by Ben Tarnoff
NOTES
For simplicity’s sake, I refer to Samuel Langhorne Clemens as Mark Twain throughout. “Mark Twain” was more than just a pen name. He used it in public and in private. He signed letters “Mark” and “Sam,” and his friends knew him by both names.
Several online resources were helpful for my research. These were Readex America’s Historical Newspapers, JSTOR, Google Books, Twain quotes.com, the Mark Twain Project Online, the Making of America archive at the University of Michigan, and the California Digital Newspaper Collection from the Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside.
PEOPLE
BH Bret Harte (b. Francis Brett Harte)
CWS Charles Warren Stoddard
IC Ina Coolbrith (b. Josephine Donna Smith)
OLC Olivia Langdon Clemens (b. Olivia Louise Langdon)
SLC Mark Twain (b. Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
WDH William Dean Howells
BOOKS
Mark Twain
AMT Harriet Elinor Smith, ed., Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
ET&S Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst, eds., The Works of Mark Twain: Early Tales & Sketches, vol. 1, 1851–1864, and vol. 2, 1864–1865 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979–1981).
MCMT Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983 [1966]).
MTAL Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2006 [2005]).
MTB Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, vols. 1–3 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912).
MTL Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson, eds., Mark Twain’s Letters, vol. 1, 1853–1866. Harriet Elinor Smith and Richard Bucci, eds., vol. 2, 1867–1868. Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank, eds., vol. 3, 1869, and vol. 4, 1870–1871. Lin Salamo and Harriet Elinor Smith, eds., vol. 5, 1872–1873. Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith, eds., vol. 6, 1874–1875 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988–2002).
MTLO Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Harriet Elinor Smith, eds., Mark Twain’s Letters, 1876–1880 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). Accessible via Mark Twain Project Online, http://www.marktwainproject.org.
MTN Frederick Anderson, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson, eds., Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals, vol. 1, 1855–1873 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
MTR Mark Twain, Roughing It, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith and Edgar Marquess Branch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 [1872]).
TAMT Charles Neider, ed., The Autobiography of Mark Twain (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990 [1959]).
TIHOT Gary Scharnhorst, ed., Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010).
Bret Harte
BHAN Axel Nissen, Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).
BHGS Gary Scharnhorst, Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).
Charles Warren Stoddard
CRP “Confessions of a Reformed Poet,” an unpublished autobiography by Charles Warren Stoddard. The manuscript is held by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. For page numbers, I refer to the typescript copy that accompanies the manuscript. Because these numbers reset for each chapter, I have included the chapter information as well.
CSCWS Carl Stroven, “A Life of Charles Warren Stoddard” (unpublished PhD diss., Duke University, 1939).
GP Roger Austen, Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard, ed. John W. Crowley (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991).
Ina Coolbrith
ECW Ina Coolbrith, “Personal Reminiscences of Early California Writers,” an address given on April 10, 1911, to the Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association in San Francisco, held by the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
ICCWS Ina Coolbrith, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” an address given in 1923 [?] in Oakland, held by the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
ICHC Ina Coolbrith, “introduction” to The Heathen Chinee: Plain Language from Truthful James (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1934), n. pag.
ICLL Josephine DeWitt Rhodehamel and Raymund Francis Wood, Ina Coolbrith: Librarian and Laureate of California (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1973).
Other
SFLF Franklin Walker, San Francisco’s Literary Frontier (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970 [1939]).
COLLECTIONS
BANC Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
HUNT Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
UVA Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
OAK Oakland History Room, Oakland Public Library.
The notes are organized by paragraph. For each note I’ve listed the page number, followed by the first few words of the paragraph.
INTRODUCTION
The Civil War began 750,000 deaths: J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57.4 (Dec. 2011), pp. 307–348.
If America belonged More than half of all Californians in 1850 were in their twenties, according to Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2003 [1965]), pp. 40–41. “Pioneers! O Pioneers”: Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982), pp. 371–375.
When Whitman looked Jefferson’s idea of the West: Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 ( Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 357–359. For a discussion of western expansionism, see Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 15–33. Jefferson used the phrase “empire of liberty” several times; for an early example, see his 1780 letter to George Rogers Clark, included in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 4 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), pp. 237–238. “The future lies that way to me . . .”: Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 9 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1893), p. 266.
Mark Twain was Until 1847, San Francisco was known as Yerba Buena. Gold rush growth of SF: Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997 [1974]), pp. 3–30.
By the time Financing new frontiers: Rodman W. Paul, “After the Gold Rush: San Francisco and Portland,” Pacific Historical Review 50.1 (Feb. 1982), pp. 20–21, and SFLF, pp. 9–12. Champagne: SFLF, p. 13.
