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.
But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking,
and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers.
This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco
Alta:
(Clipping pasted in.)
“Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called
'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' has set all New York in a roar,
and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty
times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and
near. It is voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the
Californian afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not let
him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the
California press.”
The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the
Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.
Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in
this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I
think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a
lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book. I
wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to
know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However,
he has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain
that will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and prepare the
volume for the press.
Yours affy,
SAM.
Bret Harte and Clemens had by this time quit the Californian,
expecting to contribute to Eastern periodicals. Clemens, however,
was not yet through with Coast journalism. There was much interest
just at this time in the Sandwich Islands, and he was selected by
the foremost Sacramento paper to spy out the islands and report
aspects and conditions there. His letters home were still
infrequent, but this was something worth writing.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:
SAN FRANCISCO, March 5th, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I start to do Sandwich Islands day after
tomorrow, (I suppose Annie is geographer enough by this time to find
them on the map), in the steamer “Ajax.” We shall arrive there in
about twelve days. My friends seem determined that I shall not lack
acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already
sent me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing. I
am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts
and the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the
Sacramento Union--for which they pay me as much money as I would get if
I staid at home.
If I come back here I expect to start straight across the continent by
way of the Columbia river, the Pend d'Oreille Lakes, through Montana
and down the Missouri river,--only 200 miles of land travel from San
Francisco to New Orleans.
Goodbye for the present.
Yours,
SAM.
His home letters from the islands are numerous enough; everything
there being so new and so delightful that he found joy in telling of
it; also, he was still young enough to air his triumphs a little,
especially when he has dined with the Grand Chamberlain and is going
to visit the King!
The languorous life of the islands exactly suited Mask Twain. All
his life he remembered them--always planning to return, some day, to
stay there until he died. In one of his note-books he wrote: “Went
with Mr. Dam to his cool, vine-shaded home; no care-worn or eager,
anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a
contrast with California and the Washoe!”
And again:
“Oh, Islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep.”
The letters tell the story of his sojourn, which stretched itself
into nearly five months.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:
HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, April 3, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been here two or three weeks, and
like the beautiful tropical climate better and better. I have ridden on
horseback all over this island (Oahu) in the meantime, and have visited
all the ancient battle-fields and other places of interest. I have got a
lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields--I guess
I will bring you some of them. I went with the American Minister and
took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who is
related to the royal family, and although darker than a mulatto, he
has an excellent English education and in manners is an accomplished
gentleman. The dinner was as ceremonious as any I ever attended in
California--five regular courses, and five kinds of wine and one of
brandy. He is to call for me in the morning with his carriage, and we
will visit the King at the palace--both are good Masons--the King is
a Royal Arch Mason. After dinner tonight they called in the “singing
girls,” and we had some beautiful music; sung in the native tongue.
The steamer I came here in sails tomorrow, and as soon as she is gone
I shall sail for the other islands of the group and visit the great
volcano--the grand wonder of the world. Be gone two months.
Yrs.
SAM.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: