Aside from two separate lecture tours to this region, Mark Twain's final days in Washoe were eventful.
Twain Was “News” To Other Newspapers While a Reporter On The “Enterprise” (part 2)
By Austin E. Hutcheson
From The Twainian, Volume 8 Number 2 (1949)
Continuing the discussion of Twain as a source of news to Virginia City and California papers, as set forth in the November-December issue, we here pick up the trail of our hero at the time of his departure for Carson City to report the proceedings of the constitutional convention of 1863.
This abortive convention continued in session from October 26 to December 11, but Twain must have arrived in Carson City several days earlier than the opening date in order to have written and sent to the Enterprise his “Massacre” tale printed in the October 28 issue of that paper.
Immediately following the close of the convention late in the evening of Friday, Dec. 11, the famous session of the “Third House” opened with Mark Twain as president. This hilarious affair is described by Twain in his letter to the Enterprise, dated (Sunday) December 13, the opening sentence of which reads: “The Third House met in the hall of the Convention at 11 P. M., Friday, immediately after the final adjournment of the First House.” (A unicameral constitutional body.)
The burlesque—and probably totally imaginary—nature of Mark’s report of this gathering is evidenced in the fourth paragraph where Mark says: “The President addressed the house as follows, taking his remarks down in shorthand as he proceeded.” Actual date of issue of the Enterprise in which this letter was printed does not appear in connection with the photostat copy of the clipping supplied to me by Editor Brownell of The Twainian, but it is safe to assume that it appeared in the Enterprise on Tuesday or Wednesday following Twain's writing of it on Saturday and Sunday, December 12 and 13, 1863.
Twain, needing a rest, departed from Carson City on December 14. We next hear of him in the following item:
“Mark Twain-‘This gentleman has returned to the romantic scenes of Lake Tahoe after his herculean labors as President (sic) of the ‘Third House’ at Carson.” (V. C. Bulletin, Dec. 17, 1863.)
But we must conclude from the item in the Bulletin of the following day that Twain did not remain long amid the “romantic scenes” of Lake Tahoe, but kept going until he reached Sacramento. Thanks to the telegraph that connected Virginia City with coast cities, the Sacramento correspondent of the V. C. Bulletin wired his paper on Dec. 18 the following item:
Mr. Twain—We are pleased to announce the safe arrival of Mr. Twain in this city. He made the trip from Carson in four days and met no highwaymen on the way. He gives a very glowing account of the country through which he passed, and we understand will publish an account of it in the Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Twain still remains in feeble health, and will, after sojourning here for a few days, visit the celebrated Soda Springs of Na-Pa (Calif.) to recruit his prostrated energies.”
On January 28, 1864, while the territorial legislature was meeting for its third session with Twain covering it as reporter for the Enterprise, he delivered his first public lecture with charged admission, Proceeds went to the Carson Presbyterian Church, of which Orion was a trustee; his wife, Molly, and only child, Jenny, devoted members.
“Interesting Correspondence — Trustees of the (Carson, Presbyterian) Church request permission to charge admission, (receipts to go to the Church fund) to Mark Twain's Third Annual Message to the Third House of the Territorial Legislature. Twain complies but states that it is not his intention to make the message amusing, but rather informational.” (V. C. B., Jan, 25, 1864.)
This was based on a public exchange of letters, printed in the Carson City Independent, between the trustees and Governor Twain, on January 23.
On January 27, the Bulletin published a note: “Complimentary — Acknowledgement of complimentary tickets to Mark Twain's third Annual Message.” One on January 29: Letter from Carson—The Third House Message by Mark Twain netted the Presbyterian Church quite a nice little sum.” But on February 2 came the tragic news: “Miss Jenny Clemens, 8-year-old daughter of Orion Clemens, died last night at Carson of spotted fever.”
The San Francisco Golden Era of February 28, 1864, reprinted a squib by Twain, “Wild Humorist of the Sagebrush Hills,” called “Concerning Notaries.” Although in this he ridicules the rush for notary appointments, so lucrative in fees, one revealing sentence states that he himself was “seized with the fatal distemper.” Mark seems in truth to have secured for a brief period a notary appointment from his friend, Governor Nye: “Still Another—Henry P. Cohen, bookkeeper in the Enterprise office, has been appointed Notary Public for Storey County (since) Mark Twain resigned.” (V. C, B., April 22, 1864.)
“A Misconception—-Sammy Clemens’ jokes are too bitter to be funny.” (V. C. B., April 2, 1864.) Lacking contemporary issues of the Enterprise, we cannot learn what jokes Mark may have written as cause for this complaint.
“Will Yet Be a State — Hon. Mr. (Orion) Clemens, acting Governor of the Territory, says the “enabling act” has not yet been received, but believes Nevada will be a State in time to participate in the Presidential election.” (V. C. B., April 15, 1864.) Some historians, in error, have stated that there were two federal enabling acts. The alleged first one was actually a mere territorial statute, paving the way for the 1863 convention which made Mark famous as Third House Governor.