They also sustained Early literary life: Michael Kowalewski, “Romancing the Gold Rush: The Literature of the California Frontier,” California History 79.2 (Summer 2000), pp. 207–210, and SFLF, pp. 17–54. The gold rush generation produced a vast amount of letters, diaries, and other documents about early California. The most famous of these early firsthand accounts was written by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe under the pen name Dame Shirley in 1851–1852. For a complete listing of gold rush literature, see Gary F. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets Covering the Years 1848–1853 (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1997).
CHAPTER ONE
What people remembered Twain’s drawl: Arthur McEwen, “In the Heroic Days,” in TIHOT, p. 22; Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” McClure’s 4.1 (Dec. 1894), p. 47; MTAL, pp. 168–169; and William H. Rideing, “Mark Twain in Clubland,” Bookman 31 (June 1910), pp. 379–382. Twain’s seriousness: ibid. and G. K. Chesterton,
A Handful of Authors: Essays on Books and Writers, ed. Dorothy Collins (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953), pp. 10–15.
On May 2, 1863 Mark Twain’s first visit to SF: ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 248–249. Stagecoach journey from Virginia City to SF: Mark Twain, “Letter from Mark Twain,” Territorial Enterprise, September 17, 1863, in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 293–295.
Now he fell “After the sage-brush . . .”: MTR, p. 396. Activities during SF visit: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, June 1, 1863, in MTL, vol. 1, pp. 255–256, and SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, June 4, 1863, MTL, vol. 1, pp. 256–257.
He hadn’t planned Mid-May: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, May 18, 1863, MTL, vol. 1, pp. 252–254. “I am going to the Dickens . . .” and “[W]hen I go down Montgomery . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, June 1, 1863, MTL, vol. 1, p. 255. SF population in 1863: SFLF, p. 90.
Spring turned to summer “It seems like going back to prison . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, June 4, 1863, MTL, vol. 1, p. 256. Twain returned to Virginia City on July 2, 1863: ET&S, vol. 1, p. 254.
On February 3, 1863 Mark Twain, “Letter from Carson City,” Territorial Enterprise, February 3, 1863, in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 194–198.
This debut didn’t The other pen names of Sam Clemens included W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. Premature birth and “When I first saw him . . .”: MTAL, p. 8.
The origins of his Origin of “Mark Twain”: MTAL, pp. 118–119, and Paul Fatout, “Mark Twain’s Nom de Plume,” American Literature 34.1 (March 1962), pp. 1–7.
By 1863, he had Twain’s first known published item is “A Gallant Fireman,” which appeared in his brother Orion’s Western Union (later the Hannibal Journal) on January 16, 1851: ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 61–62. “very wild and mischievous”: “Mark Twain’s Boyhood: An Interview with Mrs. Jane Clemens,” in TIHOT, p. 1. In the same interview, Jane recounts how her son begged to leave school, and that she “concluded to let him go into a printing office to learn the trade.” See also MTB, vol. 1, pp. 74–76. Twain probably began his apprenticeship in the fall of 1847, in the office of Henry La Cossitt’s Hannibal Gazette: ET&S, vol. 1, p. 5. Cigar, pipe, and off-color songs: from a letter by Pet McMurry, a journeyman in the printer’s office of the Missouri Courier who worked alongside Twain, quoted in MTB, vol. 1, p. 77. The rival editor scorched by Twain was J. T. Hinton; see MTAL, pp. 53–55.
Twain’s irreverence Hannibal’s transformation: ibid., pp. 47, 57–58.
By the time Expanding print landscape: ibid., pp. 46–47; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 87–88; William James Linton, The History of Wood-Engraving in America (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1882), pp. 27–33. Statistics on numbers of newspapers: Bruce A. Bimber, Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 52–53.
The newspaper revolution Role of newspapers in the gold rush: H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 2002), pp. 70, 124–126, 130. Literacy in the Far West: SFLF, pp. 7, 14; Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 34–35, 42, 153; and Sanford Winston, Illiteracy in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930), pp. 16–17. Literary paper as sign of flush times: MTR, p. 339. Literature’s significance for farmers and miners: SFLF, p. 120.
Twain arrived in Twain’s departure for Nevada: MTAL, pp. 101–102.
So he climbed Coyotes and jackrabbits: MTR, pp. 12, 30. “The country is fabulously rich . . .”: SLC to Pamela A. Moffett and Jane Lampton Clemens, October 25, 1861, MTL, vol. 1, p. 132.
After a failed stint First day of work: MTAL, p. 110; C. C. Goodwin, “As I Remember Them,” in TIHOT, p. 17. Virginia City: Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997 [1932]), pp. 122–125; Paul Fatout, Mark Twain in Virginia City (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), pp. 54–60; and MTAL, pp. 110–111.
