Mark Twain - Reporter: Day By Day

May 28 Saturday – Sam wrote William K. Cutler in receipt of his challenge to a duel. “Having made my arrangements—before I received your note—to leave for California, & having no time to fool away on a common bummer like you, I want an immediate reply to this” [MTL 1: 301]. Note: Cutler had come up from Carson City and Steve Gillis placated him and convinced him to leave town. In some accounts it has been erroneously given that Sam Clemens ran from a duel, the reason for his leaving Virginia City. Examination of these letters and news accounts prove otherwise.

May 28 Monday – Sam arrived at Kailau Bay. He hired a horse and rode through the coffee and orange region of Kona. The Boomerang was to proceed to Kealakekua Bay, the spot where natives in 1779 murdered Captain Cook. Sam was to meet the schooner there. At sunset Sam stood on the same spot at the same hour where Cook was killed [Sanborn 286; Roughing It, Ch. 69]. Sam wrote: “Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook’s assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide….Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook.

May 29 Sunday – Sam, Joe Goodman, and Steve Gillis left Virginia City for San Francisco. Goodman wrote to Paine in 1911 that he’d intended to ride only a short way with the pair, but that the company was “too good and I kept clear on to San Francisco” [MTL 1: 302].

May 29 Tuesday –Sam saw a “bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea” [RI Ch. 72]. Note: at some point, perhaps at Kailau Bay, Sam joined up with his friend, Charles Warren Stoddard, who had family in the islands (see June 2 Frear entry.) Sam would at times write of “Mr. Brown,” referring to both Stoddard and Edward (Ned) T. Howard (1844?-1918).

In the evening the schooner Emeline and Captain Crane picked Sam up and resumed the sea voyage, since the Boomerang was becalmed [Frear 69].

May 3 Sunday – A column signed by “Mark Twain” but probably written by Joe Goodman ran in the Enterprise toasting Sam’s departure from Virginia City to San Francisco, his first visit there. “He has gone to display his ugly person and disgusting manners and wildcat on Montgomery Street. In all of which he will be assisted by his protégée, the Unreliable” [MTL 1: 253]. A. Hoffman claims these were Goodman’s words, and that Sam took off for San Francisco “about the first of May” [80]. (See May 1 entry.)

May 3 Thursday – Sam returned to Waikapu Sugar Plantation, owned by Henry Cornwell, where he spent the night. The Hornet sank in the Pacific, 108 days out and a little above the equator [Frear 103].

May 30 Monday – Sam and Steve Gillis settled at the Occidental Hotel.

May 30 Wednesday – Frear writes of the events of the day:

May 31 Thursday – “All the next day (Thursday) we fought the treacherous point and, after tacking far our that night, made it and came in and anchored the following day (Friday)…” [Frear 69].

May 4 Friday – Sam wrote from the Wailuku Sugar Plantation, Maui to his mother, Jane Clemens and sister Pamela Moffett. This is the infernalist darkest country, when the moon don’t shine; I stumbled & fell over my horse’s lariat a minute ago & hurt my leg, & so I must stay here tonight. I went to Ulapalakua Plantation (25 miles,) few days ago, & returned yesterday afternoon to Mr.

May 5 to August 10 Monday ca. – A photo of Sam with muttonchops is given this date range at MTP.

May 5 Thursday – The Sanitary Fancy Dress Ball was held in Carson City in connection with the St. Louis Fair (a larger Sanitary charity event to help the Union wounded veterans).

May 6 Saturday – Sam’s article, “Important Correspondence,” ran in the Californian [ET&S 2: 144].

May 7 Monday – Sam wrote from Wailuku Sugar Plantation, Maui to Will Bowen. He wrote about being mad at Will for so long that his anger had “about spent itself & I begin to feel friendly again.” Will had owed Sam money and they’d had a disagreement in the early 60s. Will was still a steamboat captain on the Mississippi. Sam also wrote about seeing Daniel Martin, an old Hannibal resident and saloon owner Sam had met in Como, Nevada, near Carson City. Martin billed himself as “Martin the Wizard” and did sleight of hand poorly.

April, mid – Sam left for Maui on a small schooner, where he saw the Haleakala volcano [Frear 55; MTL 1: 335n5]. Frear on some notable personages Sam met on Maui: As on Oahu he found Minister [C.C.] Harris and Bishop [T.N.] Staley types of pretense deserving his hottest denunciation for years, so on Maui he found a character whom he immortalized as a Munchausen. He called him Markiss. His real name was F.A. Oudinot. He claimed descent from Napoleon’s famed Marshal of that name, and on French national days would celebrate all by himself in a gorgeous French uniform and with a French flag.

January, mid – Sam was arrested for being drunk in public and jailed overnight. He’d been the object of a police watch, after articles criticizing police corruption and racism.

June, Mid – Sam wrote his Territorial Enterprise readers that the Occidental was “ ‘Heaven on the half shell’ – a welcome respite from the sagebrush and desolation of Washoe” [MTL 1: 302].

May, mid – The first two weeks Sam ran around with an old Hannibal friend he bumped into shortly after arriving in the City, Neil Moss, the son of a rich pork-packer. He also met Bill Briggs (b.1831?), John’s older brother, and one of Sam’s Hannibal gang. He took a horse-drawn omnibus from Portsmouth Square to Ocean House, where he walked along the beach barefoot in the surf.

Summer, mid – Sam claimed to be out of debt by the end of five months [RI, Ch 62]. He also published articles in the Golden Era, brief items in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle and the San Francisco Youths’ Companion.

November 1 Wednesday – Sam’s article “More California Notables Gone” ran in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle [ET&S 2: 485].

November 1–10 Monday – Sam follows up: LOCAL COLUMN

November 1–7 Friday – Local Column, Enterprise, two items from Sam: “Silver Bricks” and “Building Lots” (Text recovered by Michael Marleau from reprinting in The Mining and Scientific Press of Nov. 8, 1862) [Marleau, “Some Early” 12].

November 11 to December 20 Saturday – The second Territorial Legislature of Nevada was in session. Sam covered the session. According to Henry Nash Smith, “It is not clear how often he mailed dispatches back to Virginia City, but by bringing together two passages from his reminiscences one may infer that he sent a daily factual report and a weekly letter of a more personal and humorous cast” [34].

November 11 Wednesday – Activity was slowing in Virginia City, with increased unemployment in the face of high prices. J. Ross Browne (1817-1875), the celebrated traveler, reported in the Stockton

Daily Independent:
There are more people now in Virginia than the business of the place requires….My belief is that Virginia City will gradually become what Nature intended it to be—a mere depot for the trade and products of the Comstock lead….It does not possess a single inducement beyond what is based on mineral productions [Fatout, MT in VC 139-40].

November 11 Friday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to his brother Orion of financial need, Orion’s possible nomination for Nevada senator and the Hale & Norcross mining stock.