29 May 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (San Francisco Alta California, 9 June 1877, UCCL 01436)
Dear Sir:Ⓐemendation“Mark Twain” was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news over it for the New Orleans Picayune; he died in 1863, &Ⓐemendation as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor’s remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear.1explanatory note
The San Francisco Alta California published this letter on 9 June 1877, evidently after McPherson (who has not been otherwise identified) submitted it in refutation of a different account of the origin of Clemens’s pseudonym published in the Alta of 13 May. The letter differs only slightly from Clemens’s letter of 24 June 1874 to an unknown correspondent (L6, 166–67). It therefore may be a form letter, sent to McPherson sometime earlier than 1877. The apocryphal story in the Alta article reads:
We knew Clemens in the early days, and know exactly how he came to be dubbed “Mark Twain.” John Piper’s saloon, on B street, used to be the grand rendezvous for all the Virginia City Bohemians. Piper conducted a cash business, and refused to keep any books. As a special favor, however, he would occasionally chalk down drinks to the boys, on the wall, back of the bar. Sam. Clemens, when localizing for the Enterprise, always had an account, with the balance against him, on Piper’s wall. Clemens was by no means a Coal Oil Tommy—he drank for the pure and unadulterated love of the ardent. Most of his drinking was conducted in single-handed contests, but occasionally he would invite Dan DeQuille, Charley Parker, Bob Lowery or Alf. Doten, never more than one of them, however, at a time, and whenever he did, his invariable parting injunction to Piper was to“ mark twain,” meaning two chalk-marks, of course. (“Brevities,” 1)
Dan De Quille, Robert Lowery, Alfred Doten, and Charles E. Parker were reporters—the first three in Virginia City and Parker in nearby Gold Hill. The Alta actually reprinted the story from the Eureka (Nev.) Sentinel of 8 May, and its likely author was George W. Cassidy, the newspaper’s coeditor, but it had been in circulation in Nevada as early as 1866. In 1910 the story was attributed—probably inaccurately—to Doten (Lingenfelter and Gash 1984, 74–75; Fatout 1964, 34–36, 220 n. 4; Nevada City [Calif.] Transcript, 22 Feb 1866; “Recollections of His Life Here,” San Francisco Examiner, 22 Apr 1910, 2). Coal Oil Tommy was a character in The Lottery of Life, a melodrama by John Brougham first produced in 1867. In it, Tommy squanders an oil fortune through profligate spending and dissipation (“Letter from Boston,” Sacramento Union, 21 Oct 1867, 1).
“Brevities,” San Francisco Alta California, 9 June 1877, 1.
“Mark Twain,” New York Times, 17 June 1877, 5.