“Mark Twain, in a letter from Carson published in today’s Enterprise gives the following severe but just raps to the telegraph monopoly—(1) exorbitant charges; (2) tariffs double that allowed by law; (3) use by owners to aid them in stock gambling schemes—e.g., the night a jury failed to agree on the Savage vs. North Potosi case the wire to San Francisco was held up by the sending of an imaginary message (unrelated random text of a book or newspaper) of 3,000 words.” (V. C. B., April 28, 1864.) Here already is seen the later and mature Twain, reformer and social critic; and here we find the employment, thus early, of a device well known to present-day newspaper correspondents.
“Fencing Club in Virginia, Mark Twain and Dan De Quille are taking lessons daily.” (Gold Hill Daily News, April 16, 1864.)
(Editorial): “The Austin Flour Sack arrived at Gold Hill yesterday with great pomp and waving banners. .. . Tone was given to the procession by the presence of Governor Twain and his staff of bibulous reporters, who came down in a free carriage, ostensibly for the purpose of taking notes, but in reality in pursuit of free whisky.” (G. H. News, May 17, 1864.) This flour was auctioned to raise money for the Sanitary Fund, the Red Cross of the Civil War.
“Hoity! Toity! (editorial) — The cross firing has been going on for a week past between the Union and the Enterprise, concerning a donation made by the employes of the former paper to the Sanitary Fund. Nearly a column of this morning’s Enterprise is devoted to publication of correspondence between Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) and James L. Laird, and Mr. Wilmington an intervenor— the affair threatens to culminate in a serious row, and the bloody and bararous code has been appealed to.” (G. H. D. News, May 24, 1864.)
“A Falstaffian Duel” —“As we go to press, a rumor is rife in town that Pete Hopkins, of Carson, having heard that his friend Mark Twain was about to enter into a contract to be killed, has come to the rescue and assumed the dying part. Pete has had no rest since that terrible massacre at Dutch Nick's, and is desirous of dying a savage death; besides he thinks he would make a better target than Mark, in which opinion we coincide. Blood, or something else, is likely to grow out of this difficulty, unless the parties can be made to believe, in the language of Bulwer, ‘that the pen is mightier than the sword.’ The duel will perhaps come off at the pine forest at Empire City. Horrible! most horrible.” (G. H. D, News, May 24, 1894.)
“Sanitary Fund—The following subscriptions were paid into the Treasury May 23, 1864—Enterprise office $300, Enterprise Office Employees, $150.” (G.H.D. News, May 24, 1864.)
“An Exile” (editorial—G.D.H. News, May 30, 1864.) “Mark Twain departed yesterday morning on the California stage. We don’t wonder that M. T.’s beard is full of dirt and his face is black before the people of Washoe. Giving way to the idiosyncratic eccentricities of an erratic mind, Mark has indulged in the game of the infernal —in short, ‘played hell.’ Shifting the locale of his tales of fiction from the Forest of Dutch Nick’s to Carson City; the dramatis personae thereof from the Hopkins’ family to the fair Ladies of the Ladies’ Fair: and the plot thereof from murder to miscegenation —he slopped. Thrice the card of the indignant ladies has appeared in the columns of the Union, and once the Carson Independent contained the following: “The ladies all seemed highly pleased with their efforts, and we are informed that before adjourning they gave three cheers for the immortal four and three groans for the Territorial Enterprise. Those groans were not for the Enterprise in the abstract, but for the Enterprise as the vehicle of Mark Twain's abominations.”
“What's the News? (editorial) — Newspaper makers are expected to produce news even if ‘wires are down’ or ‘items scarce.’.—Such a manufacturer did upon a time abide in Washoe; but that man has disappeared from the land. Is it necessary to say that we allude to the lamented Twain? That loved and lost journalist, tortured by a demand for 'news’ when it was not, did manufacture some that he fondly believed would satisfy the public craving. He filled the pine forest of Dutch Nick’s with the ghastly corpses of the Hopkins family, and sprinkled the road to Carson with gore from the vermilion scalp of the apocryphal mother of those mythical slain. That ‘news’ satisfied the greedy mind of the public but mark the sequel: the indignation of the non-manufacturer and the diabolical damnation of the deceived.” (G. H. News June 8, 1864.)
“Personal—Secretary of the Territory Orion Clemens came up from Carson yesterday. Orion looked dusty and careworn, probably from the effects of the heavy responsibility resting upon him in managing that comic Territorial seal, to-wit—the drunken miner celebrating the 4th of July.” (G. H. News, Aug. 18, 1864.)
“Our San Francisco Correpondence —Mark Twain—Mark had a brief and not very eventful career as a local in San Francisco, and has taken to sundry literature for a livelihood. He says he left the Call because, "They wanted me to work at nights, and damn me if I'll work nights for any man a-living!" It is considered rather necessary for a local on a morning paper in San Francisco to work nights and so he goes out.” (GHD. News, Oct. 15, 1864.)
Twain, resigning by hearty mutual agreement after his brief trial as a regular “local” reporter on the Call, thus was left free to fulfill his destiny. In future his writing was to be not merely for a day, but for all time.