The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


P. S. I have just heard five pistol shots down street--as such things
are in my line, I will go and see about it.

P. S. No 2--5 A.M.--The pistol did its work well--one man--a Jackson
County Missourian, shot two of my friends, (police officers,) through the
heart--both died within three minutes. Murderer's name is John Campbell.

The "Unreliable" of this letter was a rival reporter on whom Mark
Twain had conferred this name during the legislative session. His
real name was Rice, and he had undertaken to criticize Clemens's
reports. The brisk reply that Rice's letters concealed with a show
of parliamentary knowledge a "festering mass of misstatements the
author of whom should be properly termed the 'Unreliable," fixed
that name upon him for life. This burlesque warfare delighted the
frontier and it did not interfere with friendship. Clemens and Rice
were constant associates, though continually firing squibs at each
other in their respective papers--a form of personal journalism much
in vogue on the Comstock.

In the next letter we find these two journalistic "blades" enjoying
themselves together in the coast metropolis. This letter is labeled
"No. 2," meaning, probably, the second from San Francisco, but No. 1
has disappeared, and even No, 2 is incomplete.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

No. 2--($20.00 Enclosed)
LICK HOUSE, S. F., June 1, '63.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--The Unreliable and myself are still here,
and still enjoying ourselves. I suppose I know at least a thousand
people here--a great many of them citizens of San Francisco, but the
majority belonging in Washoe--and when I go down Montgomery street,
shaking hands with Tom, Dick and Harry, it is just like being in Main
street in Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces. I do hate to go
back to Washoe. We fag ourselves completely out every day, and go to
sleep without rocking, every night. We dine out and we lunch out, and we
eat, drink and are happy--as it were. After breakfast, I don't often see
the hotel again until midnight--or after. I am going to the Dickens
mighty fast. I know a regular village of families here in the house, but
I never have time to call on them. Thunder! we'll know a little more
about this town, before we leave, than some of the people who live in it.
We take trips across the Bay to Oakland, and down to San Leandro, and
Alameda, and those places; and we go out to the Willows, and Hayes Park,
and Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a
yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific
Coast. Rice says: "Oh, no--we are not having any fun, Mark--Oh, no, I
reckon not--it's somebody else--it's probably the 'gentleman in the
wagon'!" (popular slang phrase.) When I invite Rice to the Lick House to
dinner, the proprietors send us champagne and claret, and then we do put
on the most disgusting airs. Rice says our calibre is too light--we
can't stand it to be noticed!

I rode down with a gentleman to the Ocean House, the other day, to see
the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the
ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea. When I stood
on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same
thing on the shores of the Atlantic--and then I had a proper appreciation
of the vastness of this country--for I had traveled from ocean to ocean
across it.
(Remainder missing.)


Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that
constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the
mountainside. The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always
subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

A letter written in the late summer--a gay, youthful document
--belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

No. 12--$20 enclosed.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, '63.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust.
Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local
editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and
tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire
to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day." There's a comment on
human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I
could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't
want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my
place on the "Enterprise" is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy,
idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year.
But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life,
though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody
knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of
the mountains or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most
conceited ass in the Territory.

You think that picture looks old? Well, I can't help it--in reality I am
not as old as I was when I was eighteen.

I took a desperate cold more than a week ago, and I seduced Wilson (a
Missouri boy, reporter of the Daily Union,) from his labors, and we went
over to Lake Bigler. But I failed to cure my cold. I found the "Lake
House" crowded with the wealth and fashion of Virginia, and I could not
resist the temptation to take a hand in all the fun going. Those
Virginians--men and women both--are a stirring set, and I found if I went
with them on all their eternal excursions, I should bring the consumption
home with me--so I left, day before yesterday, and came back into the
Territory again. A lot of them had purchased a site for a town on the
Lake shore, and they gave me a lot. When you come out, I'll build you a
house on it. The Lake seems more supernaturally beautiful now, than
ever. It is the masterpiece of the Creation.

The hotel here at the Springs is not so much crowded as usual, and I am
having a very comfortable time of it. The hot, white steam puffs up out
of fissures in the earth like the jets that come from a steam-boat's
'scape pipes, and it makes a boiling, surging noise like a steam-boat,
too-hence the name. We put eggs in a handkerchief and dip them in the
springs--they "soft boil" in 2 Minutes, and boil as hard as a rock in
4 minutes. These fissures extend more than a quarter of a mile, and the
long line of steam columns looks very pretty. A large bath house is
built over one of the springs, and we go in it and steam ourselves as
long as we can stand it, and then come out and take a cold shower bath.
You get baths, board and lodging, all for $25 a week--cheaper than living
in Virginia without baths.....
Yrs aft
MARK.


