by Ben Tarnoff
By the summer Ina Coolbrith, “June,” Golden Era, June 7, 1863.
No matter that Australian coal gas and Alaskan ice: Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, p. 123. California agriculture: ibid., pp. 94–95, and Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846–1856, p. 47. From 1848 to 1853, nearly all flour consumed in California was imported into SF. Industry: ibid., pp. 64–67.
Harte led the charge “street music”: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: Glances over My Left Shoulder from a Corner Window, and Cogitations Generally,” Golden Era, July 8, 1860. “There are moments . . .”: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian’s ‘Sensation’ Play,” Golden Era, November 25, 1860. For the best of Harte’s later “Bohemian” columns, see “A Rail at the Rail,” Golden Era, April 12, 1863, and “Back Windows,” Golden Era, March 8, 1863.
Harte made an For an overview of Bohemia’s origins, see Roy Kotynek and John Cohassey, American Cultural Rebels: Avant-Garde and Bohemian Artists, Writers, and Musicians from the 1850s through the 1960s (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), pp. 5–20. “Bohemia has never . . .”: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian Concerning,” Golden Era, November 11, 1860.
CHAPTER TWO
On September 8 Virginia City in the summer of 1863: MTAL, pp. 123–124. “infernal racket” and “O, for the solitude . . .”: “‘Mark Twain’s’ Letter,” San Francisco Morning Call, July 9, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 254–258. Twain describes the fire in his next letter, in San Francisco Morning Call, July 30, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 259–261, and in a letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, August 5, 1863, in MTL, vol. 1, pp. 261–262. Twain’s cold: ET&S, vol. 1, p. 270.
Twain made the most Joked about it in the Call: “‘Mark Twain’s’ Letter,” San Francisco Morning Call, July 30, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 259–261. Two weeks at Tahoe: ibid., p. 270. “a voice . . .” and “an impalpable . . .”: Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, August 19, 1863, included in Mark Twain, Mark Twain of the Enterprise: Newspaper Articles and Other Documents, 1862–1864, ed. Henry Nash Smith and Frederick Anderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), p. 69. See also ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 270–283. “Everybody knows me . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, August 19, 1863, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 264.
He came to San Francisco Twain’s stagecoach trip and arrival in SF: Mark Twain, “Letter from Mark Twain,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, September 17, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 291–295. “How to Cure a Cold”: Golden Era, September 20, 1863, included ibid., pp. 296–303.
Fortunately, the Golden Era’s Dropping out of City College: CRP, chap. 2, p. 8.
In the fall “a kind of wildwood . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 239. “almost as quiet . . .”: CRP, chap. 2, p. 8. Stoddard’s arrival and Brayton Academy: CSCWS, pp. 60–61. Only an hour or so by ferry: George H. Harlan and Clement Fisher Jr., Of Walking Beams and Paddle Wheels: A Chronicle of San Francisco Bay Ferryboats (San Francisco: Bay Books, 1951), p. 19.
Before the semester House in Oakland: CRP, chap. 3, p. 2. The Oakland Creek is now known as the San Antonio Creek, the Oakland Estuary, or the Oakland Inner Harbor.
“Harte used to” “Harte used to have this room”: CRP, chap. 3, p. 2. “Much as I longed . . .”: ibid., p. 3.
The two men Autograph album: CRP, chap. 2, p. 9. Many of the entries were published in “Notable Autographs,” the Californian: A Western Monthly Magazine 1.4 (April 1880), pp. 353–357. “gifted owner”: ibid., p. 353. “I might have . . .” and “seemed to look . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 254. Stoddard’s blue eyes: GP, p. 156.
In time, they Harte’s poem for Stoddard, “Mary’s Album,” is also included in Bret Harte, The Writings of Bret Harte, vol. 20, pp. 306–307.
This bit of cynicism “throw the shadow . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 255.
Harte’s inscription aside “I conned my . . .”: CRP, chap. 3, p. 7. “at the long . . .”: ibid., p. 3.
Fortunately, there was “Once a week I could return to the bosom of my family and revel in the pageant of the streets that were so picturesque and peculiar in those days,” Stoddard wrote in CRP, chap. 2, p. 9. The ferry from Oakland landed near Davis Street between Vallejo and Broadway, according to San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1862–63 (San Francisco: Charles F. Robbins, 1863), p. 204. This was a few blocks south of where Clarke’s Point stood, a rocky promontory below Telegraph Hill where traders once landed.
