green grass and shrubbery.
So he was really going home at last! He had been gone five and a half
years--eventful, adventurous years that had made him over completely, at
least so far as ambitions and equipment were concerned. He had came
away, in his early manhood, a printer and a pilot, unknown outside of his
class. He was returning a man of thirty-one, with a fund of hard
experience, three added professions--mining, journalism, and lecturing--
also with a new name, already famous on the sunset slopes of its
adoption, and beginning to be heard over the hills and far away. In some
degree, at least, he resembled the prince of a fairy tale who, starting
out humble and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred adventures and
returns with gifts and honors.
The homeward voyage was a notable one. It began with a tempest a little
way out of San Francisco--a storm terrible but brief, that brought the
passengers from their berths to the deck, and for a time set them
praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a big, burly, fearless
sailor, who had visited the edges of all continents and archipelagos; who
had been born at sea, and never had a day's schooling in his life, but
knew the Bible by heart; who was full of human nature and profanity, and
believed he was the only man on the globe who knew the secret of the
Bible miracles. He became a distinct personality in Mark Twain's work--
the memory of him was an unfailing delight. Captain "Ned Blakely," in
'Roughing It', who with his own hands hanged Bill Noakes, after reading
him promiscuous chapters from the Bible, was Captain Wakeman. Captain
"Stormfield," who had the marvelous visit to heaven, was likewise Captain
Wakeman; and he appears in the "Idle Excursion" and elsewhere.
Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus--the trip
across the lake and down the San Juan River--a, brand-new experience,
between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The
luxuriance got into his note-book.
Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns, pillars, towers,
pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds, domes, walls, in endless confusion
of vine-work--no shape known to architecture unimitated--and all so
webbed together that short distances within are only gained by glimpses.
Monkeys here and there; birds warbling; gorgeous plumaged birds on the
wing; Paradise itself, the imperial realm of beauty-nothing to wish for
to make it perfect.
But it was beyond the isthmus that the voyage loomed into proportions
somber and terrible. The vessel they took there, the San Francisco,
sailed from Greytown January 1, 1867, the beginning of a memorable year
in Mark Twain's life. Next day two cases of Asiatic cholera were
reported in the steerage. There had been a rumor of it in Nicaragua, but
no one expected it on the ship.
The nature of the disease was not hinted at until evening, when one of
the men died. Soon after midnight, the other followed. A minister
making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the burial service. The
gaiety of the passengers, who had become well acquainted during the
Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word "cholera" went among them,
faces grew grave and frightened. On the morning of January 4th Reverend
Fackler's services were again required. The dead man was put overboard
within half an hour after he had ceased to breathe.
Gloom settled upon the ship. All steam was made to put into Key West.
Then some of the machinery gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly
becalmed in the fierce heat of the Gulf, while repairs were being made.
The work was done at a disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time
and again they were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat,
listening to the hopeless hammering, wondering who would be the next to
be sewed up hastily in a blanket and slipped over the ship's side. On
the 5th seven new cases of illness were reported. One of the crew, a man
called "Shape," was said to be dying. A few hours later he was dead. By
this time the Reverend Fackler himself had been taken.
"So they are burying poor 'Shape' without benefit of clergy," says the
note-book.
General consternation now began to prevail. Then it was learned that the
ship's doctor had run out of medicines. The passengers became
demoralized. They believed their vessel was to become a charnel ship.
Strict sanitary orders were issued, and a hospital was improvised.
Verily the ship is becoming a floating hospital herself--not an hour
passes but brings its fresh sensation, its new disaster, its
melancholy tidings. When I think of poor "Shape" and the preacher,
both so well when I saw them yesterday evening, I realize that I
myself may be dead to-morrow.
Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on the
ship--a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.
By noon it was evident that the minister could not survive. He died at
two o'clock next morning; the fifth victim in less than five days. The
machinery continued to break and the vessel to drag. The ship's doctor
confessed to Clemens that he was helpless. There were eight patients in
the hospital.
But on January 6th they managed to make Key West, and for some reason
were not quarantined. Twenty-one passengers immediately deserted the
ship and were heard of no more.
