Explanatory Notes
Apparatus Notes
MTPDocEd
[begin page 233]
111. Enthusiastic Eloquence
23 June 1865

This appreciation of the banjo music played by Tommy Bree, Charley Rhoades, and Sam Pride appeared in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle on 23 June 1865. The Chronicle editors introduced it with these words: “Mark Twain, who occasionally condescends to drop in at the Academy of Music, though as a general thing he prefers negro minstrelsy to Italian opera, thus puts on record his sentiments with reference to the comparative merits of the banjo and the piano.” But the article, brief as it is, was more than that: it was a reiteration of Clemens' preference for the “spirit of cheerfulness” over the “powers of dreariness,” which he had expressed in “A Voice for Setchell” (no. 104) just one month before.

Tommy Bree, the popular ballad singer whom Clemens praised in the sketch, had opened at the Olympic Theatre only two days earlier. Charley Rhoades, another Pacific Coast banjo player (whose musical career had begun in the California mining camps), had been featured at the same theater for three months prior to Bree's appearance. Sam Pride, who was black (unlike most performers in “negro minstrelsy”), had been known to Clemens at least since April 1863, when the author mentioned him in his local column for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, saying that he had just “heard Sam. Pride's banjo make a very excellent speech in English to the audience” at La Plata Hall.1 Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a distinguished concert pianist who had opened in San Francisco on 10 May 1865, was, in Clemens' eyes, no match for these experts on “the glory-beaming banjo!”

“Enthusiastic Eloquence” is the first acknowledged sketch that [begin page 234] Clemens published in the Chronicle. The paper referred to the article, in a mysteriously facetious postscript, as “the foregoing extract,” and the word “extract” might imply that the Chronicle had reprinted only one item from a longer letter in the Enterprise. But on balance, it seems probable that “Enthusiastic Eloquence” had not been previously published: Bree had opened at the Olympic only two days before the sketch appeared in the Chronicle—insufficient time for it to travel to Virginia City and return in the Enterprise. The likelihood is strong that the sketch was either lifted from a manuscript destined for the Enterprise, or else written casually, as part of an article on San Francisco entertainments, for the Chronicle. Michael H. de Young, cofounder of the paper, recalled that Clemens was one of “those Bohemians” who “hung around” the office and wrote for the newspaper, “though paid no regular salaries.” De Young said that Clemens even had “desk room with us . . . and made his headquarters in our office.”2 This recollection probably applies to the circumstances under which the present sketch was written and published, for in October 1865 Clemens would join the Chronicle on a more formal basis, earning $40 a month for dramatic criticisms.

Editorial Notes
1 “The Minstrels,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 3 April 1863, reprinted in Appendix B12, volume 1.
2 Michael H. de Young, “History of the San Francisco Chronicle,” TS in Bancroft.
Textual Commentary

The first printing in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle for 23 June 1865 (p. 2) is copy-text. Copy: PH from Bancroft. There are no textual notes.

[begin page 235]
Enthusiastic Eloquence

I have emendation modified my musical creed a little since I have enjoyed the opportunity of comparing Tommy Bree, the banjoist of the Olympicexplanatory note, with Gottschalk. I like Gottschalk well enough. He probably gets as much out of the piano as there is in it. But the frozen fact is, that all that he does get out of it is “tum, tum.”emendation He gets “tum, tum,”emendation out of the instrumentemendation thicker and faster than my landlady's daughter, Mary Ann; but, after all, it simply amounts to “tum, tum.”emendation As between Gottschalk and Mary Ann, it is only a question of quantity; and so far as quantity is concerned, he beats her three to one. The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles, and slate pencils. But give me the banjo. Gottschalk compared to Sam Prideexplanatory note or Charley Rhoades, is as a Dashaway cocktailexplanatory note to a hot whisky punch. When you want genuine music—music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pillsexplanatory note, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,—when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!emendation

Editorial Emendations Enthusiastic Eloquence
  I have  (I-C)  ●  “I have
  “tum, tum.” (I-C)  ●  ‘tum, tum.’
  “tum, tum,” (I-C)  ●  ‘tum, tum,’
  instrument (I-C)  ●  instrumens
  “tum, tum.” (I-C)  ●  ‘tum, tum.’
  banjo! (I-C)  ●  banjo!”
Explanatory Notes Enthusiastic Eloquence
 Olympic] The Olympic Theatre, formerly Gilbert's Melodeon, was at the corner of Clay and Kearny streets. Since 1859 it had been a leading variety house, along with the Bella Union and the Eureka Minstrel Hall.
 Sam Pride] J. Wells Kelly, Second Directory of Nevada Territory (San Francisco: Valentine and Co., 1863), lists “Pride Samuel (colored) musician, bds with Mrs. Taylor” (p. 272). He had been performing in the West at least since 1862, when the San Francisco Pacific Appeal described him as “truly the Champion Banjoist of the world. . . . His performances are inimitable” (“Sam Pride's Original Colored Minstrels,” San Francisco Pacific Appeal, 19 April 1862, p. 3).
 Dashway cocktail] The Dashaway Association, which Clemens had covered as a reporter on the Call, was a temperance organization claiming three hundred members in its San Francisco chapter. Hot whisky punches fared badly in the chorus of the association's official song:  |  Dash! dash the cup away!
Dash! dash the cup away!
In brotherhood, 'tis understood,
We'll dash, dash the cup away!

(See CofC , pp. 54–55; “Dashaway Statistics for 1864,” San Francisco Morning Call, 10 January 1865, p. 3; “The Dashaway Association,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 5 January 1865, p. 3; The Sacramento Bee's Centennial Album, Part the Sixth, pp. CC–17.)

 Brandreth's pills] “Brandreth's Vegetable Pills” were a patent medicine widely advertised for fever and ague and allegedly designed to “expel from the body all those evil geniuses that have had an agency in producing the disease” (advertisement, Golden Era 13 [9 July 1865]: 8).