by Ben Tarnoff
These disappointments put Bret Harte, “The Poet of Sierra Flat,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1871), pp. 115–120, also included in Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, ed. Gary Scharnhorst, pp. 98–107. “[S]carcely as striking . . .”: Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19, 1871; see also New York Evening Post, June 22, 1871, and BHGS, p. 75.
May, June, July The Albany Evening Journal of July 11, 1871, described Harte’s attitude at the Phi Beta Kappa ceremony as “plainly indifferent, not to say contemptuous.” In Crowding Memories, p. 142, Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich agreed, observing that Harte “did not recognize the dignity of the occasion.” William Dean Howells took a more charitable view. Harte “took the whole disastrous business lightly, gayly, leniently, kindly, as that golden temperament of his enabled him to take all the good or bad of life”; see William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 158. “It is a serious damage . . .”: quoted in BHGS, p. 85.
Beneath his insouciant “exodus from the exile”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 154. Harte discussed his hatred for California with Anna Dickinson in Chicago; see Dickinson’s letter to her mother, included in James Harvey Young, “Anna Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 76.1 (Jan. 1952), pp. 44–45. He expressed similar sentiments to M. E. W. Sherwood in Newport; see M. E. W. Sherwood, “Bret Harte: Mrs. Sherwood Writes Her Reminiscences, Dating from the Success of ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp,’” New York Times, May 10, 1902. “bewildered . . .”: Noah Brooks, “Harte’s Early Days: Reminiscences by Noah Brooks, Who Knew Him in California,” New York Times, May 24, 1902. “this noisy yet . . .”: quoted in BHGS, p. 75. Harte’s house hunting in upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut: ibid., pp. 75–76. “[W]hat have become . . .”: BH to WDH, May 15, 1871, quoted ibid. Newport days: ibid., pp. 76–84. “left Newport in debt . . .”: TAMT, p. 387. “gotten so little . . .”: quoted in Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” p. 266.
All of Harte’s “There was a happy . . .”: TAMT, p. 166.
Neither Charles Warren Stoddard Harte did remain in touch with at least two Californians after going East, however, at least briefly. These were Josephine Clifford McCrackin, his Overland assistant, and Ambrose Bierce.
Coolbrith never recovered “I had my own heartache . . .”: quoted in Edward F. O’Day, “Varied Types XLI—Ina Coolbrith,” Town Talk, September 30, 1911, clipping from the Coolbrith scrapbooks held by OAK. “toiled and suffered . . .”: ECW. “[My] duties . . .”: IC to CWS, January 26 [year unknown, but certainly before Stoddard’s departure for Europe in 1873], HUNT. “I have written nothing by daylight for over a year,” she told Stoddard. Commencement ode and Overland poems: ICLL, pp. 114–117, and OAK scrapbooks. Coolbrith published seven poems in the Overland in 1871. “The sorrow . . .”: Ina Coolbrith, “Two Pictures,” Overland Monthly 7.2 (Aug. 1871), p. 130.
She couldn’t help it “I cannot sit . . .”: Ina Coolbrith, “Marah,” Overland Monthly 10.6 (June 1873), p. 545. Miller’s daughter: ICLL, p. 120. Disappearance of father: ibid., pp. 124–125. “The last of the brood . . .”: IC to CWS, August 27, 1873, HUNT.
Stoddard was no stranger Harte’s silence and Stoddard: CSCWS, pp. 150–151. “Many of Harte’s old friends felt hurt at his silence after he left for the eastern states. He seemed to quite ignore California and Californians,” Stoddard wrote in “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” p. 266. Charles Warren Stoddard, “A Prodigal in Tahiti,” Atlantic Monthly 30.181 (Nov. 1872), pp. 610–621. “infinitely the best . . .”: WDH to CWS, November 13, 1872, HUNT. “Do send us . . .”: WDH to CWS, October 25, 1872, HUNT.
Encouraged, Stoddard powered Departure for Samoa and decision to stay in Hawaii: CSCWS, pp. 158–161, and GP, pp. 55–57. Search for publisher: CSCWS, pp. 164–165, and GP, pp. 57–58. “I have spoken . . .”: WDH to CWS, January 3, 1873, HUNT.
South-Sea Idyls Charles Warren Stoddard, South-Sea Idyls (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873). “[B]arbarism has . . .”: SLC to Walt Whitman, April 2, 1870, included in CSCWS, p. 136.
This voice was Reception of South-Sea Idyls: GP, pp. 61–63. “[T]hey have each . . .” and “careless . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Recent Literature,” Atlantic Monthly 32.194 (Dec. 1873), pp. 740–741. Chronicle commission and departure: CSCWS, pp. 167–168.
Coolbrith was in “When I received . . .” and “You cannot avoid . . .”: IC to CWS, August 27, 1873, HUNT.
Stoddard would remain Salt Lake City: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Saints Alive!” San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1873. Chicago: Charles Warren Stoddard, “The Modern Babylon,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 21, 1873. New York: Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Gotham,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 1873. “I shall be among . . .”: WDH to CWS, June 2, 1873, HUNT. Stoddard sent a photograph of himself to Howells before coming East. Howells responded that Stoddard’s face “is expressive of everything that I liked best in your writings.” “More delightful . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 136.811 (Dec. 1917), p. 148.
Stoddard liked the East Departure for England and arrival in Liverpool: CSCWS, pp. 169–170. Finding Twain: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Mark Twain,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 1878, and SLC to CWS, October 16, 1873, in Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, and Harriet Elinor Smith, eds., Mark Twain’s Letters Newly Published 1, accessed online via Mark Twain Project Online, University of California, Berkeley.
A big boost Twain’s fears: SLC to David Gray, June 10, 1880, in MTLO and MTAL, p. 321.
Twain had nothing Roughing It’s sales: Harriet Elinor Smith, foreword to MTR, p. xxvii. Royalties: MTAL, p. 318. Critical reception: ibid., p. 321, and MCMT, pp. 148–149. All quotes: William Dean Howells, “Recent Literature,” Atlantic Monthly 29.176 (June 1872), p. 754.
Twain felt relieved “I am as uplifted . . .”: SLC to WDH, May 22–29 [?], 1872, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 95. In My Mark Twain, p. 15, Howells writes of Twain, “We were natives of the same vast Mississippi Valley; and Missouri was not so far from Ohio but that we were akin in our first knowledges of woods and fields as we were in our early parlance. I had outgrown the use of mine through my greater bookishness, but I gladly recognized the phrases which he employed for their lasting juiciness and the long-remembered savor they had on his mental palate.”
He also found Growing friendship between Twain and Howells: SLC to WDH, March 18, 1872, in MTL, vol. 5, pp. 58–59; SLC to WDH, June 15, 1872, ibid., pp. 102–108; and SLC to WDH, March 13, 1873, ibid., pp. 317–319. For an overview of their relationship, see Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, William Dean Howells, pp. 148–173.
Over the years “Lincoln of our literature”: William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, p. 84. “the superiority of the vulgar”: William Dean Howells, W. D. Howells as Critic, ed. Edwin H. Cady (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 77.
But that was Deteriorating relationship between Harte and Howells: BHGS, pp. 76–77. “a queer absent-minded . . .”: Anne Fields’s diary entry for January 12, 1872, reprinted in M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess, p. 240. “catastrophe”: quoted in BHGS, p. 86.
No one could’ve “burned his ships”: quoted in Anna Dickinson’s letter of February 22, 1871, to her mother, included in James Harvey Young, “Anna Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte,” p. 45. Harte-Howells correspondence on “Concepción de Argüello”: Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East: Some Unpublished Letters,” pp. 328–331. “my dear boy”: BH to WDH, March 25, 1872, ibid., p. 328. “Yankee Professors” and “I am careless . . .”: ibid., p. 329.
Even the affable Howells’s response, Harte’s apology, and reconciliation: BHAN, p. 122. Bret Harte, “Concepción de Argüello”: Atlantic Monthly 29.175 (May 1872), pp. 603–605. Expiration of contract: BHGS, pp. 85–89. Photograph fro
m 1872 included ibid., p. 88. Harte’s debts: ibid., pp. 77–78. “He was utterly . . .”: Noah Brooks, “Harte’s Early Days: Reminiscences by Noah Brooks, Who Knew Him in California,” New York Times, May 24, 1902.
On June 13 Harte’s arrival in Hartford: MTL, vol. 5, p. 105. Langdon’s worsening health: SLC to Orion and Mollie Clemens, May 15, 1872, ibid., p. 86. Death of Langdon: MTAL, p. 319, and MCMT, p. 149.
One cold morning Carriage ride: TAMT, pp. 249–250. “Yes, I killed him”: William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, p. 12. “I have always felt . . .”: TAMT, p. 249.
He went to “sparkling sarcasms . . .”: TAMT, p. 387. Harte’s financial troubles and Twain’s loan: ibid. Twain persuading Bliss to give Harte a book contract: BH to SLC, July 25, 1872, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 134. “Tell Mrs. Clemens . . .” and “You ought to . . .”: BH to SLC, June 17, 1872, ibid., pp. 105–106.
