Mark Twain - Reporter: Day By Day

December 25 Monday – Christmas – The following articles supposed to be by Twain, ran in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle:
OUR NEW JUDGE

December 25–27 Sunday – Sam’s Local Column in the Enterprise: “A Christmas Gift.” Someone sent Sam a “naked, porcelain doll baby” [ET&S 1: 420]. Note: Did Ward send the doll?

December 26–27 Wednesday – Taken from Sam’s San Francisco Letter, dated Dec. 23, were “Gardner Indicted,” “Extraordinary Delicacy,” “Shooting,” “Another Enterprise,” and “Spirit of the Local Press,” printed in the Territorial Enterprise [ET&S 2: 413].

December 27 Saturday – A. J. Simmons, later speaker of the house in the Nevada legislature, sold Sam ten feet in the Butte ledge, Tehema Mining Company for $1,000, and ten feet in the Kentucky ledge, Union Tunnel Company, both in Santa Clara district of Humboldt County [MTL 1: 278 n8]. Dan De Quille left Virginia City by overland stagecoach as planned for a nine-month visit to his home in Iowa. Benson writes that the expected absence of De Quille was one reason Barstow offered Sam a position [72]. It was feared by some that Dan would not return (see May 1, 1863 entry and the following Dec.

December 28 Sunday – Sam’s article, “The Illustrious Departed,” ran in the Enterprise:

December 28 Monday – The Virginia City Evening Bulletin quoted Sam’s article in the Enterprise: “Report of Artemus Ward’s Lecture in Virginia City.” The Enterprise article probably ran a day or two before Dec. 28:

December 29 Tuesday – Artemus Ward and his manager left Virginia in a mud wagon for Austin, 180 miles away. Fatout reports on the farewell: “Faithful companions gathered to see them off and to bestow going-away presents: a demijohn of whiskey, feet in a mine somewhere behind Mount Davidson, a pouch of tobacco, a bowie knife guaranteed to have killed two men. Mark Twain presented a copy of the Enterprise, Dan De Quille a sackful of hardboiled eggs” [MT in VC 134]. Fatout also comments on Ward’s influence on Sam, something that has been widely written of:

December 29 Friday – Sam’s San Francisco Letter given this date was published in the Enterprise sometime in Jan. 1866. Sections: “Busted,” “Inspiration of Louderback,” “A Pleasant Farce,” “Personal,” (no text available for the last two items) and:

THE BLACK HOLE OF SAN FRANCISCO

December 3 Saturday – Sam’s story “Lucretia Smith’s Soldier” was first published in the San Francisco Californian. The story was instantly popular, reprinted by newspapers in California and New York, and was later included with the Jumping Frog collection [Wilson 193; ET&S 2: 125].

December 30 Tuesday – Sam’s Local Column was published in the Enterprise: “Board of Education,” “Blown Down,” “At Home,” “The School,” “Sad Accident,” “Thrilling Romance,” “Fire Almost,” “Private Party,” and “Our Stock Remarks”:
Owing to the fact that our stock reporter attended a wedding last evening, our report of transactions in that branch of robbery and speculation is not quite as complete and satisfactory as usual this morning [ET&S 1: 175-6].

December 30 Wednesday – Sam went to Carson City. His brother Orion was hopeful of a candidacy for secretary of state. Sam’s article, “The Bolters in Convention” was published in the Enterprise [Smith 112-18] and an unsigned article, “A Gorgeous Swindle,” the style of which points decidedly to Sam, and includes a parody of Sir Walter Scott [Smith 118-21; Gribben 617].

December 31 Thursday – Sam reported on the Union party convention to select candidates for Nevada’s first state election, scheduled for Jan.19, 1864. Joe Goodman, Sam’s editor, failed to win the nomination for state printer. Orion did win the nomination for secretary of state [MTL 1: 266].

December 31 Sunday – “Convicts” is part of a San Francisco Letter dated Dec. 28 and published in the Enterprise. On Dec. 10 a group of five Comstock reporters sat for a group portrait at Sutterly Brothers in Virginia City, afterwards making the rounds of saloons and ordering a banquet at the International Hotel. All five men were old friends of Sam. Some one (I do not know who,) left me a card photograph, yesterday, which I do not know just what to do with. It has the names of Dan De Quille, W. M. Gillespie, Alf. Doten, Robert Lowery and Charles A.

