May 12 Friday – The CBR arrived in St. Louis. John Henton Carter escorted Sam and his party to the Southern Hotel, where they spent the night. Sam shared “a couple of farewell hot scotches with Bixby” [Powers, MT A Life 461]. Carter interviewed Sam about his books, the new suspender he was inventing, complaints about his image as a mere humorist, and his ability as a steamboat pilot. The interview would be published in Rollingpin’s Humorous Illustrated Annual for 1883.
Sam was interviewed by a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch [Budd, “Interviews” 37-9]. The interview probably also ran during the month in the St. Louis Times [Schmidt]. An excerpt from that interview:
A Post-Dispatch reporter met him in the rotunda of the hotel, and was received very cordially. It was only when the possibility of an interview was broached that Mr. Clemens grew slightly restive.
“I guess I haven’t got time,” he said. “The fact is you can say anything you like if you will put it in your own words, but don’t quote me as saying anything. No man can get me right unless he takes it down shorthand, very particularly too.”
–“You don’t love the interview, I see, Mr. Clemens?”
“No; I don’t. I have never yet met a man who attempted to interview me whose report of the process did not try hard to make me out an idiot, and did not amply succeed, in my mind, in making him a thorough one.” …Mr. Clemens melted a little and said:
“I have not been out here since 1864, I think, and I had intended remaining some time in the city. But I waited too long at New Orleans to catch the Baton Rouge, the commander of which was my old master, and in consequence will have to leave tonight.”
–“You ought not to be in such a hurry. The newspapers represent you as being fabulously wealthy, and as living in great splendor at Hartford.”
“Oh, there is quite an amount of fiction in that statement. Of course I’m living at Hartford, and I had a house when I left there, but I have not gone into competition with Vanderbilt yet, and I don’t think that I’ll do so.”
–“What is the nature of your new work?”
“I have been writing a series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly on subjects connected with the Mississippi, and I found that I had got my distances a little mixed. I took this trip for the purpose of making observations on this subject. I was getting a little rusty about it.”
In this interview Sam also spoke about a matter that interested him greatly—Arctic expeditions (a tragic failure of the Greeley expedition to the North Pole had left in 1881 and the main party was found frozen to death a year later; recent stories dealt with a rescue party that found the bodies) [Budd, “Interviews” 37-8].
The St. Louis Chronicle ran a piece on page 1 paraphrasing Sam; he said he never chooses titles for his books before they were finished [Budd, “Interviews” 2].
The “River News” column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
Mark Twain visited ‘Change today in company with his old friend Horace E. Bixby. The meeting between Mr. Clemens and Capt. James O’Neal was cordial in the extreme.
The same paper, on page 2, ran an interview of Sam discussing a fantasy expedition to fix the location of Hell. Sam also railed at interviewers and discussed his planned Mississippi travel book [Budd, “Interviews” 2].
James O’Neal was now superintendent of the Anchor Line. Sam had called him “The whitest Captain I ever sailed with” [MTNJ 2: 477n154].
Sam and his stenographer Roswell H. Phelps left St. Louis at about 4 PM aboard the Gem City on an overnight packet headed north to that “white town drowsing in the sunshine.” On board was a sister of Clint Levering, the ten-year-old boy who drowned while playing with Sam and friends on Aug. 13, 1847 (see entry). Sam noted the sister was with her husband (unnamed) and had “grown sons (one, anyway.)” Sam used a nickname for Clint of “Writer Levering.”
James R. Osgood took a train for Chicago for business and agreed to meet up with Sam in Davenport, Iowa on May 18 [MTNJ 2: 434].