by Ben Tarnoff
Discouraged, Twain almost The friend was John McComb. His account is quoted in William Montgomery Clemens, Mark Twain: His Life and Work, A Biographical Sketch (San Francisco: Clemens, 1892), pp. 56–59. McComb says Twain claimed his salary as a pilot would be $300 per month. At the Call, he made between $100 and $140 per month. “You have a style . . .” and “If you don’t . . .”: ibid., p. 58. “unfettered . . .”: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, ed. James M. Cox (New York: Penguin, 1986 [1883]), p. 122.
San Francisco broadened “fifty-six Chinese dialects”: TAMT, p. 156.
But San Francisco’s greatest “sterling literary weekly” and “Some of the most . . .”: San Francisco Morning Call, September 4, 1864, included in Mark Twain, Clemens of the “Call,” p. 63.
He soon had The building at 612 Commercial Street housed the offices of the Golden Era, the San Francisco Morning Call, and the annex of the local branch of the US Mint, where Harte worked; see Roy Morris Jr., Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 158, and TAMT, pp. 161, 164. All quotes: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 47.
To Twain, Harte All quotes: TAMT, pp. 163–164. Harte took over as editor of the Californian from September 10 to November 19, 1864; see ET&S, vol. 2, p. 67. Harte would also take over the following year, from April to December 1865, and then again from April to August 1866; see MTR, p. 699.
It was a miracle “spoke in a slow . . .”: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 47.
The meeting went All quotes: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, September 25, 1864, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 312.
He would soon “It was true . . .” and “broad hints . . .”: James J. Ayers, Gold and Sunshine: Reminiscences of Early California (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1922), p. 224. “It was like a father . . .”: TAMT, p. 160. Long-delayed revenge: ibid., pp. 160–161. See also MTR, p. 404, and MTAL, p. 146. Barnes’s account: George E. Barnes, “Mark Twain as He Was Known during His Stay on the Pacific Slope,” p. 48.
Losing his job $25 a week at the Call versus $50 a month at the Californian: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, September 25, 1864, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 312. “It was a terrible . . .”: George E. Barnes, “Mark Twain as He Was Known during His Stay on the Pacific Slope,” p. 48. “Mark was the laziest . . .”: quoted in Nigey Lennon, The Sagebrush Bohemian, p. 49.
For the next Twain’s nine pieces for the Californian were “A Notable Conundrum,” October 1, 1864; “Concerning the Answer to That Conundrum,” October 8, 1864; “Still Further Concerning That Conundrum,” October 15, 1864; “Whereas,” October 22, 1864; “A Touching Story of George Washington’s Boyhood,” October 29, 1864; “Daniel in the Lion’s Den—and Out Again All Right,” November 5, 1864; “The Killing of Julius Caesar ‘Localized,’” November 12, 1864; “A Full and Reliable Account of the Extraordinary Meteoric Shower of Last Saturday Night,” November 19, 1864; “Lucretia Smith’s Soldier,” December 3, 1864. These pieces are included in ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 66–133. “deeply grieved . . .”: Mark Twain, “Whereas,” ET&S, vol. 2, p. 91. Twain treated the Civil War more directly in “Lucretia Smith’s Soldier,” about a woman who shames her lover into enlisting.
Before Twain could dig Steve Gillis’s beatdown of the bartender: William R. Gillis, Memories of Mark Twain and Steve Gillis (Sonora, CA: The Banner, 1924), pp. 29–33; MTB, vol. 1, p. 265; and MTAL, p. 149. Twain left San Francisco on December 4, 1864; see ET&S, vol. 2, p. 134.
If Gillis hadn’t “queer vicissitudes”: MTR, p. 405.
In December 1864 Stoddard stayed in Nuuanu Valley, two miles from Honolulu. His lounging time and journey with Perry: CSCWS, pp. 79–82, and GP, pp. 27–30.
Touring the island Week at Hilo: CSCWS, p. 81. All quotes: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Kane-Aloha,” The Island of Tranquil Delights: A South Sea Idyl and Others (Boston: Herbert B. Turner, 1905), pp. 260–261.
Perry strongly disapproved Stoddard calls Perry his “chaperone” throughout his sketch “Kane-Aloha.” “I cut loose . . .”: from an unpublished autobiographical sketch, quoted in CSCWS, p. 82. “We reveled in . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Kane-Aloha,” p. 268. “We had certainly . . .”: ibid., p. 271.
