18 March 1864 • Virginia City, Nev. Terr. (MS: CU-MARK and NPV, UCCL 00076)
(I will not write to Ma, bec this Ⓐemendationtime, because in a day or two I shall write to her through the columns of the N. Y. Sunday Mercury.)1explanatory note I would have mailed finished it to-day, but I took it over to show it to Miss Menken, the actress—Orpheus ⒶemendationC. Kerr’s wife—she is a literary cuss herself.2explanatory note Although I was acquainted with Orpheus, I didn’t know her from the devil,3explanatory note & the other day (I am acting in place of both the chief editors, now, & Dan has the local all to himself,)4explanatory note she sent a note brief Ⓐemendationnote, couched in stately terms & full of frozen dignity, addressed to “Mr Mark Twain,” asking if we would publish a sketch from her pen. Now you ought to have seen my answer—(3 pages of “legal cap.,Ⓐemendation”) because I took a good deal of pride in it. It was extravagantly sociable & familiar, but I swear it had humor in it, because I laughed at it myself. It was bad enough as it was when first finished—but I took it out of the envelop & added an extra atrocity. She has a beautiful white hand—but her handwriting Ⓐemendationis infamous; she writes very fast, but and her letters chirography is of the doorplate Ⓐemendationorder—her letters are immense. I gave her a conundrum—thus: “My Dear Madam—Why ought your hand to retain its present grace & beauty always? Because you fool away devilish little of it on your manuscript.”
I think I can safely say that woman was furious for a few days. But that wasn’t a matter of much consequence to me, & finally she got over it of her own accord, & wrote another note. She is friendly, now.5explanatory note
Pamela, you wouldn’t do for a local reporter—because do you Ⓐemendationdon’t appreciate the interest that attaches to names. An item is of no use unless it speaks of some person, & then not Ⓐemendationthen, unless that person’s name is distinctly mentioned. The most interesting letter one can write, to an absent friend, is one that treats of persons he has been acquainted with, rather than the public events of the day. Now you speak of a young lady who wrote to Hallie Benson that she had seen me, & you didn’t mention her name. It was just a mere chance that I ever guessed who she was—but I did, finally, though I don’t remember her name, now. I was introduced to her in San Francisco by Hon A. B. Paul,6explanatory note & saw her afterwards in Gold Hill. They were a very pleasant lot of girls—she & her sisters.
You say “we hear that Sam has grown very fleshy & remarkably broad-shouldered—you must send us a full-length likeness, & let us see the improvement.” I’ll do it—here it is:
four-line space (about two inches): portrait missing
I have no confidence in photographic artists, & I drew the picture myself, so that I would know it was correct. I had to borrow the head from a photograph, though—those fellows take heads very well. If this is too broad for Annie’s album, tell her she must paste it on the back of it. I don’t want it lost, because it cost me infinite pains & labor to make it. I wouldn’t Ⓐemendationhave undertaken such Ⓐemendationa job for anybody but her.7explanatory note
I also send her full-length pictures of Go his ⒶemendationExcellency Gov. Mark Twain, of the Third House, Hon Wm H. Clagett of the House of Representatives, and Hon. A. J. Simmons, Speaker of the same.8explanatory note Ma will know Clagett by his frowsy hair & slovenly dress. He is the greatest ablest public speaker in the Territory.
I can’t send you my Message. It was written to be spoken— it to Ⓐemendationwrite it so that it would read well, would bee too much trouble, & I shall probably never publish it. It was terribly severe on Gov. Nye, too, & since he has conferred on me one of the coveted Notarial appointments (without the formality of a petition from the people,) it would be a mean return to print it now.9explanatory note If he had Ⓐemendationrefused the appointment, though, I’d have delivered it in Virginia (I could have got the whole community at a dollar a head,) & published it afterward. You bet you. I got my satisfaction out of it, though—a larger audience than Artemus had10explanatory note—the satis comfort of knowing that the thieving, lousy slow, -going, ratty popul careless Ⓐemendationpopulation of Carson could be induced to fill a house once,—the gratification of her hearing Ⓐemendationgood judges say it was the best thing of the kind they had ever listened to—& finally, a present of handsome $22500 gold watch, from Theodore Winters & Hon. A. W. Baldwin, inscribed “To Gov. Mark Twain,” &c. &c.11explanatory note I am ahead on the Message, anyhow.
Pepper saw Judge Mott, did he? I promised to write to Mott occasionally, & so did Orion, but I guess neither of us have ever done it.12explanatory note
Remember me kindly to Mr P & ⒶemendationMrs Pepper, & Zeb & Beck Jolly.
We had a little snow to-dayⒶemendation, & once, 3 months ago, a few flas flakes Ⓐemendationfell—but at no time this winter has it been necessary to wear an overcoat. I have no recollection of having seen rain—either here or in California—for I don’t know how long—nearly a year & a half, I suppose. {I went & raised the devil & had the paper started to Moffett & Schr again.13explanatory note Tell me if it arrives regularly.
(over
Joe Goodman is gone to the Sandwich Islands. I stipulated, when I took his place, that I should never be expected to write editorials about politics or the eastern news. I take no sort of interest in those matters. I wanted to go with Joe, but the news-editor14explanatory note was expecting every day to get sick (he has since accomplished it,) & we could not all leave at once.15explanatory note
Molly & Orion are all right, I guess.16explanatory note They would write me if I would answer there Ⓐemendationletters—but I won’t. It is torture to me to write a letter. And it is still greater torture to receive one—except yours & Ma’s. My correspondents, being industriously neglected, are gradually dropping off, though, & I begin to r feel Ⓐemendationreally comfortable over the prospect of their drying up entirely. I think Ma inflicts a new correspondent on me every now & then (bel (beware Ⓐemendationhow you leave this letter where Aunt Ella17explanatory note can see it—I haven’t answered her letter of 3 months ago) but she mustn’t scare up any more, male or female, though I am really thankful Ⓐemendationto her for her intended & well-meant kindness.
No such communication has been found in the Mercury. The sketch Clemens promises “may never have been written, or it may have been an early version of ‘An Open Letter to the American People’ . . . which teases his mother about her style of letter writing; it was not published in the Mercury but in the New York Weekly Review, almost two years later, on 17 February 1866” (ET&S1, 350).
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835?–68) had arrived in Virginia City on 27 February 1864 after dazzling California audiences for some six months with a repertoire of her favorite plays. While in Virginia City throughout March, she titillated theater-goers in the title role of Mazeppa, Henry M. Milner’s dramatic adaptation of Byron’s poem, in which she wore flesh-colored tights to simulate nudity, earning the sobriquet “the great unadorned” (“Miss Menken,” Unionville Humboldt Register, 19 Mar 64, 2). Nevada newspaper gossip suggests that offstage “the Menken” was almost as visible. She was rumored to have abandoned her third husband, satirist Orpheus C. Kerr (Robert Henry Newell, 1836–1901), who was traveling with her, in favor of a local horse trainer. She engaged in a jealous quarrel with an actress in her troupe. And in public ceremonies she received a silver brick and honorary membership in Fire Engine Company No. 2. Menken characterized her Virginia City stay as “one of the pleasantest months of my life” (“‘The Dying Menken’ Thinks of Virginia City,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 16 Sept 68, 2). A would-be poet as well as an actress, Menken had published some of her unrestrained free verse in the San Francisco Golden Era and elsewhere; Infelicia (London, 1868), a collection of her poems, appeared posthumously (“Menken,” Virginia City Union, 27 Feb 64, 3; NAW, 2:526–27).
Clemens had, however, seen Menken in September 1863 in San Francisco performances of Mazeppa and John Thomas Haines’s The French Spy, both of which he reviewed for the Territorial Enterprise of 17 September. Her acting in the former play, he felt, resembled the contortions of a violent “lunatic”: “She bends herself back like a bow; she pitches headforemost at the atmosphere like a battering-ram; she works her arms, and her legs, and her whole body like a dancing-jack. . . . she ‘whallops’ herself down on the stage, and rolls over as does the sportive pack-mule after his burden is removed.” But in The French Spy, in the role of “a frisky Frenchman . . . as dumb as an oyster,” her “extravagant gesticulations do not seem so overdone. . . . She don’t talk well, and as she goes on her shape and her acting, the character of a fidgety ‘dummy’ is peculiarly suited to her line of business” (SLC 1863, 2:78).
