From October to December of 1866, Mark Twain toured Northern California and Nevada, around Carson City, lecturing on his adventures in Hawaii. He then returned to San Francisco, sailed south, crossed the Peninsula, continued north and lectured through New York and the Mid West from January to May of 1867.
Sandwich Islands Tours: Day By Day
August 13 Monday – At 3 PM, the Smyrniote and the Comet arrived at San Francisco together. The trip had taken 25 days, due to long periods of calm weather [Sanborn 294]. From Walter Frear:
August 14 Tuesday – Based on his letter of the previous day, Sam left for Sacramento to present his bill to the Union Publishers. They paid him and gave him another assignment to report on the State Fair, which ran from Sept. 10 to 15.
August 14–19 Sunday – In his letter completed Aug. 20 to his mother, Sam wrote that he’d been to Sacramento to square accounts [MTL 1: 353]. The exact date of his return took place within this five-day period. He was paid a bonus for his scoop of the Hornet disaster [MTL 1: 355n6]. