§ 84. The New Chinese Temple
23 August 1864
(This headnote is repeated in numbers 82–85.)
These four sketches appeared in the San Francisco Morning Call while Clemens was working as its local reporter. Although they are of course unsigned, Clemens' authorship is assured by the fact that all four are preserved as clippings in his scrapbooks, and by the fact that Albert S. Evans, who is ridiculed in the last two sketches, publicly acknowledged Clemens as the author.
The subject of the series is the opening of the San Francisco temple of the Ning Yeung Association, a social and quasi-judicial organization that was formed in 1854 and became the largest of the Chinese Six Companies.1 Clemens may have culled some facts from his scrapbook clip- [begin page 39] pings when he described the Ning Yeung Association in chapter 54 of Roughing It. There he explained:
On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies home when they die. . . . The Ning Yeong Company . . . numbers eighteen thousand members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it has a costly temple. . . . In it I was shown a register of its members, with the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked.2
The careful but informal description in the opening sketch, with its subdued, friendly humor and casually inserted information, gives way in the second piece to broader comedy: a burlesque portrait of “the old original Josh.” In the third sketch Clemens finds himself in danger of “becoming imbued with Buddhism” and losing his national identity, but is recalled by the prospect of a drink to his “noble American instincts.” This in turn leads to his ridicule of Evans, his counterpart on the San Francisco Alta California.3
Comic feuding among reporters and editors was a standard feature of Nevada journalism which Clemens brought with him when he moved to San Francisco and started working for the Call: two months before he wrote these sketches on the Josh House, he had begun baiting Evans in his local items column. Evans, who returned the compliment, created a character whom he called Mr. Stiggers, or Armand Leonidas Stiggers, a rather pathetic and dandyish fellow who was apparently meant as a parody of bohemians like Clemens. Perhaps to annoy Evans, Clemens regularly identified Stiggers with his creator, as he does in the third sketch here, where he accuses him of having consumed the temple's entire liquor supply. In the fourth sketch he extends this attack by quoting from Evans' Alta article on the new temple4 and predicting that “Mr. Stiggers, of the Alta” will reply to his ridicule. Of course Evans did precisely that, addressing his remarks to “the gentle aborigine from the land of sage brush and alkali, whose soubriquet was given him by his friends as indicative of his capacity for doing the drinking for two.” Evans [begin page 40] went on to explain why Clemens found the temple's liquor cabinet empty, saying that the Chinese barkeeper maintains
two liquor cases—one from which to treat gentlemen who look as if they were disposed to indulge moderately and keep out of the calaboose, and the other, an empty one, which he shows to those whose faces indicate unmistakably that they can't be trusted when liquor is free. . . . There was a time . . . when you might have wrung in and got a drink with the rest, but that happy time is past, long past—Mark that, my boy, and go on with your weeping.5
Clemens continued to bait Evans for the next two years, not only in his columns in the Call, but also in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle.
William Hay, The Chinese Six Companies (San Francisco: The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 1942), pp. 5, 16.
For additional information about Evans and Mark Twain's continuing public feud with him, see “Mark Twain Improves ‘Fitz Smythe’ ” (nos. 129–134), as well as Appendix B, volume 2, which reprints a number of attributed items about Fitz Smythe.
“Opening of a New Temple,” San Francisco Alta California, 23 August 1864, p. 1.
“That's What's the Matter,” San Francisco Alta California, 24 August 1864, p. 1.
Being duly provided with passes, through the courtesy of our cultivated barbaric friend, Ah Wae, outside business-agent of the Ning-Yong Company, we visited the new Chinese Temple again yesterday, in company with several friends. After suffocating in the smoke of burning punk and josh lights, and the infernal odors of opium and all kinds of edibles cooked in an unchristianⒶemendation manner, until we were becoming imbued with Buddhism and beginning to lose our nationality, and imbibe, unasked, Chinese instincts, we finally found Ah Wae, who roused us from our lethargy and saved us to our religion and our country by merely breathing the old, touching words, so simple and yet so impressive, and withal so familiar to those whose blessed privilege it has been to be reared in the midst of a lofty and humanizing civilization: “How do, gentlemen—take a drink?” By the magic of that one phrase, our noble American instincts were spirited back to us again, in all their pristine beauty and glory. The polished cabinet of wines and liquors stood on a table in one of the gorgeous hallsⒶemendation of the temple, and behold, an American, with those same noble instincts of his race, had been worshipping there before us—Mr. Stiggers, of the Alta. His photograph lay there,Ⓐemendation the countenance subdued by accustomed wine, and reposing upon it appeared that same old smile of serene and ineffable imbecility which has so endeared it to all whose happiness it has been to look upon it. That apparition filled us with forebodings. They proved to be well founded. A sad Chinaman—the sanctified bar-keeper of the temple—threw open the cabinet with a sigh, exposed the array of [begin page 46] empty decanters, sighed again, murmured, “Bymbye, Stiggins been here,” and burst into tears. No one with any feeling would have tortured the poor pagan for further explanations when manifestly none wereⒶemendation needed, and we turned away in silence, and dropped a sympathetic tear in a fragrant rat-pie which had just been brought in to be set before the great god Josh. The temple is thoroughly fitted up now, and is resplendent with tinsel and all descriptions of finery. The house and its embellishments cost about eighty thousand dollars. About the 5th of September it will be thrown open for public inspection, and will be well worth visiting. There is a band of tapestry extending around a council-room in theⒶemendation second story, which is beautifully embroidered in a variety of intricate designs wrought in bird's feathers, and gold and silver thread and silk fibres of all colors. It cost a hundred and fifty dollars a yard, and was made by hand. The temple was dedicated last Friday night, and since then priests and musicians have kept up the ceremonies with noisy and unflagging zeal. The priests march backward and forward, reciting prayers or something in a droning, sing-songⒶemendation way, varied by discordant screeches somewhat like the cawing of crows, and they kneel down, and get up and spin around, and march again, and still the infernal racket of gongs, drums and fiddles, goes on with its hideous accompaniment, and still the spectator grows more and more smothered and dizzy in the close atmosphere of punk-smoke and opium-fumes. On a divan in one hall, two priests, clad in royal robes of figured blue silk, and crimson skull-caps, lay smoking opium, and had kept it up until they looked as drunk and spongy as the photograph of the mild and beneficent Stiggers. One of them was a high aristocrat and a distinguished man among the Chinamen, being no less a personage than the chief priest of the temple, and “Sing-Song” or President of the great Ning-Yong Company. His finger-nails are actually longer than the fingers they adorn, and one of them is twisted in spirals like a cork-screw. There was one room half full of priests, all fine, dignified, intelligent looking men, like Ah Wae, and all dressed in long blue silk robes, and blue and red topped skull caps, with broad brims turned up all round like wash-basins. The new temple is ablaze with gilded ornamentation, and those who are fond of that sort of thing would do well to stand ready to accept the forthcoming public invitation.
The first printing in the San Francisco Morning Call for 23 August 1864 (p. 3) is copy-text. Copies: clipping in Scrapbook 5, p. 41, MTP; PH from Bancroft. There are no textual notes.