December 4 Sunday – Sam left San Francisco with James Gillis for Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County, Ca., some one hundred miles east of San Francisco. They boarded a San Joaquin steamer for Stockton, and from there went on by stagecoach to “that serene and reposeful and dreamy and delicious sylvan paradise” (Jackass gulch) [Sanborn 256]. Brother Billy Gillis, then 23, waited there for them. Steve Gillis, finding no way to reconcile with Emeline Russ, returned to Virginia City.

December 5 Friday – One of Sam’s weekly letters, “Letter from Carson City” was dated this day and printed sometime in December in the Enterprise [Smith 35]. The letter included: “Alford vs. Dewing,” “Internal Improvements,” and “Williams Map.” Sam was the “Committee” in the first extant weekly letter:

REPORT ON WILLIAMS MAP

Your committee, consisting of a solitary but very competent individual, to whom was referred Col. Williams’ road from a certain point to another place, would beg most respectfully to report:

Your committee has had under consideration said map.

December 5 Tuesday – Sam’s article “Delightful Romance” ran in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, a summary of an Albert Evans article which appeared the day before in the Alta California [ET&S 2: 510].

December 6 Sunday – Sam’s article “A Tide of Eloquence” was reprinted in the Golden Era [Walker 66]. It was printed in the Enterprise sometime in November [Camfield bibliog.].

December 7 Thursday – The Semi-Weekly Telegraph (Salt Lake City), ran this squib quoting Mark Twain:
WESTERN.—MARK TWAIN, noticing a case of infamous outrage on an infant in San Francisco, makes the following candid confession—“We are thoroughly prospecting not only the main lead of crime here, but all its dips, spurs and angles.”

December 8 Tuesday – Another “Letter from Mark Twain,” from Carson City, dated (Dec. 5) ran in the Enterprise. Sections: “Church in Carson,” “Questions of Privilege,” “Mr. Stern’s Speech” [Smith 92-5]. Krause gives all of “Mr. Stern’s Speech” parody [58] and discusses allusions [59-60].

December 8–10 Sunday – Sam’s verse about the theatre manager Thomas MaGuire (1820-1896) appeared in the Enterprise sometime between these dates [ET&S 2: 385].
A RICH EPIGRAM
Tom Maguire,
Torn with ire,
Lighted on Macdougall,
Grabbed his throat,
Tore his coat,
And split him in the bugle.
Shame! Oh, fie!
Maguire, why
Will you thus skyugle?
Why bang and claw,
And gouge and chaw
The unprepared Macdougall?

January, end – Sam’s notebook carried news of others getting rich, including one whose offer he’d refused:
“Herman Camp has sold some Washoe Stock in New York for $270,000” [MTNJ 1: 73]. Note: “Camp was an early locator and aggressive speculator in Washoe mining stocks. He had been friendly with Clemens in Virginia City and then in San Francisco while Clemens was staying there in mid-1863” [MTL 1: 327n1].

End of July – Relating to the diaries of Methuselah and Shem, which were part of a larger project Sam conceived in the late 1860s is this passage in his notebook:
“Conversation between the carpenters of Noah’s Ark, laughing at him for an old visionary—his money as good as anybody’s though going to bust himself on this crazy enterprise” [MTNJ 1: 147}.

Fall – Benson writes: “Ingomar, the Barbarian,” was presented in the opera house in the autumn of 1863. Mark Twain’s connection with this play proved of more than usual significance, because his critique was copied in the East, and we have the first instance of Eastern periodicals printing the Western writings of Mark Twain…. In this Ingomar review, Mark Twain shows a breaking away from the cruder humor that was in evidence in earlier burlesque writings. Gradually he came to depend more and more on cleverness rather than coarseness.

February 1 Monday – Orion and Mollie Clemens’ only daughter and niece of Sam’s, Jennie, died of cerebrospinal meningitis (“spotted fever.”) [MTL 1: 383].

Sam’s article “Satirical Account of Bill Stewart’s Party” ran in the Enterprise [Camfield bibliog.].

February 1 Wednesday – Sam wrote of a dream about saying goodbye to Laura Wright, when Sam was on the Pennsylvania. Though the two never met again, Sam indirectly communicated with Laura in Dallas, Texas in 1880 through one of her students, sent her money in 1906 responding to her letter for assistance for herself, a widow, and a disabled son [MTNJ 1: 89-90].