Harte’s own conjugal Anna Griswold Harte’s illness: BHGS, p. 79. Jessamy’s illness: ibid., pp. 87–89. Move to Morristown: ibid., p. 87. “sleepy dolce . . .” and “Could not you and I . . .”: BH to SLC, July 25, 1872, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 134.
On August 21, 1872 Twain’s departure for England: MTAL, pp. 322–325, and MCMT, p. 151. “I do miss him . . .” and “England is a subject . . .”: quoted in Edith Colgate Salsbury, Susy and Mark Twain: Family Dialogues (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 10. For Twain’s early thoughts on England, see MTL, vol. 5, pp. 584–585.
What he didn’t Twain’s trip: “Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journals” in MTL, vol. 5, pp. 583–629; SLC to OLC, September 11, 1872, ibid., pp. 154–158; SLC to OLC, September 15, 1872, ibid., pp. 159–160; SLC to OLC, September 22, 1872, ibid., pp. 169–170; SLC to OLC, September 25, 1872, ibid., pp. 178–182; SLC to OLC, October 3, 1872, ibid., pp. 188–190; SLC to OLC, October 12, 1872, ibid., pp. 196–197; SLC to OLC, October 25, 1872, ibid., pp. 199–204. State banquet: SLC to OLC, November 10, 1872, ibid., pp. 221–222. Dinner held by sheriffs of London: SLC to OLC, September 28, 1872, ibid., pp. 183–188. “I was never . . .” and “I did not know . . .”: ibid., p. 184. Twain’s popularity in England: MCMT, pp. 151–153, and William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, pp. 39–40.
The English craze English reception of Artemus Ward and Twain: MCMT, pp. 152–154; Dennis Welland, Mark Twain in England (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978), pp. 15–63; and Judith Yaross Lee, “The International Twain and American Nationalist Humor: Vernacular Humor as a Post-Colonial Rhetoric,” Mark Twain Annual 6.1 (Nov. 2008), pp. 33–49. “peculiar humor . . .”: Once a Week, December 14, 1872, quoted ibid., p. 33. See also the English reviews of Twain’s books in Louis J. Budd, ed., Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 82–83, 102–103.
Flattered wasn’t the “Too much company . . .”: SLC to OLC, September 11, 1872, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 155. Tower of London: ibid. Westminster Abbey: “Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journals,” ibid., p. 600. Handel’s Messiah: SLC to OLC, September 25, 1872, ibid., p. 179. Spectator letter: SLC to the editor of the London Spectator, September 20, 1872, ibid., pp. 163–168. “I am not going abroad . . .”: SLC to OLC, October 12, 1872, ibid., p. 196.
He kept his The full entourage accompanying Twain to England in May 1873 included Livy, their baby daughter Susy, Susy’s nurse Nellie Bermingham, Livy’s friend Clara Spaulding, and Samuel C. Thompson, a twenty-five-year-old former journalist who briefly served Twain as his personal secretary; see MTAL, p. 334. Thatched roofs: OLC to her sister, May 31, 1873, quoted in MTL, vol. 5, p. 371. Shakespeare’s tomb: ibid., p. 388. Robert Browning and Anthony Trollope: ibid., p. 397, and SLC to Mary Mason Fairbanks, July 6, 1873, ibid., p. 402.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By October 1873 “I am blue and cross and homesick”: undated letter by Livy, probably to her mother or sister, quoted in MTL, vol. 5, p. 457. Panic of 1873: Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968 [1964]), pp. 213–226, and Richard White, Railroaded, pp. 82–84.
One night after Twain and Livy’s reaction to the Panic of 1873: SLC to John Brown, September 22 and 25, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, pp. 439–442; OLC to her mother, September 25, 1873, ibid., pp. 443–444; and MCMT, p. 168. More than $10,000: SLC to Thomas W. Knox, September 10, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 435. Twain lectured at the Queen’s Concert Rooms in Hanover Square from October 13 to 18, 1873, with five evening performances and one matinee; see Fred W. Lorch, The Trouble Begins at Eight, pp. 139–143. Liverpool performance: ibid., p. 143, and Paul Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, p. 182. Twain and his family departed Liverpool for New York on October 21, 1873.
He wouldn’t be gone Dropping off Livy and family at Hartford: MTL, vol. 5, p. 458. Twain sailed for England from New York on November 8, 1873. Lying in his berth: SLC to OLC, November 10 and 17, 1873, ibid., p. 473. Back at the Langham: SLC to OLC, November 20, 1873, ibid., p. 478.