What kind of transgression Emotional parting: ibid., pp. 273–276. For an overview of Stoddard’s views on the Pacific, see Paul Lyons, “From Man-Eaters to Spam-Eaters: Cannibal Tours, Lotus-Eaters, and the (Anti)Development of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Imaginings of Oceania,” American Pacificism: Oceania in the U.S. Imagination (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 122–123.
Back home, he “never become . . .”: CRP, chap. 3, p. 9. Stoddard would contribute seventeen poems to the Californian in 1865; see CSCWS, p. 87.
He couldn’t have Eastern plagiarism and Webb’s protests: Californian, February 4, 1865, and ET&S, vol. 2, p. 127. “nearly bankrupted . . .”: Charles Henry Webb (as John Paul), John Paul’s Book: Moral and Instructive: Consisting of Travels, Tales, Poetry, and Like Fabrications (Hartford, CT: Columbian Book Company, 1874), p. 540. The Californian running out of money: MTAL, p. 153. The paper’s offices moved to 532 Merchant Street, between Montgomery and Sansome Streets, as announced in the Californian, April 8, 1865.
But the future Celebrations in SF: San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 4, 1865.
At 10:20 p.m. Times of Lincoln’s assassination and death: Edward Steers Jr., The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. xxxviii. Mob attack on anti-Lincoln papers: San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 17, 1865.
That night Funeral procession: San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 19, 1865.
I have read Harte’s reaction and all quotes: Bret Harte, “Our Last Offering,” Californian, April 22, 1865.
Everyone knew that All quotes: ibid. Lincoln as “rail-splitter”: Ronald C. White Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2009), pp. 3–4, 321, 331.
In the summer Harte published thirteen “Condensed Novels” in the Californian between July 1865 and June 1866, later reprinted in F. Bret Harte, Condensed Novels and Other Papers (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1867), pp. 11–147. Parody of Dickens: “The Haunted Man,” ibid., pp. 56–66. Parody of Braddon: “Selina Sedilia,” ibid., pp. 29–39. Parody of Cooper: “Muck-a-Muck: A Modern Indian Novel, After Cooper,” ibid., pp. 11–20.
He showed less No fiction during his years at the Californian: BHGS, pp. 25–26, and BHAN, p. 78. Birth of Francis King Harte: BHAN, p. 73. Feather duster on his back: Alvin Fay Harlow, Bret Harte of the Old West (New York: J. Messner, 1943), p. 225.
His friends admired All quotes: Charles Henry Webb, “Inigoings,” Californian, February 10, 1866.
Anna Griswold Harte Anna Griswold Harte: Josephine Clifford McCrackin, “A Letter from a Friend,” Overland Monthly 40.3 (Sept. 1902), pp. 222–225; BHAN, pp. 73, 91; Richard O’Connor, Bret Harte: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 84; and BHGS, pp. 21–23. In 1941, Harte’s grandson Geoffrey Bret Harte wrote, “My grandparents had little in common. In the final analysis, what my grandfather most wanted was peace in the home and this I believe he never got. In our age this problem would have been solved by divorce; in theirs such a course was unthinkable.” Quoted BHGS, pp. 22–23. Photographs of Anna: ibid., p. 24, and BHAN, p. 168. “positively plain”: Elinor Mead Howells to Victoria and Aurelia H. Howells, March 17, 1871, in Elinor Mead Howells, If Not Literature: Letters of Elinor Mead Howells, ed. Ginette de B. Merrill and George Arms (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988), p. 137.
The Californian helped Coolbrith’s appearance: George Wharton James, “Ina Donna Coolbrith: An Historical Sketch and Appreciation,” p. 315; ICLL, p. 113; and Charles Warren Stoddard, “Ina D. Coolbrith,” Magazine of Poetry: A Quarterly Review 1.1 (1889), p. 313. “the ripe glow . . .”: ibid. Anna Griswold was from New York, the d
aughter of a wealthy businessman. “might easily have . . . ,” “the contralto voice,” “gentle melancholy,” and “Spanish and semitropical”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Ina D. Coolbrith,” p. 313. “We used to shout . . .”: ICHC.
Coolbrith gave Harte Ina Coolbrith, “The Mother’s Grief,” Californian, March 25, 1865. Pair of meandering essays: Ina Coolbrith (as Meg Merrill), “Not an Intercepted Letter,” Californian, February 4, 1865, and Ina Coolbrith (as Meg Merrill), “Meg Merrilliana: A Declaration of First Love,” Californian, March 4, 1865. “Unfortunately, I seldom . . .”: ibid.