Stoddard agonized over For more on Stoddard’s academic struggles, see CRP, chap. 3, pp. 5–8, and CSCWS, pp. 62–64. Twain dropped out of school and became a printer’s apprentice after his father died in March 1847; see MTB, vol. 1, pp. 74–75. Bret Harte ended his schooling at thirteen; see BHAN, p. 23. Coolbrith most likely attended school in St. Louis from 1846 to 1851, and in Los Angeles from 1855 to 1858; see ICLL, pp. 25–64. “Education consists . . .”: Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), p. 346.
By this standard Literary migration to SF: SFLF, pp. 146–175. Webb: ibid., pp. 133–135; George R. Stewart Jr., Bret Harte, pp. 119–120; and L. Anne Clark Doherty, “Webb, Charles Henry,” American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/articles/16/16-01729.html. Boom in journalism: Louis M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York: Knopf, 1954), p. 9. “I was quartered . . .”: New York Times, April 2, 1862.
In San Francisco Webb arrived in San Francisco on April 20, 1863. He came to the city as a correspondent for the New York Times, and joined the San Francisco Evening Bulletin as its literary editor. His arrival: SFLF, pp. 133–134. Description of Webb: ECW and Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” Pacific Monthly 19.3 (March 1908), p. 261. “decorative impediment . . .”: ibid.
Webb began his For a selection of Webb’s columns, signed under the pseudonym Inigo, see Golden Era, July 24, 1863; August 16, 1863; August 30, 1863; September 27, 1863; November 8, 1863; November 22, 1863; November 29, 1863.
No newcomer aroused “caught the eye . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “La Belle Menken,” National Magazine 21.5 (Feb. 1905), pp. 477–478. In his article, Stoddard includes the drawing that he claims was used as Menken’s publicity picture. A photograph of Menken that may have circulated at the time is included in Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 164. “[I]f she is half . . .”: Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, August 16, 1863.
By the time Scene at the premiere and “We doubt . . .”: Daily Alta California, August 25, 1863. Maguire’s Opera House in San Francisco had a chandelier with twenty gas burners: Karyl Lynn Zietz, The National Trust Guide to Great Opera Houses in America (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), p. 35.
Menken didn’t disappoint For an overview of Menken’s Mazeppa, see “Tom Maguire, Napoleon of the Stage: III. Man of Affairs,” California Historical Society Quarterly 21.1 (March 1942), p. 59, and SFLF, pp. 169–170. Her reception in SF: Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken, pp. 179–181, and Twain’s review in “Letter from Mark Twain,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, September 17, 1863, included in Mark Twain of the Enterprise, pp. 78–80.
Everyone went to “Grace” was a word often used in connection with Menken. For one example, see Golden Era, August 30, 1863. Whispering crowds: Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, August 30, 1863. “if the performance . . .”: San Francisco Evening Bulletin, quoted in Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken, p. 180. “Prudery is obsolete”: Sacramento Daily Union, quoted ibid. “People who have . . .”: Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, August 30, 1863.
Menken so thoroughly All quotes: “Letter from Mark Twain,�
�� Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, September 17, 1863, included in Mark Twain of the Enterprise, pp. 78–80.
Stoddard felt differently Stoddard’s fascination with Menken: Charles Warren Stoddard, “La Belle Menken,” pp. 477–488. “out of the common run”: ibid., pp. 477–478. “willowy elasticity” and “idealized duality of sex”: Golden Era, September 13, 1863, quoted in Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken, p. 182. Cigarettes: ibid., p. 216. In 1862, Menken married her third husband, Robert Henry Newell, who wrote satirical articles under the pseudonym Orpheus C. Kerr. Newell joined her in the Far West and wrote for the Golden Era; they divorced in 1865. “half-feminine masculinity”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “La Belle Menken,” p. 478. “physique . . . made whole”: from Stoddard’s December 1866 entry in his “Thought Book” (1865–1867), BANC, and quoted in GP, p. 24.
