12 February 1864
This sketch of Theodore Winters' new house in Washoe Valley forms the first section of a “Letter from Mark Twain” written on Friday, 5 February 1864, from Carson City.1 It survives in a clipping in one of Mark Twain's scrapbooks; a banner headline for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise of February 12 has been pasted above it. Presumably Clemens was a little slow in mailing his dispatch from Carson City.
Clemens knew Winters well. In October 1863 he had reported Winters' connection with the First Annual Fair of the Washoe Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Society. And shortly before Clemens visited Winters' home and described it in this sketch, his host and A. W. (Sandy) Baldwin had presented him with a handsome gold watch inscribed “To Gov. Mark Twain” of the Third House of the 1863 Nevada Constitutional Convention.2 In 1905, the year before Winters died, Clemens remembered him as one of the “unforgettable antiques” of his Nevada days.3
Winters migrated from Illinois to Forest City, California, in 1849. There he joined his father and his two brothers, Joseph and John D., in cattle raising, placer mining, and freighting to the California mining camps and to settlements in Carson Valley. At the time of the Mormon exodus from Nevada in 1857, he acquired a mile-square tract of land in Washoe Valley southwest of Washoe City and north of Washoe Lake. Two years later he struck it rich when a mining stake that his brother Joseph had bought turned out to be on the Ophir vein. Winters became a principal stockholder in the Spanish mine and for a time managed its Virginia City mill. He was [begin page 340] a member of the Nevada Territorial Legislature of 1862 but thereafter remained politically inactive until 1890, when he ran (unsuccessfully) as the Democratic candidate for governor of Nevada.
The party Clemens attended at Winters' house was given by Theodore's brother Joseph and by Pete Hopkins, two men who, like Theodore, were leading figures in western horseracing circles—a sport which also interested Clemens.4 Winters' three-story mansion, no less than Sandy Bowers' house a few miles away, was a Washoe Valley showplace comparable in elegance and conspicuous consumption to the Hartford house that Clemens erected a decade later. Aided by John A. Steele, a Washoe City architect and contractor, Winters had planned his house in 1860 and completed its construction in 1863. The solidly built, luxuriously furnished structure was amply proportioned for Winters' large family. It was set among well-tended gardens, and nearby were a pool and a quarter-mile racecourse where Winters trained and raced his famous thoroughbreds. Eventually Winters' Rancho del Sierra stretched over four thousand acres of land, and there he outlived the nineteenth century raising hay and grain for his cattle, operating a dairy, and cultivating large orchards.5
Theodore Winters' handsome dwelling in Washoe Valley, is an eloquent witness in behalf of Mr. Steele's architectural skill. The basement story is built of brick, and the spacious court which surrounds it, and whose columns support the verandah above, is paved with large, old-fashionedⒶemendation tiles. On this floor is the kitchen, dining-room, bath-room, bed chambers for servants, and a commodious store-room, with shelves laden with all manner of substantials and luxuries for the table. All these apartments are arranged in the most convenient manner, and are fitted and furnished handsomely and plainly, but expensively. Water pipes are numerous in this part of the house, and the fluid they carry is very pure, and cold and clear. On the next floor above, are two unusually large drawing-rooms, richly furnished, and gotten up in every respect with faultless taste—which is a remark one is seldom enabled to apply to parlors and drawing-rooms on this coast. The colors in the carpets, curtains, etc., are of a warm and cheerful nature, but there is nothing gaudy about them. The ceilings are decorated with pure, white mouldings of graceful pattern. Two large bed-chambers adjoin the parlors, and are supplied with elaborately carved black walnut four-hundred-dollar bedsteads, similar to those used by Dan and myself in Virginia; the remainder of the furniture of these chambers is correspondingly sumptuous and expensive. On the floor above are half a dozen comfortable bedrooms for the accommodation of visitors; also a spacious billiard-room which will shortly be graced by a table of superb workmanship. [begin page 342] The windows of the house are of the “Gothic” style, and set with stained glass; the chandeliers are of bronze; the stair railings of polished black walnut, and the principal doors of some kind of dark-colored wood—mahogany, I suppose. There are two peculiarly pleasant features about this house—the ceilings are high, and the halls of unusual width. The building—above the basement story—is of wood, and strongly and compactly put together. It stands upon tolerably high ground,Ⓐemendation and from its handsome verandah, Mr. Winters can see every portion of his vast farm. From the stables to the parlors, the house and its belongings is a model of comfort, convenience and substantial elegance; everything is of the best that could be had, and there is no circus flummery visible about the establishment.
I went out there to a party a short time ago, in the night, behind a pair of Cormack's fast horsesⒺexplanatory note, with John JamesⒺexplanatory note. On account of losing the trail of the telegraph poles, we wandered out among the shingle machines in the Sierras, and were delayed several hours. We arrived in time, however, to take a large share in the festivities which were being indulged in by the Governor and the Supreme Court and some twenty other guests. The party was given by Messrs. Joe Winters and Pete Hopkins, (at Theodore Winters' expense,) as a slight testimonial of their regard for the friends they invited to be present. There was nothing to detract from the pleasure of the occasion, except LovejoyⒺexplanatory note, who detracted most of the wines and liquors from it.
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 12 February 1864. The only known copy of this printing, in a clipping in Scrapbook 3, pp. 106–107, MTP, is copy-text. There are no textual notes.