§ 129. [Editorial “Puffing”]
15–18 November 1865
Under the heading “Good for Mark” the San Francisco Examiner noted on 20 November 1865: “The San Francisco correspondent of the Territorial Enterprise in one of his last letters to that paper, in speaking of the disgusting disposition to puff individuals, manifested by the press of the Bay City, is thus expressive.” It followed this with the brief extract here assigned the title “Editorial ‘Puffing,’ ” obviously only a portion of Clemens' latest Enterprise letter. We conjecture that it appeared in the Enterprise sometime between 15 and 18 November 1865.
Clemens' principal targets in this comment were the local editor of the Alta California, Albert S. Evans (whom he usually called “Fitz Smythe”), and the local reporter on the Morning Call who, as Clemens had reason to know, was under strict orders not to offend the paper's Irish clientele. “Editorial ‘Puffing’ ” is, in fact, the first of seven sketches grouped together here because they all deal satirically with Fitz Smythe during a period when Clemens seemed particularly interested in pursuing him.
Albert S. Evans of New Hampshire made his slow and circuitous way to California during the 1840s and 1850s by way of Indiana, Illinois, and Texas. In San Francisco he became a journalist, reporting for the Morning Call before serving as city editor for the Alta California and correspondent for the Gold Hill News, Chicago Tribune, and New York Tribune. Evans was an industrious and moralistic man with a pedestrian skill as a writer and a stillborn sense of humor—in short, an ideal target for Clemens, who was a veteran of newspaper controversies by the time he settled in San Francisco in May 1864. Within a month of his arrival in the city, Clemens and Evans were trading insults through their local columns. The feud continued, not without some genuine bitterness, through the latter part of 1865 and early months of 1866.
Clemens' immediate target in the present sketch was Evans' article “Banquet to a Departing Merchant.” There Evans unctuously reported a farewell banquet for Moses Ellis, “one of our principal, and, we are pleased to say, prosperous pioneer merchants,” who he added, “leaves us [begin page 330] to-day on a visit to the home of his nativity.”1 Clemens' sketch mocked these phrases, very much in the spirit which informed his earlier piece in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, “More California Notables Gone.”2
Let Ⓐemendation “John Wychecombe Smith, Esq., one of our pioneer merchants, and one among our wealthiest and most respected citizens,”Ⓐemendationleave in the steamer “to revisit the home of his nativity,”Ⓐemendationand one of these papers will give you half a column of sorrow and distress about it, and wind up with the eternal “but we are happy to say that not many months will elapse ere he will be with us again”Ⓐemendation—and forget to mention that a distinguished and war-bronzed Major-GeneralⒺexplanatory note went in the same steamer with the wealthy and successful Smith. The other paper would let John Wychecombe Smith go to the States, or to the devil, either, a dozen times over, and always maintain an insolent silence about it: but let Moike Mulrooney, or Tim Murphy, or Judy O'Flaherty, receive a present of raalⒶtextual note Irish whisky from the ould country, and it will never let you hear the last of it.Ⓐemendation
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably between 15 and 18 November 1865, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, the San Francisco Examiner for 20 November 1865 (p. 3), which is copy-text. Copy: PH from Bancroft.