No letters have been found between the previous letter to John McComb and the following telegram, probably sent on 2 March to the proprietors of the San Francisco Alta California. When Clemens’s early February interview with Carleton was not successful, Webb “bravely said that not all the Carletons in the universe should defeat that book; he would publish it himself on a ten per cent. royalty. And so he did” (AD, 21 May 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE , 145).
Before taking this step, however, Webb or Mark Twain evidently offered the manuscript to other publishers, for on 20 July the editor of the New York Citizen, Charles Graham Halpine (1829–68), better known as Private Miles O’Reilly, asserted that Mark Twain’s “‘book,’ in the form in which he had prepared it, was refused on all sides.” And in 1889 Webb himself boasted of publishing the Jumping Frog book, “which the regular publishers to whom it was offered one and all refused” (“The San Francisco Californian ...,” New York Citizen, 20 July 67, 3; Webb to Edmund Clarence Stedman, ca. 1889, AAA, lot 71). Despite Mark Twain’s various statements to the contrary, he probably worked closely with Webb on the final selection and revision of his sketches, but he left New York for St. Louis on 3 March, well before either man had seen the proofs. The events that precipitated this abrupt departure occurred toward the end of February.
At the end of January, it had been announced in the New York press and widely repeated in newspapers across the country that (as the Alta noted on 30 January) the “members of Beecher’s congregation are organizing an excursion to the Holy Land, Crimea and Greece. They propose to charter a steamer, and leave in June. Rev. Mr. Beecher and family go with them.” Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) was arguably the most famous minister in the country—a prominent figure among the liberal clergy whom Clemens had recently referred to as “the fast nags of the cloth” (“By Telegraph,” San Francisco Alta California, 30 Jan 67, 1; SLC to JLC and family, 4 Dec 66, L1 , 368).
In the Atlantic Monthly for January 1867, James Parton identified Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn as “simply the most characteristic thing of America.”
If we had a foreigner in charge to whom we wished to reveal this country, we should like to push him in, hand him over to one of the brethren who perform the arduous duty of providing seats for visitors, and say to him: “There, stranger, you have arrived; this is the United States, the New Testament, Plymouth Rock, and the Fourth of July,—this is what they have brought us to. What the next issue will be, no one can tell; but this is about what we are at present.” (Parton, 41)
Clemens, in fact, had a letter of introduction to Beecher. It is not known whether he used the letter at this time, but clearly he did submit himself to one of the “brethren” Parton describes. On 3 February he took the ferry across the ice-choked East River (when “the thermometer was at 180 degrees below zero”), apparently at the invitation of “a New York editor” who had authorized his use of “pew No. 46.” The editor was probably Moses Sperry Beach (1822–92) of the New York Sun, a long-time member and former trustee of Plymouth Church who, with his daughter Emeline (1850–1924), would soon be among the “most prominent Brooklynites” to make the Holy Land trip (SLC to JLC and family, 4 Dec 66, L1 , 368; SLC 1867; “Obituary Notes,” New York Times, 4 Mar 1924, 19; Hirst and Rowles, 15–17).
By the end of February, Mark Twain had been “bitten by the prospectus” that outlined the plans for this novel undertaking (SLC 1904, 75; see the Prospectus of the Quaker City Excursionclick to open link). In a letter written on 2 March, he described these plans for his Alta readers:
Prominent Brooklynites are getting up a great European pleasure excursion for the coming summer, which promises a vast amount of enjoyment for a very reasonable outlay. The passenger list is filling up pretty fast.
The steamer to be used will be fitted up comfortably and supplied with a library, musical instruments and a printing-press—for a small daily paper is to be printed on board. The ship is to have ample accommodations for 150 cabin passengers, but in order that there may be no crowding, she will only carry 110. The steamer fare is fixed at $1,250, currency. The vessel will stop every day or two, to let the passengers visit places of interest in the interior of the various countries, and this will involve an additional expense of about $500 in gold. The voyage will begin the 1st of June and end near the beginning of November—five months—but may be extended by unanimous vote of the passengers.... Isn’t it a most attractive scheme? Five months of utter freedom from care and anxiety of every kind, and in company with a set of people who will go only to enjoy themselves, and will never mention a word about business during the whole voyage. It is very pleasant to contemplate.
Several details in this summary show that Mark Twain was not relying solely on the published prospectus, but had learned of such things as the printing press and daily newspaper on board from some more current source. He explained that he had visited the excursion office sometime in late February, accompanied by “a Tribune man,” for the purpose of making “some inquiries” about the trip. The Tribune man was Edward House, and Mark Twain reported that they “were received at the office of the concern with that distant politeness proper toward men who travel muddy streets on foot” and “go unshaven.” Without warning, House introduced his companion as “the Rev. Mark Twain, who is a clergyman of some distinction, lately arrived from San Francisco,” and went on to say that because he was “a Baptist,” they were concerned that he might not be welcome, “inasmuch as Mr. Beecher is a Universalist”—an exaggeration of Beecher’s liberal views (SLC 1867).
The butt of this crude hoax was Captain Charles C. Duncan, the excursion manager and later the captain of the Quaker City. Paine said that this story, “though often repeated by Mark Twain himself,” was “mainly apocryphal” ( MTB , 1:311). But Duncan’s daughter recalled,
When Mr. Clemens came ... to enquire about the cruise, he was with a friend. Both had had drinks, and ... he announced himself as a Baptist minister.
Said Captain Duncan, “You don’t look like a Baptist minister and really, Mr. Clemens, you don’t smell like one either!” (Gingrich, 6)
And, sometime in February 1877, Duncan himself was rash enough to speak publicly about it, thereby drawing Mark Twain’s fire in the New York World:
The “captain” says that when I came to engage passage in the Quaker City I “seemed to be full of whiskey, or something,” and filled his office with the “fumes of bad whiskey.” I hope this is true, but I cannot say, because it is so long ago; at the same time I am not depraved enough to deny that for a ceaseless, tireless, forty-year public advocate of total abstinence the “captain” is a mighty good judge of whiskey at second-hand.
Claiming indifference to Duncan’s charges, Clemens added: “Why should I worry over the ‘bad whiskey?’ I was poor—I couldn’t afford good whiskey. How could I know that the ‘captain’ was so particular about the quality of a man’s liquor?” (SLC 1877).
In his 2 March letter to the Alta Mark Twain reported: “I went back yesterday with another friend, acknowledged my true occupation, entered my name for the voyage and paid the forfeit money required to secure a berth—the remainder of the $1,250 is not to be paid till the 15th of April, when all such accounts have to be squared” (SLC 1867). The “forfeit money” was $125, according to the prospectus, which indicated that “no passage was considered engaged until ten per cent. of the passage money is deposited with the treasurer,” Rufus R. Graves (Charles C. Duncan 1867). Presumably on the same day Clemens announced the payment of his deposit, he also sent his telegram to the Alta proprietors.