Mark Twain's fear that his “Venice” lecture might fail before an “unbiased” eastern audience suggests that he was somewhat apprehensive about a circuit tour. If so, he had reason. This time he could not count on the advantage, as in the West, of friendly listeners predisposed to approve. He would have to show these strangers. Nor would he be the sole performer at large, as in California. Many seasoned competitors allowed comparative judgments by equally seasoned audiences.
Since the 1820’s the lecturing business had flourished in the East, and had gradually extended its range until a hamlet in Illinois was likely to be as conversant with speakers, and as critical, as a long-established community in Massachusetts. A town was small indeed that did not boast a literary society or lyceum association devoted to uplift and enlightenment. To inform and improve, these organizations invited lecturers to discuss topics timely and perennial. Six or eight speakers made a “course,” which might vary from the African travelogues of Paul B. Du Chaillu, to Civil War reminiscences of literate generals to the acrimony of Wendell Phillips or the emphatic feminism of Susan B. Anthony.
A very popular speaker lectured two hundred nights or more a year, and scarcely any was so inept that he could not find a few engagements. P. T. Barnum lectured, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, General O. O. Howard, General Kilpatrick, Robert Ingersoll, Fredrick Douglass, George Francis Train, Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, Theodore Tilton—and a host of others. Women, perhaps hoping to emulate Anna Dickinson, stormed the rostrum to charm, to instruct, and to assail masculine stupidity that oppressed women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jane Swisshelm, Kate Field, Mary Livermore, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, Lillie Peckham: they were part of a variegated sisterhood that cooed, cajoled, and berated. Then, as now, a notable name like Emerson, or a notorious one, like Victoria Woodhull, had drawing power. Yet the less prominent also had their day of transitory attention: Lillian Edgarton, "The Pearl of the Platform”; Mrs. Susannah Evans, “celebrated temperance oratress”; Waterhouse Hawkins, “the eminent palaeontologist”; and others long forgotten. As the modern American listens entranced, to the interminable gabble of TV and radio, so by the hour nineteenth century audiences happily wallowed in billows of rhetoric rolling out from hundreds of platforms. During the “season,” from about October to March, an army of pundits, prophets, reformers, preachers, and professors took to the road, bustling from town to town, crossing each other’s trails and occasionally meeting to swap yarns about missed trains and missed dinners, cold halls and cold audiences, absurdities and satisfactions.
Sam left New York and arrived in Cleveland, Ohio early to work on his first lecture with Mary Fairbanks. A great deal was riding on Sam’s success as a lecturer in the East—Jervis Langdon’s approval, for one. Sam had Pittsburgh and Elmira lined up for the lecture he called, “The American Vandal Abroad,” and wanted to have the kinks out before revisiting Livy’s hometown. DBD
Fatout writes In the early fall of 1868 Mark Twain enlisted the aid of Redpath, who took him on as a hundred-dollar man, and scheduled about forty engagements. As tours went, this one was short and poorly arranged for economical travel. Belatedly signing up with the Bureau, he found many courses filled, hence had to accept a miscellany of towns, a third of which were scarcely more than villages, on a tortuous route. He started at Cleveland in mid-November, then for three and a half months hopped back and forth between the East amd Middle West on a weird itinerary of zigzags and redoublings upon itself. Gaps of days between performances ran up hotel bills, unscheduled trips to Cleveland to see Mrs. Fairbanks and to Elmira to see Olivia Langdon added to expenses that consumed half the income. Reproving himself for delay, he lamented that, whereas he might have made $10,000, he expected to clear not over two thousand. Possibly the net return was even less, and he earned it the hard way.
To Joseph T. Goodman
17 February 1869 • Titusville, Pa.
(Paraphrase: Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 26 Mar 69, UCCL 00256)
Mark Twain to be Married.—We have received a letter from that wise and holy pilgrim, “Mark Twain,” dated Titusville, Pennsylvania, February 17, in which he says: “I have pretty thoroughly lectured New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Michigan, and am now doing this Pennsylvania oil region. Half a dozen more lectures, I hope, will finish this long, wearisome winter’s siege—a dozen anyhow—and then I shall have a holiday. Whoop! you old fool!” He then goes on to say that he could get appointments at $100 per night for four or five months next season in case he should feel inclined to accept, but that he don’t know whether or not he will again enter the field, as he is going to get married and so will want to settle down. We are not at liberty to give names, but may be allowed to say that the young lady who has captivated the gushing Mark resides in the town of Elmira, New York, is an only daughter, rich, handsome, and in every respect a suitable companion for an orphan like Mark. If Mark takes his father-in-law’s advice he will probably give up lecturing and go to work in one of the old man’s coal mines—in short, become a coal-heaver. In concluding his letter Mark says: “I shall lecture in San Francisco in April or May. Come down, boys. I can’t go to Virginia, having killed myself there twice already in the lecture business.” We should think he might stand a little more of the same kind of “killing,” and even tackle once more the terrible footpads of the Divide, though those now infesting that vicinity are of the genuine order—not make-believes, like those who “went through” him on the occasion of his first appearance in this city as a lecturer.
“SLC to Joseph T. Goodman, 17 Feb 1869, Titusville, Pa. (UCCL 00256).” I
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