He had returned The Gilded Age’s composition: MCMT, pp. 159–167; MTAL, pp. 328–333; and Louis J. Budd, introduction to Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age, pp. xi–xxxi. By late April 1873, the manuscript was finished; Twain and Warner signed the contract with Elisha Bliss the following month.
Ever since moving Twain’s view of postwar America: MCMT, pp. 154–170; Mark Twain, “Open Letter to Commodore Vanderbilt,” Packard’s Monthly (March 1869), pp. 89–91, and Mark Twain, “The Revised Catechism,” New York Tribune September 27, 1871. “an era of incredible rottenness”: SLC to Orion Clemens, March 27, 1875, in MTL, vol. 6, p. 427.
Twain’s relationship to this Twain and the new economy: MCMT, pp. 95–96, 158–159. The Gilded Age as first novel sold by subscription: MTL, vol. 5, p. 362. Twain’s marketing efforts: SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., November 5, 1873, ibid., pp. 461–470.
This was why Twain arranged for The Gilded Age’s publication in England by Routledge & Sons, and copyrighted the edition to protect his interests. See SLC to T. B. Pugh, July 27, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, pp. 421–422; SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., July 16, 1873, ibid., pp. 416–417; SLC to Charles Dudley Warner, July 16, 1873, ibid., pp. 417–418; and SLC to Elisha Bliss, July 27, 1873, ibid., pp. 420–421. Twain hired Stoddard as his secretary in October 1873, before escorting his family home to Hartford and returning to London in November; see CSCWS, pp. 173–175, and SLC to CWS, October 19, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, pp. 456–458.
Stoddard had little “I hired him . . .”: AMT, p. 161. “He seized me . . .”: quoted in George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” National Magazine (Aug. 1911), p. 669. “long, long talks . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 70.
On December 1 Twain and Stoddard in London: Charles Warren Stoddard, “Mark Twain,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 1878; Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, pp. 64–74; George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” pp. 662, 669–671; and Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” pp. 262–263; and AMT, pp. 161–163. The London fog of the 1873–1874 winter: Philip Eden, Great British Weather Disasters (London: Continuum, 2008), pp. 68–74, and SLC to OLC, December 9, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 497. “nearly broke my heart”: SLC to OLC, December 13 and 15, 1873, ibid., p. 512.
Finally, the time Twain’s 1873 performances in London: Fred W. Lorch, The Trouble Begins at Eight, pp. 140–149, and Paul Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, pp. 179–188. Rubbing his hands: George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” p. 669. “The moment . . .”: quoted ibid. “delicious dialect of California”: Evening Standard (London), October 14, 1873, quoted in Paul Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, p. 180.
He opened with Twain delivered his Hawaii lecture every evening from December 1 through December 5, 1873, with a matinee on December 3 and another on December 6. He switched to his Roughing It lecture on December 9, and continued it through December 20; see Fred W. Lorch, The Trouble Begins a
t Eight, pp. 143–144. Stoddard’s observations: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, pp. 67–68. “still as statues . . . ,” faces in the crowd, and “Bully audiences”: SLC to OLC, December 16, 1873, in MTL, vol. 5, p. 521.
Lecturing energized him Negro spiritual, “With fear and trembling . . .” and “Yours was so damned . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” p. 263. “knew the art . . .”: quoted in George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” p. 669. Stoddard remembered the cocktails being made from bourbon. But the active ingredient was almost certainly Scotch, per the recipe given in SLC to OLC, January 2, 1874, in MTL, vol. 6, p. 3: “a bottle of Scotch whiskey, a lemon, & some crushed sugar, & a bottle of Angostura bitters.” “Ever since I have been in London I have taken in a wine-glass what is called a cock-tail (made with those ingredients,) before breakfast, before dinner, & just before going to bed,” he told Livy.
Twain was a born “gorgeous seclusion”: quoted in George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” p. 662. “Very, very . . .”: ibid., p. 670.
This wasn’t the “his youth . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, “In Old Bohemia II: The ‘Overland’ and the Overlanders,” p. 263. Church bells: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 70. “now talking . . .”: quoted in George Wharton James, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” pp. 669–670.
A vivid panorama “I could have . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 70.
By 1873, Twain Fit of remembering: MTAL, pp. 312–315, 351–352. “The fountains . . .” and “faces . . .”: SLC to William Bowen, February 6, 1870, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 50. Around 1868, Twain wrote “Boy’s Manuscript,” an early unpublished attempt to put his Hannibal memories into fictional form; see Mark Twain, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians and Other Unfinished Stories, ed. Dahlia Armon et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 1–19, 265–266. This piece anticipates The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he began writing as early as 1872.