By “chief editors,” Clemens meant Joseph T. Goodman, co-owner of the Enterprise, and, possibly, Rollin M. Daggett (see 17 Sept 64 to Wright, n. 3click to open link). Denis E. McCarthy, Goodman’s partner, managed the Enterprise print shop. Dan De Quille (William Wright, 1829–98) was local editor of the paper from 1862 to 1898. He was born in Ohio and lived there and then in Iowa until 1857, when he migrated to California. A miner in both California and Nevada before joining the staff of the Enterprise, Wright became widely recognized as an authority on mining, as well as a humorist. His History of the Big Bonanza (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1876), written with Clemens’s encouragement and published with his assistance, remains a definitive account of the mines of the Comstock lode (see William Wright 1876, vii–xxv).
Menken soon became friendly enough to invite Clemens to an unusual literary dinner in her hotel room, the only other guests being Dan De Quille and the Bohemian poet Ada Clare (Jane McElhinney, 1836?–74). Menken’s husband was barred from the room. According to Dan De Quille, the evening terminated ignominiously when Clemens, aiming a kick at one of the actress’s numerous dogs, accidentally “hit the Menken’s pet corn, causing her to bound from her seat, throw herself on a lounge and roll and roar in agony. . . . Mark disliked the Menken and would have avoided the arrangement that seated him by her side had it been possible. After this mishap nothing could propitiate Mark. He very soon imagined a pressing engagement and begged to be excused” (William Wright 1893, 14).
Almarin B. Paul (1823–1909) was a prominent quartz miner and mill operator from Nevada City, California. According to most authorities, in August 1860 he began operating the first mill in Nevada Territory, the Pioneer Mill of the Washoe Gold and Silver Mining Company at Devil’s Gate in Gold Cañon. He was also a discoverer of the Washoe wet process of crushing ore and the inventor of an improved type of separator. By the time of Clemens’s letter, Paul—a Gold Hill banker and the owner of several mills and extensive mining and timber lands—was reputed to be one of Nevada’s wealthiest men (Irvine, 2:671–73; Paul 1927, 54; Angel, 68, 503; Lord, 84–88; Lyman, 136–37; Elliott, 95–96; Kelly 1863, 329, 345; Paul 1861, 1).
The beneficiary of Clemens’s efforts was his niece, Annie Moffett.
Clemens and A. J. Simmons may have met while both were prospecting in the Humboldt region. Simmons migrated to the Santa Clara district, Humboldt County, in the summer of 1861 from Red Bluff, California, and sent back letters to the Sacramento Union and the Red Bluff Beacon. He located numerous claims, helped draft resolutions governing the district organization of mining companies, and became an officer in several of those companies. On 27 December 1862 he sold Clemens, for $1,000, ten feet in the Butte ledge, Tehama Mining Company, and ten feet in the Kentucky ledge, Union Tunnel Company, both in the Santa Clara district of Humboldt County (deed in CU-MARK). Simmons was elected a Humboldt representative to the 1862 second Territorial Legislature, and was chosen Speaker of the House in the 1864 third Territorial Legislature (Simmons 1861, 1; Simmons 1861, 1; “A. J. Simmons,” Red Bluff [Calif.] Beacon, 27 Dec 62, 3). The photograph Clemens sent has not been found, but it was probably another print of the one reproduced below—presumably without the inscription, which has not been explained.
“An Act to provide for the Appointment of Notaries Public, and Defining their Duties,” passed on 9 February and effective on 1 March, revoked the more than two hundred existing notary licenses. It limited the number of new notaries to a total of seventy-two for Nevada Territory’s ten existing counties, allotted six to any new county created, and specified that all notaries be appointed by the governor (Laws 1864, 46–48). In a letter to the Territorial Enterprise written on 6 February, Clemens described the fierce competition for these lucrative positions which developed in anticipation of this law: “There are seventeen hundred and forty-two applications for notaryships already on file in the Governor’s office” (SLC 1864, 3: 103). In fact at least one thousand applications, many accompanied by lengthy petitions signed by influential backers, were filed. Clemens himself was “seized with the fatal distemper” and “wrote a petition with frantic haste, appended a copy of the Directory of Nevada Territory to it, and . . . fled down the deserted streets to the Governor’s office” (SLC 1864, 3:103). The petition accompanying Clemens’s application was signed by Orion Clemens, Thomas C. Nye (the governor’s nephew), Territorial Auditor William W. Ross, and Ross’s clerk and legislative attaché, F. A. Hollister. On 1 March Governor Nye appointed Clemens to a two-year term as notary for Storey County, and two days later an advertisement for Henry L. Blodgett and Sam. L. Clemens, notaries public, with quarters in the post office, began running in the Virginia City Evening Bulletin. For reasons Clemens never made clear, on 14 April he wrote the next letter, relinquishing his appointment (see Rocha and Smith, 83–90, and Nevada, 5).