Coolbrith would never Menken’s marriages: Michael Foster and Barbara Foster, A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menken, 1835–1868, America’s Original Superstar (Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2011), p. 307. “Why doesn’t some . . .”: IC to CWS, May 25, 1874, HUNT. “How grand the Bay . . .”: Ina Coolbrith (as Meg Merrill), “Meg Merrilliana: A Declaration of First Love,” Californian, March 4, 1865.
On December 4, 1864 Twain’s arrival at Jackass Hill: MTAL, p. 149. “forlorn remnant”: TAMT, p. 176. Twain’s memories of mining country: ibid., pp. 175–177, and MTR, pp. 391–395, 412–420. See MTR, p. 704, for information on Jackass Hill. In 1864, California produced $24 million worth of gold; in 1865, it produced $17.9 million. Compare this with the gold rush peak of $81.2 million in 1852. See “Appendix A: Gold Production” in Rodman W. Paul, California Gold, p. 345.
The cabin at Jackass Hill “headquarters of all Bohemians . . .”: quoted in Roy Morris Jr., Lighting Out for the Territory, p. 168. Harte’s stay at Jackass Hill: BHAN, pp. 43–46, and TAMT, pp. 162–163. “ragged and hungry”: quoted in Charles Carroll Goodwin, As I Remember Them, p. 93. Jim Gillis demanding his money back: ibid.
Twain was in Early days in Jim Gillis’s cabin: MTAL, pp. 150–151; MTB, vol. 1, pp. 266–270; and MTN, pp. 68–78. His last piece for the Californian was “Lucretia Smith’s Soldier” on December 3, 1864; his next would be “An Unbiased Criticism,” on March 18, 1865.
But rural California Byron, Shakespeare, and Dickens: MTN, p. 70. Jim Gillis: Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, pp. 169–172; MTAL, p. 150; and TAMT, pp. 181–182. “stand up before . . . ,” “enjoying each . . . ,” and “monstrous fabrications”: ibid.
In Angel’s Camp Traveling to Angel’s Camp in late January 1865: MTN, pp. 71–72. Twain’s attempt at mining: William R. Gillis, Memories of Mark Twain and Steve Gillis, pp. 37–38, and MTB, vol. 1, pp. 270–273. “marooned miners”: TAMT, p. 176. “T.—Age 38 . . .”: MTN, p. 74. “beans & dishwater” and “Hellfire, General Debility . . .”: ibid., p. 78. “Coleman with his jumping . . .”: ibid., p. 80.
The story involved “austere facts” and “was not telling . . .”: Mark Twain, “Private History of the ‘Jumping Frog’ Story,” in Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, vol. 2, p. 153. Albert Bigelow Paine, in MTB, vol. 1, p. 271, claims that the narrator of the story was Ben Coon, identified in Twain’s notebook as a riverboat pilot from Illinois whom he met at Angel’s Camp; see MTN, p. 75. However, Twain never definitively identified the tale’s narrator; see ibid.
Quite possibly they Provenance of jumping frog tale: Roger Penn Cuff, “Mark Twain’s Use of California Folklore in His Jumping Frog Story,” Journal of American Folklore 65.256 (April–June 1952), pp. 155–158; Hennig Cohen, “Twain’s Jumping Frog: Folktale to Literature to Folktale,” Western Folklore 22.1 (Jan. 1963), pp. 17–18; Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, pp. 172–175; and Oscar Lewis, The Origin of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1931), pp. 5–27. A version of the story had appeared in the Sonora Herald in 1853, written by James W. E. Townsend, who had worked for both the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and the Golden Era. It’s possible that Twain read it in the Herald, heard it from Townsend, or first discovered it much earlier, in Missouri.
Twain adored the story “one gleam . . .” and “quoted from . . .”: SLC to James N. Gillis, January 26, 1870, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 36. Twain returned to San Francisco on February 26, 1865; see MTN, p. 82. “offences against public decency”: “California Nomenclature,” Californian, December 2, 1865; see also “The Pioneers,” Californian, September 16, 1865. “He said the men . . . ,” “half unconsciously . . . ,” and “It was as graphic . . .”: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 47.
Twain mimicked the Discovering Ward’s letters: MTN, p. 82. “Write it . . .”: quoted in MTB, vol. 1, p. 277. See also ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 264–265.
Even with the deadline Twain’s delays: ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 265–269. “The idea of writing the Jumping Frog Story only very slowly took shape in my mind,” he explained in 1897. Twain’s return to SF literary life: MTAL, pp. 152–153.