Menken’s sensuality wasn’t The term “Bohemians” originally came from Paris, where it described the young loafers who began haunting the cafés of the Latin Quarter in the 1830s. They took their name from the kingdom of Bohemia, once thought to be the homeland of Gypsies, and embraced lives of art and vice. In the late 1850s, the word migrated to New York, where it came to refer to a group centered on Pfaff’s. See Joanna Levin, Bohemia in America, 1858–1920 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 16–22, and Roy Kotynek and John Cohassey, American Cultural Rebels, pp. 15–20. Description of Clapp: Elihu Vedder, The Digressions of V: Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), p. 232; Junius Henri Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New York (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1869), pp. 152–153; and William Dean Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1901), pp. 69–70. “It attacked . . .”: ibid., p. 70.
Menken joined the “precedent” and “new free forms”: Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, p. 14. Menken’s love of Whitman: Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken, pp. 147–149; SFLF, p. 170; and Adah Isaacs Menken, “Swimming Against the Current,” Golden Era, November 15, 1863. “Swimming against . . .”: ibid.
The New York Bohemians The Era often republished articles from the New York press about the Pfaffians; see Joanna Levin, Bohemia in America, p. 113, and Golden Era, June 3, 1860. “fellows of infinite humor and rare fancy”: Golden Era, August 12, 1860. “Bohemian Capital”: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian’s ‘Christmas,’” Golden Era, December 23, 1860.
There was also “eccentricities . . .”: Fitz Hugh Ludlow, “A Good-Bye Article,” Golden Era, November 22, 1863. The Pfaffians who traveled to San Francisco in 1863 included Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Ada Clare, and Robert Henry Newell.
The legacy of By 1860, 39 percent of SF’s population was female. Compare this with 1852, when, according to the census, only 15 percent was female. The gender imbalance persisted for decades; as late as 1900, men still made up 55 percent of the population. See Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001 [1994]), p. 47. “nomads” in the “vast beehives”: Golden Era, February 17, 1861. “natural resting place” and “living tide”: Bret Harte, “Bohemian Feuilleton: Hotel Life,” Golden Era, April 21, 1861.
If San Francisco’s fluid “Bohemian” as working writer: Joanna Levin, Bohemia in America, pp. 67, 249; see also Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 158–159: “[N]o other American city supported so many newspapers and writers in proportion to the total population or prized so much its associations with the arts and artists.” “small portion . . .”: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: Glances over My Left Shoulder from a Corner Window, and Cogitations Generally,” Golden Era, July 8, 1860. Percentage of foreign-born male citizens: Philip J. Ethington, The Public City, p. 50. See also Barbara Berglund, Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846–1906 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), pp. 4–5. Mexican and Chinese clothing: Amelia Ransome Neville, The Fantastic City, p. 47. “bustling . . .”: Bret Harte, “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” p. 277.
There was another Seeing the Far West for the first time: Wallace Stegner, “Thoughts in a Dry Land,” Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (New York: Penguin, 1992), pp. 52–55. For eyewitness accounts of gold rush–era California, see Gary F. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush. For pre–gold rush narratives, see Joshua Paddison, ed., A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 1999), pp. 167–305. “to about twice . . .” and “I said we . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens, October 26, 1861, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 137.
This was what “westernization of the perceptions”: Wallace Stegner, “Thoughts in a Dry Land,” p. 54. Thomas Starr King on giant sequoias: letter to James T. Fields, June 26, 1862, HUNT.
The seemingly obvious Eastern views of the West: Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, pp. 216–249. “semi-barbarous citizens”: quoted ibid., p. 219.
This theory of progress “struggling up to civilization”: letter from Thomas Starr King to James T. Fields, October 29, 1862, HUNT.
These weren’t unusual Fireside Poets: James H. Justus, “The Fireside Poets: Hearthside Values and the Language of Care,” in A. Robert Lee, ed., Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (London: Vision Press, 1985), pp. 146–165.
New England had dominated “We have listened . . .”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley, eds., The Portable Emerson (New York: Penguin, 1981 [1946]), p. 70.
The New York Bohemians “solemn Philistines”: quoted in Roy Kotynek and John Cohassey, American Cultural Rebels, p. 17.
In October 1863 Harte’s story was called “The Legend of Monte del Diablo.” The Atlantic Monthly’s October 1863 issue also included Emerson’s poem “Voluntaries” and Thoreau’s essay “Life Without Principle.” Thoreau had died the year before. “I am sure . . .”: a letter from Thomas Starr King to James T. Fields, January 31, 1862, HUNT. “a fresh mind . . .”: Jessie Benton Frémont’s letter to James T. Fields, October 26, 1862, quoted in BHAN, p. 71.
A Californian writing “pushing, bustling . . .”: Bret Harte, “The Legend of Monte del Diablo,” included in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, ed. Gary Scharnhorst, p. 12. “deceitful lure”: ibid., p. 13.
As blasphemous as “the greatest disgrace . . .”: Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle,” in Atlantic Monthly 12.72 (Oct. 1863), p. 487. “a rush . . .” and “a general jail-delivery . . .”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Considerations by the Way,” in The Conduct of Life (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), p. 224.
These patronizing appraisals “bustling Yankee”: Bret Harte, “Bohemian Papers: The Mission Dolores,” Golden Era, March 22, 1863. “romantic and dramatic . . .”: Bret Harte, “The Rise of the ‘Short Story,’” p. 255.
Harte’s Atlantic coup “Your young friend . . .”: quoted in BHGS, p. 20. For more of Harte’s early fiction dealing with pioneer California, see “The Work on Red Mountain,” which later became “M’Liss,” and “Notes on Flood and Field,” both included in The Writings of Bret Harte, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896).
Twain, on the other Twain’s four features in the Era were “How to Cure a Cold,” Golden Era, September 20, 1863; “Mark Twain—More of Him” and “The Lick House Ball,” Golden Era, September 27, 1863; and “The Great Prize Fight,” Golden Era, October 11, 1863. Heady dose of high society: Mark Twain, “The Lick House Ball,” Golden Era, September 27, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 313–319. It’s not clear exactly when or how Twain acquired the nickname Washoe Giant; it appears in Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, November 8, 1863, as well as in Fitz Hugh Ludlow, “A Good-Bye Article,” Golden Era, November 22, 1863.
On October 28 “A Bloody Massacre near Carson” appeared in Virginia City Terri
torial Enterprise, October 28, 1863, included in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 320–326.
The story caused Power of Sacramento Daily Union: SFLF, pp. 110, 120, and Charles Carroll Goodwin, As I Remember Them (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Commercial Club, 1913), p. 79. “I Take It . . .” and “dividend cooking”: quoted in ET&S, vol. 1, p. 320. “The only . . .”: ibid., pp. 320–321.
The reaction was swift For the reaction to Twain’s article, see ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 320–323, and Richard G. Lillard, “Contemporary Reaction to ‘The Empire City Massacre,’” American Literature 16.3 (Nov. 1944), pp. 198–203. All quotes from Richard G. Lillard, “Contemporary Reaction to ‘The Empire City Massacre.’”
Although unrepentant in public “All this worried . . .”: Dan De Quille, as interviewed in Archibald Henderson, Mark Twain (1910), included in TIHOT, pp. 38–39. See Richard G. Lillard, “Contemporary Reaction to ‘The Empire City Massacre,’” p. 203, for a summary of the references to Twain’s hoax in the Nevada and California press. The Virginia City Daily Morning Union discussed it as late as October 29, 1866. For more on the dark side of Twain’s reputation, see Arthur McEwan, “In the Heroic Days” (1893), included in TIHOT, p. 22, and George E. Barnes, “Mark Twain as He Was Known during His Stay on the Pacific Slope,” included ibid., p. 47.
He was always “He liked . . .”: William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, ed. Marilyn Austin Baldwin (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967 [1910]), p. 37. Twain’s contemporaries left a substantial written record of his loyalty as a friend and his viciousness as an enemy; in MTAL, p. 33, Ron Powers writes that Twain saw friendship as “a value of nearly sacred proportions.” “In attack he was fiery . . .”: Dan De Quille, “Salad Days of Mark Twain,” included in TIHOT, p. 28.
By late 1863 “As a literary . . .”: Alta California, September 20, 1863. This article refers to the “celebrities” writing for the Era, counting Twain, Harte, and Webb among its star contributors. “graceful and elegant”: Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, September 27, 1863. “[S]o loudly . . .”: Charles Henry Webb, “Things,” Golden Era, October 25, 1863.