It was now the autumn of 1863. Mark Twain was twenty-eight years
old. On the Coast he had established a reputation as a gaily
original newspaper writer. Thus far, however, he had absolutely no
literary standing, nor is there any evidence that he had literary
ambitions; his work was unformed, uncultivated--all of which seems
strange, now, when we realize that somewhere behind lay the
substance of immortality. Rudyard Kipling at twenty-eight had done
his greatest work.

Even Joseph Goodman, who had a fine literary perception and a deep
knowledge of men, intimately associated with Mark Twain as he was,
received at this time no hint of his greater powers. Another man on
the staff of the Enterprise, William Wright, who called himself "Dan
de Quille," a graceful humorist, gave far more promise, Goodman
thought, of future distinction.

It was Artemus Ward who first suspected the value of Mark Twain's
gifts, and urged him to some more important use of them. Artemus in
the course of a transcontinental lecture tour, stopped in Virginia
City, and naturally found congenial society on the Enterprise staff.
He had intended remaining but a few days, but lingered three weeks,
a period of continuous celebration, closing only with the holiday
season. During one night of final festivities, Ward slipped away
and gave a performance on his own account. His letter to Mark
Twain, from Austin, Nevada, written a day or two later, is most
characteristic.


Artemus Ward's letter to Mark Twain:

AUSTIN, Jan. 1, '64.
MY DEAREST LOVE,--I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o'clock. It is a
wild, untamable place, full of lionhearted boys. I speak tonight. See
small bills.

Why did you not go with me and save me that night?--I mean the night I
left you after that dinner party. I went and got drunker, beating, I may
say, Alexander the Great, in his most drinkinist days, and I blackened my
face at the Melodeon, and made a gibbering, idiotic speech. God-dam it!
I suppose the Union will have it. But let it go. I shall always
remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must or
rather cannot be, as it were.

Love to Jo. Goodman and Dan. I shall write soon, a powerfully convincing
note to my friends of "The Mercury." Your notice, by the way, did much
good here, as it doubtlessly will elsewhere. The miscreants of the Union
will be batted in the snout if they ever dare pollute this rapidly rising
city with their loathsome presence.

Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor.

Do not, sir--do not flatter yourself that you are the only
chastely-humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes.

Good-bye, old boy--and God bless you! The matter of which I spoke to you
so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended to--and again with very
many warm regards for Jo. and Dan., and regards to many of the good
friends we met.
I am Faithfully, gratefully yours,
ARTEMUS WARD.


The Union which Ward mentions was the rival Virginia. City paper;
the Mercury was the New York Sunday Mercury, to which he had urged
Mark Twain to contribute. Ward wrote a second letter, after a siege
of illness at Salt Lake City. He was a frail creature, and three
years later, in London, died of consumption. His genius and
encouragement undoubtedly exerted an influence upon Mark Twain.
Ward's second letter here follows.


Artemus Ward to S. L. Clemens:

SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 21, '64.
MY DEAR MARK,--I have been dangerously ill for the past two weeks here,
of congestive fever. Very grave fears were for a time entertained of my
recovery, but happily the malady is gone, though leaving me very, very
weak. I hope to be able to resume my journey in a week or so. I think
I shall speak in the Theater here, which is one of the finest
establishments of the kind in America.

The Saints have been wonderfully kind to me, I could not have been better
or more tenderly nursed at home--God bless them!

I am still exceedingly weak--can't write any more. Love to Jo and Dan,
and all the rest. Write me at St. Louis.
Always yours,
ARTEMUS WARD.


If one could only have Mark Twain's letters in reply to these! but
they have vanished and are probably long since dust. A letter which
he wrote to his mother assures us that he undertook to follow Ward's
advice. He was not ready, however, for serious literary effort.
The article, sent to the Mercury, was distinctly of the Comstock
variety; it was accepted, but it apparently made no impression, and
he did not follow it up.

For one thing, he was just then too busy reporting the Legislature
at Carson City and responding to social demands. From having been a
scarcely considered unit during the early days of his arrival in
Carson Mark Twain had attained a high degree of importance in the
little Nevada capital. In the Legislature he was a power; as
correspondent for the Enterprise he was feared and respected as well
as admired. His humor, his satire, and his fearlessness were
dreaded weapons.