He wasn’t the same Mark Twain, “An Unbiased Criticism,” Californian, March 18, 1865, in ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 134–143.
He was experimenting For a selection of Twain’s pieces from this period, see ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 134–261. Twain began writing for the Enterprise again in June 1865: Edgar Marquess Branch, introduction to ET&S, vol. 1, p. 30. Most of his Enterprise letters are lost, but a handful remain. For a selection of his anti-police articles, see Mark Twain, “Thief Catching,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, December 19, 1865, included in Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s San Francisco, ed. Bernard Taper (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2003 [1963]), pp. 157–158; Mark Twain, “The Black Hole of San Francisco,” Territorial Enterprise, December 29, 1865, included ibid., pp. 171–173; and Mark Twain, “What Have the Police Been Doing?” Territorial Enterprise, reprinted in Golden Era, January 21, 1866, included ibid., pp. 189–191. Twain also wrote about the police for the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, and produced a couple of parodies of children’s literature for the San Francisco Youths’ Companion; see James E. Caron, Mark Twain, pp. 202–208, and MTB, vol. 1, p. 264. “Mark Twain is still . . .”: San Francisco Examiner, February 10, 1866, quoted in Fred Kaplan, The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Anchor, 2005 [2003]), p. 137.
Twain had always Moralist of the Main: MTAL, p. 153. “All right . . .”: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1918 [1885]), p. 297.
As a prankster Praise from Gold Hill News: “The Californian,” Gold Hill News, July 5, 1863, quoted in Edgar Marquess Branch, introduction to ET&S, vol. 1, p. 31.
He also earned “foremost” and “among . . .”: “American Humor and Humorists,” New York Round Table, September 9, 1865, quoted in Edgar Marquess Branch, introduction to ET&S, vol. 1, p. 32. Rising eastern profile: ibid., pp. 32–33, and ET&S, vol. 2, p. 268. “To my thinking . . .”: Charles Henry Webb, “Letter from San Francisco,” Sacramento Union, November 3, 1865, quoted in Edgar Marquess Branch, introduction to ET&S, vol. 1, p. 33.
CHAPTER FOUR
The American frontier Daniel Boone wrestling bears: Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2007), pp. xiv–xvi. Davy Crockett battling a twelve-foot catfish: from the 1836 edition of Davy Crockett’s Almanack, discussed in Michael A. Lofaro, introduction to James Atkins Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, ed. John B. Shackford (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994 [1956]), p. xii. Utah grasshoppers: C. Grant Loomis, “Hart’s Tall Tales from Nevada,” California Folklore Quarterly 4.3 (July 1945), p. 238, and Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, p. 150. Arkansas corn: Thomas Bangs Thorpe, “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” in Southern Frontier Humor, eds. M. Thomas Inge and Ed Piacentino, p. 134. “borderland of fable”: Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, p. 149. See also Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000 [1973]).
These forms found Mark Twain, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” New York Saturday Press, November 18, 1865, included in ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 282–288.
The path to publication Two incomplete drafts: “The Only Rel
iable Account of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “Angel’s Camp Constable,” both written between September 1 and October 16, 1865. See ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 262–281.
Money always made John Marshall Clemens’s bad business sense: MTAL, pp. 9–10, 14–15, 20, 23, 38. Wages from Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle: SLC to Orion and Mary E. Clemens, October 19 and 20, 1865, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 324. Between July and December 1865, Twain wrote only seven articles for the Californian; see ibid., p. 325. He published “Advice for Good Little Boys” in the San Francisco Youths’ Companion, July 1, 1865, and “Advice for Good Little Girls” in the same magazine on either July 1 or July 8, 1865; see ET&S, vol. 2, pp. 240–245. He also published three letters in the Napa County Reporter, from November to December 1865; see ibid., pp. 297–299, 371–375, 380–384, 481–512.
In Roughing It “slinking,” “I slunk from . . . ,” and “I felt meaner . . .”: MTR, pp. 405–406. His reminiscences in Roughing It may be a composite of two periods of financial hardship: the first in 1864, before his departure for Jackass Hill, and the second in 1865, after his return to SF. See MTR, p. 701. “There is now . . . ,” “the end of his credit,” and “Having become . . .”: “A Sheik on the Move,” San Francisco Morning Call, October 29, 1865. “I put the pistol . . .”: from a marginal note in Twain’s copy of Letters of James Russell Lowell, dated April 21, 1909, quoted in MTL, vol. 1, p. 325. He recalled his near suicide as an “experience of 1866,” but it probably took place in late 1865, before the publication of “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.”