Virginia City’s lawlessness Enterprise journalism: Effie Mona Mack, Mark Twain in Nevada (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), pp. 207–211, and MTAL, pp. 111–117. For more Nevada writing from the Comstock era, see Lawrence I. Berkove, ed., The Sagebrush Anthology: Literature from the Silver Age of the Old West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
Virginia City taught Twain “an unmitigated lie . . .”: SLC to Orion and Mary E. Clemens, October 21, 1862, MTL, vol. 1, p. 242. “Petrified Man” probably appeared in the Territorial Enterprise on October 4, 1862. Since there are no extant files of the Enterprise from these years, the surviving articles are those reprinted in other papers. Twain’s rivalry with G. T. Sewall: ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 155–156.
Newspapers throughout Nevada At least twelve newspapers in California and Nevada reprinted “Petrified Man.” Of these, eight reprinted it without comment; see ET&S, vol.1, p. 158. “I could not have gotten . . .”: quoted ibid., p. 156. Courtship of mining companies: MTAL, p. 114. “I am the most conceited ass . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, August 19, 1863, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 264.
Yet his swagger “Not a settler . . .”: quoted in Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 124–125.
The Comstock Virginia City’s colonial status, and SF’s dominance of the Far West: SFLF, pp. 9, 92–93, 351, and Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 124–126. More newspapers per capita than any other American city: ibid., pp. 158–159. Mark Twain’s first letter to the San Francisco Morning Call would appear on July 9, 1863.
By the 1860s Gold production in California peaked in 1852 and then sharply declined: see “Appendix A: Gold Production,” in Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), p. 345. Impact of Comstock and Civil War: SFLF, pp. 10–11, 90, 97–98; Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 77–113; James F. Carson, “California: Gold to Help Finance the War,” Journal of the West 14.1 (Jan. 1975), pp. 35–38; Thomas R. Walker, “Economic Opportunity on the Urban Frontier: Wealth and Nativity in Early San Francisco,” Explorations in Economic History 37.3 (2000), pp. 258–277; Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986 [1985]), p. 131; and David J. St. Clair, “The Gold Rush and the Beginnings of California Industry,” California History 77.4 (Winter, 1998/1999), pp. 185–208.
The Civil War would Origins of transcontinental railroad: Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), pp. 17–22, and David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Penguin, 2000 [1999]), pp. 3–118. Messianic rhetoric and anticipation: William Deverell, “Redemptive California? Re-thinking the Post–Civil War,” Rethinking History 11.1 (March 2007), pp. 65–66.
Any citizen July 4 festivities: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, July 6, 1863.
The news from First news of Gettysburg in SF: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, July 6, 1863. First news of Vicksburg in San Francisco: San Francisco Bulletin, July 7, 1863. Growing exhaustion with the war: SFLF, pp. 108–109. Bad turnout and 35 cases of public drunkenness: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, July 6, 1863.
King knew how King at the Metropolitan: ibid. King: Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986 [1973]), pp. 99–105. California politics during the Civil War: Gerald Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” Southern California Quarterly 64.2 (Summer 1982), pp. 115–132; Benjamin Franklin Gilbert, “California and the Civil War: A Bibliographical Essay,” California Historical Society Quarterly 40.4 (Dec. 1961), pp. 291–293; and Steven M. Avella, “California,” in David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Milita
ry History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 340.
Before speaking that day Reading and reception of poem: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, July 6, 1863. For the full text of the poem, see Bret Harte, The Writings of Bret Harte, vol. 20 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), pp. 328–330. George R. Stewart Jr., Bret Harte: Argonaut and Exile (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1959 [1935]), p. 116, speculates that Harte stayed home out of shyness.
Not that he wasn’t A stylish overcoat sporting a lamb collar: “Bret Harte’s Early Days in San Francisco,” San Francisco Morning Call, May 25, 1902. A felicitous flash of color: TAMT, pp. 163–164. Smile and agreeable voice: Charles A. Murdock, “Francis Bret Harte,” in California Writers Club Quarterly Bulletin 2.2 (June 1914), p. 1. Many contemporaries commented on Harte’s aloofness. According to the poet Joaquin Miller, Harte “did not mix greatly with men; nor did he talk much”: see Joaquin Miller, “He Writes for the Saturday Review His Reminiscences of Bret Harte,” New York Times, May 31, 1902.
And there was much Harte married Anna Griswold on August 11, 1862. Their first son, Griswold, was born a year later. Family and job history: BHAN, pp. 64–71, and BHGS, p. 18.
This shy, soft-spoken “vagrant keels”: Bret Harte, “The Legend of Monte del Diablo,” in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, ed. Gary Scharnhorst (New York: Penguin, 2001), p. 4. “district poorhouse”: Bret Harte, “Bohemian Papers: The City Hall,” Golden Era, March 29, 1863.
Few things escaped “the corrosive touch . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 108.643 (Dec. 1903), p. 155. “singular fraternity” and “free from the trammels of precedent”: Bret Harte, “The Rise of the ‘Short Story,’” in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, ed. Gary Scharnhorst, p. 254. See also Bret Harte, “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” ibid., pp. 268–285.