"I am glad they are gone. D--n them," says the notebook. Apparently he
had never considered leaving, and a number of others remained. The
doctor restocked his medicine-locker, and the next day they put to sea
again. Certainly they were a daring lot of voyagers. On the 8th another
of the patients died. Then the cooler weather seemed to check the
contagion, and it was not until the night of the 11th, when the New York
harbor lights were in view, that the final death occurred. There were no
new cases by this time, and the other patients were convalescent. A
certificate was made out that the last man had died of "dropsy." There
would seem to have been no serious difficulty in docking the vessel and
landing the passengers. The matter would probably be handled differently
to-day.
LVII
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS
It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in New York.
Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to get away from home.
Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.
He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles Henry Webb, late
of California, who had put together a number of the Mark Twain sketches,
including "The Jumping Frog," for book publication. Clemens himself
decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking that, having missed the
fame of the "Frog" once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for
it now. But Carleton was wary; the "Frog" had won favor, and even fame,
in its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books were
undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration in those days.
Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton said to Mark Twain:
"My chief claim to immortality is the distinction of having declined your
first book."
Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton declined it,
but Webb said he would publish it himself, and he set about it forthwith.
The author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis, and was soon
with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that eventful
first year of the war. They thought he looked old, which was true
enough, but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full of
banter and gravely quaint remarks--he was always the same. Jane Clemens
had grown older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen and
vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome,
brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her mischievous, wayward
boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and inquired
searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he petted, comforted,
and teased her. She decided that he was the same Sam, and always would
be--a true prophecy.
He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many were married; some had
moved away; some were dead--the old story. He delivered his lecture
there, and was the center of interest and admiration--his welcome might
have satisfied even Tom Sawyer. From Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk,
where he lectured again to a crowd of old friends and new, then returned
to St. Louis for a more extended visit.
It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw the announcement of
the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion, and was promptly fascinated by what
was then a brand-new idea in ocean travel--a splendid picnic--a choice
and refined party that would sail away for a long summer's journeying to
the most romantic of all lands and seas, the shores of the Mediterranean.
No such argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of the golden fleece of
happiness.
His projected trip around the world lost its charm in the light of this
idyllic dream. Henry Ward Beecher was advertised as one of the party;
General Sherman as another; also ministers, high-class journalists--the
best minds of the nation. Anson Burlingame had told him to associate
with persons of refinement and intellect. He lost no time in writing to
the Alta, proposing that they send him in this select company.
Noah Brooks, who was then on the Alta, states--[In an article published
in the Century Magazine.]--that the management was staggered by the
proposition, but that Col. John McComb insisted that the investment in
Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was accordingly sent, stating that a
check for his passage would be forwarded in due season, and that meantime
he could contribute letters from New York City. The rate for all letters
was to be twenty dollars each. The arrangement was a godsend, in the
fullest sense of the word, to Mark Twain.
It was now April, and he was eager to get back to New York to arrange his
passage. The Quaker City would not sail for two months yet (two eventful
months), but the advertisement said that passages must be secured by the
5th, and he was there on that day. Almost the first man he met was the
chief of the New York Alta bureau with a check for twelve hundred and
fifty dollars (the amount of his ticket) and a telegram saying, "Ship
Mark Twain in the Holy Land Excursion and pay his passage."
--[The following letter, which bears no date, was probably handed to
him later in the New York Alta office as a sort of credential:
ALTA CALIFORNIA OFFICE, 42 JOHN STREET, NEW YORK.
Sam'l Clemens, Esq., New York.
DEAR SIR,--I have the honor to inform you that Fred'k. MacCrellish
& Co., Proprietors of Alta California, San Francisco, Cal., desire
to engage your services as Special Correspondent on the pleasure
excursion now about to proceed from this City to the Holy Land. In
obedience to their instructions I have secured a passage for you on
the vessel about to convey the excursion party referred to, and made
such arrangements as I hope will secure your comfort and
convenience. Your only instructions are that you will continue to
write at such times and from such places as you deem proper, and in
the same style that heretofore secured you the favor of the readers
of the Alta California. I have the honor to remain, with high
respect and esteem,
Your ob'dt. Servant,
JOHN J. MURPHY.]
The Alta, it appears, had already applied for his berth; but, not having
been vouched for by Mr. Beecher or some other eminent divine, Clemens was
fearful he might not be accepted. Quite casually he was enlightened on
this point. While waiting for attention in the shipping-office, with the
Alta agent, he heard a newspaper man inquire what notables were going.
A clerk, with evident pride, rattled off the names:
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