Mark Twain's Aurora Cabins, Site of his "First Sucess"

scott 9 December 2024
Although Mark Twain lived in many stately homes, and counted the world’s social elite, including kings, queens, and American presidents, as his friends, he began his career as a writer in a dirt-floor cabin living with miners and prospectors on the western frontier. While many have visited the homes where he wrote his most famous works, few have traveled to Aurora, Nevada, the place where he got his start as a writer. This once prosperous mining town had a population of over 5,000 at the height of the Civil War. By 1865 the town’s fortunes plummeted when the mines ran out of gold ore.

Washoe Mark Twain

scott 9 December 2024

As city editor of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in late 1862, Sam Clemens rehearsed a comic persona of a sometimes bumbling, sometimes wise-cracking reporter. While uncovering the facts to report the truth, this wise-cracking reporter also prospected the town to discover where its jokes lay. By elaborating his initially unnamed comic newspaper persona, Clemens created his earliest version of Mark Twain, what might be called Washoe Mark Twain.

December 10, 1900 Monday

scott 8 December 2024

December 10 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Bad head-cold—from exposure at Motts. Woke up with it at 3 a.m. Was treated by Helmer (osteopath) at 3 this afternoon. Cold all gone before 11 to-night. No physician could do that wonderful thing” [NB 43 TS 31]. Note: Motts also mentioned for Dec. 18 dinner; NB entry.

Ella T. Smith wrote to Sam about this day, her letter not extant but referred to in his reply of Jan. 1, 1901 [MTP].

December 8, 1900 Saturday

scott 8 December 2024

December 8 Saturday – L.J. Bridgman’s article, “To Mark Twain,” ran in Harper’s Weekly. Tenney: “Source: Listed in The Twainian, II (March, 1940), 3 as ‘poem illustrated by author’; a search of this issue was unsuccessful, and the citation appears to be incorrect” [32]

December 7, 1900 Friday

scott 8 December 2024

December 7 Friday – At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam replied to Christian B. Tauchnitz.

Indeed I will do you that “great favor” with very great pleasure, and shall hold those books in high regard as a remembrancer of the pleasant relations which have subsisted unbroken between us this long stretch of years [MTP: TS Curt Otto, Verlag Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1912, p.126]. Note:Tauchnitz’ incoming not extant. See entries in Vol. I & II.

December 4, 1900 Tuesday

scott 8 December 2024

December 4 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Plasmon to Hutton. / Aldine Club—evening—no reporters. W.W. Ellsworth. / Traveling with a corpse” [NB 43 TS 30]. Note: indeed there were reporters at the Aldine Club this evening. The NY Times reported on the dinner and Sam’s speech on Dec. 15: Mark Twain at the Aldine Club

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