Artemus Ward had lectured in Virginia City on 22 December 1863.
Theodore Winters (1823–1906), brother of John D. Winters, was an Illinoisan who settled in Washoe Valley in 1857 and soon became wealthy through his holdings in the Ophir and Spanish mines. For many years he was a successful rancher and stockman, specializing in the breeding and racing of horses. In February 1864 Clemens had attended a lavish party at his mansion near Washoe City (see ET&S1 , 339–42). Alexander W. (Sandy) Baldwin (1840–69) was a Georgian who emigrated to California and then to Nevada. He was considered an outstanding attorney, and became William M. Stewart’s law partner. Baldwin was a councilman from Storey County in the third Territorial Legislature (1864) and in 1865 was appointed United States district judge for Nevada (Andrew J. Marsh, 681 n. 147). On 27 November 1869, after Baldwin’s death in a railway accident, Clemens eulogized him in the Buffalo Express (SLC 1869, 2). In his 28 January 1864 dispatch to the Territorial Enterprise, Clemens called Baldwin’s and Winters’s gift to him “a pretty good result for an incipient oratorical slouch like me” (SLC 1864, 3:140).
Judge Gordon N. Mott had resigned from the Nevada bench in September 1863 as a consequence of the Chollar-Potosi suit (see 21 Oct 62 to OC and MECclick to open link, nn. 3, 4). In November 1863 he had returned to Washington, D.C., to resume his duties as territorial representative to Congress. Samuel Pepper (1820–93), a clerk aboard the John J. Roe during Clemens’s piloting days and in 1862 captain of the steamboat Champion, lived near the Moffetts in St. Louis. He was the brother-in-law of Zebulon Leavenworth, pilot of the Roe, mentioned in the next paragraph (“Samuel Pepper Dead,” unidentified clipping in MoSHi; N&J2 , 465 nn. 114, 118).
That is, the firm of William A. Moffett and George Schroter, St. Louis commission merchants.
Possibly Charles A. V. Putnam, “telegraph, paragraph and scissoring editor” of the Enterprise, one of several men who at various times had news-editing responsibilities (Doten 1973, 3:2227–28; William Wright 1893, 15). He later was Nevada state printer.
In chapter 55 of Roughing It, Clemens gave this account of his stint as Good-man’s replacement:
Mr. Goodman went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed me. The first day, I wrote my “leader” in the forenoon. The second day, I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the “American Cyclopedia,” that steadfast friend of the editor, all over the land. The fourth day I “fooled around” till midnight, and then fell back on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in anguish till far into the night and brought forth—nothing. The paper went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands—my personalities had borne fruit.
In fact, Goodman was away until 8 April (“Arrivals Yesterday,” Virginia City Union, 9 Apr 64, 3). There is no indication that he faced any challenges as a result of Clemens’s temporary editorship.
Orion and Mollie Clemens’s only child, eight-year-old Jennie, had died of “spotted fever” (cerebrospinal meningitis) on 1 February 1864 in Carson City (MEC, 15).
Ella Hunter Lampton.
MS, pages 1–2, 5–8, Moffett Collection, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK); MS, pages 3–4, ‘of much . . . If’ (274. 18–37), Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L1 , 273–280; MTB , 1:248, brief excerpts; MTL , 1:89, a single paragraph, ‘Pamela . . . sisters.’ (274.20–30), mistakenly printed as part of 11 and 12 Apr 63 to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett. The excerpts printed in MTB and MTL do not overlap. They were in separate collections when Paine saw them, and he evidently did not realize they were parts of the same letter.
see Moffett Collection, p. 462, and McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.