Also, he was of extraordinary popularity. Orion's wife, with her
little daughter, Jennie, had come out from the States. The Governor
of Nevada had no household in Carson City, and was generally absent.
Orion Clemens reigned in his stead, and indeed was usually addressed
as "Governor" Clemens. His home became the social center of the
capital, and his brilliant brother its chief ornament. From the
roughest of miners of a year before he had become, once more, almost
a dandy in dress, and no occasion was complete without him. When
the two Houses of the Legislature assembled, in January, 1864, a
burlesque Third House was organized and proposed to hold a session,
as a church benefit. After very brief consideration it was decided
to select Mark Twain to preside at this Third House assembly under
the title of "Governor," and a letter of invitation was addressed to
him. His reply to it follows:


To S. Pixley and G. A. Sears, Trustees:

CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864.
GENTLEMEN, Certainly. If the public can find anything in a grave state
paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing that they should pay that
amount, or any other; and although I am not a very dusty Christian
myself, I take an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and would
willingly inflict my annual message upon the Church itself if it might
derive benefit thereby. You can charge what you please; I promise the
public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable amount of instruction.
I am responsible to the Third House only, and I hope to be permitted to
make it exceedingly warm for that body, without caring whether the
sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in their favor, and
against myself, or not.
Respectfully,
MARK TWAIN.


There is a quality in this letter more suggestive of the later Mark
Twain than anything that has preceded it. His Third House address,
unfortunately, has not been preserved, but those who heard it
regarded it as a classic. It probably abounded in humor of the
frontier sort-unsparing ridicule of the Governor, the Legislature,
and individual citizens. It was all taken in good part, of course,
and as a recognition of his success he received a gold watch, with
the case properly inscribed to "The Governor of the Third House."
This was really his first public appearance in a field in which he
was destined to achieve very great fame.




V

LETTERS 1864-66. SAN FRANCISCO AND HAWAII

Life on the Comstock came to an end for Mark Twain in May, 1864. It
was the time of The Flour Sack Sanitary Fund, the story of which he
has told in Roughing It. He does not, however, refer to the
troubles which this special fund brought upon himself. Coming into
the Enterprise office one night, after a gay day of "Fund"
celebration, Clemens wrote, for next day's paper, a paragraph
intended to be merely playful, but which proved highly offending to
certain ladies concerned with the flour-sack enterprise. No files
of the paper exist today, so we cannot judge of the quality of humor
that stirred up trouble.

The trouble, however, was genuine enough, Virginia's rival paper
seized upon the chance to humiliate its enemy, and presently words
were passed back and forth until nothing was left to write but a
challenge. The story of this duel, which did not come off, has been
quite fully told elsewhere, both by Mark Twain and the present
writer; but the following letter--a revelation of his inner feelings
in the matter of his offense--has never before been published.


To Mrs. Cutler, in Carson City:

VIRGINIA, May 23rd, 1864.
MRS. W. K. CUTLER:

MADAM,--I address a lady in every sense of the term. Mrs. Clemens has
informed me of everything that has occurred in Carson in connection with
that unfortunate item of mine about the Sanitary Funds accruing from the
ball, and from what I can understand, you are almost the only lady in
your city who has understood the circumstances under which my fault was
committed, or who has shown any disposition to be lenient with me. Had
the note of the ladies been properly worded, I would have published an
ample apology instantly--and possibly I might even have done so anyhow,
had that note arrived at any other time--but it came at a moment when I
was in the midst of what ought to have been a deadly quarrel with the
publishers of the Union, and I could not come out and make public
apologies to any one at such a time. It is bad policy to do it even now
(as challenges have already passed between myself and a proprietor of the
Union, and the matter is still in abeyance,) but I suppose I had better
say a word or two to show the ladies that I did not wilfully and
maliciously do them a wrong.

But my chief object, Mrs. Cutler, in writing you this note (and you will
pardon the liberty I have taken,) was to thank you very kindly and
sincerely for the consideration you have shown me in this matter, and for
your continued friendship for Mollie while others are disposed to
withdraw theirs on account of a fault for which I alone am responsible.
Very truly yours,
SAM. L. CLEMENS.


The matter did not end with the failure of the duel. A very strict
law had just been passed, making it a felony even to send or accept
a challenge. Clemens, on the whole, rather tired of Virginia City
and Carson, thought it a good time to go across the mountains to San
Francisco. With Steve Gillis, a printer, of whom he was very fond
--an inveterate joker, who had been more than half responsible for
the proposed duel, and was to have served as his second--he took the
stage one morning, and in due time was in the California metropolis,
at work on the Morning Call.

Clemens had been several times in San Francisco, and loved the
place. We have no letter of that summer, the first being dated
several months after his arrival. He was still working on the Call
when it was written, and contributing literary articles to the
Californian, of which Bret Harte, unknown to fame, was editor.
Harte had his office just above the rooms of the Call, and he and
Clemens were good friends. San Francisco had a real literary group
that, for a time at least, centered around the offices of the Golden
Era. In a letter that follows Clemens would seem to have scorned
this publication, but he was a frequent contributor to it at one
period. Joaquin Miller was of this band of literary pioneers; also
Prentice Mulford, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, and
Orpheus C. Kerr.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

Sept. 25, 1864.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--You can see by my picture that this superb
climate agrees with me. And it ought, after living where I was never out
of sight of snow peaks twenty-four hours during three years. Here we
have neither snow nor cold weather; fires are never lighted, and yet
summer clothes are never worn--you wear spring clothing the year round.

Steve Gillis, who has been my comrade for two years, and who came down
here with me, is to be married, in a week or two, to a very pretty girl
worth $130,000 in her own right--and then I shall be alone again, until
they build a house, which they will do shortly.

We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodgings five
times, and our hotel twice. We are very comfortably fixed where we are,
now, and have no fault to find with the rooms or with the people--we are
the only lodgers in a well-to-do private family, with one grown daughter
and a piano in the parlor adjoining our room. But I need a change, and
must move again. I have taken rooms further down the street. I shall
stay in this little quiet street, because it is full of gardens and
shrubbery, and there are none but dwelling houses in it.

I am taking life easy, now, and I mean to keep it up for awhile. I don't
work at night any more. I told the "Call" folks to pay me $25 a week and
let me work only in daylight. So I get up at ten every morning, and quit
work at five or six in the afternoon. You ask if I work for greenbacks?
Hardly. What do you suppose I could do with greenbacks here?

I have engaged to write for the new literary paper--the "Californian"
--same pay I used to receive on the "Golden Era"--one article a week,
fifty dollars a month. I quit the "Era," long ago. It wasn't high-toned
enough. The "Californian" circulates among the highest class of the
community, and is the best weekly literary paper in the United States
--and I suppose I ought to know.

I work as I always did--by fits and starts. I wrote two articles last
night for the Californian, so that lets me out for two weeks. That would
be about seventy-five dollars, in greenbacks, wouldn't it?

Been down to San Jose (generally pronounced Sannozay--emphasis on last
syllable)--today fifty miles from here, by railroad. Town of 6,000
inhabitants, buried in flowers and shrubbery. The climate is finer than
ours here, because it is not so close to the ocean, and is protected from
the winds by the coast range.

I had an invitation today, to go down on an excursion to San Luis Obispo,
and from thence to the city of Mexico, to be gone six or eight weeks, or
possibly longer, but I could not accept, on account of my contract to act
as chief mourner or groomsman at Steve's wedding.

I have triumphed. They refused me and other reporters some information
at a branch of the Coroner's office--Massey's undertaker establishment,
a few weeks ago. I published the wickedest article on them I ever wrote
in my life, and you can rest assured we got all the information we wanted
after that.

By the new census, San Francisco has a population of 130,000. They don't
count the hordes of Chinamen.
Yrs aftly,
SAM.


I send a picture for Annie, and one for Aunt Ella--that is, if she will
have it.


Relations with the Call ceased before the end of the year, though
not in the manner described in Roughing It. Mark Twain loved to
make fiction of his mishaps, and to show himself always in a bad
light. As a matter of fact, he left the Call with great
willingness, and began immediately contributing a daily letter to
the Enterprise, which brought him a satisfactory financial return.

In the biographical sketch with which this volume opens, and more
extendedly elsewhere, has been told the story of the trouble growing
out of the Enterprise letters, and of Mark Twain's sojourn with
James Gillis in the Tuolumne Hills. Also how, in the frowsy hotel
at Angel's Camp, he heard the frog anecdote that would become the
corner-stone of his fame. There are no letters of this period--only
some note-book entries. It is probable that he did not write home,
believing, no doubt, that he had very little to say.

For more than a year there is not a line that has survived. Yet it
had been an important year; the jumping frog story, published in New
York, had been reprinted East and West, and laughed over in at least
a million homes. Fame had not come to him, but it was on the way.

Yet his outlook seems not to have been a hopeful one.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--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.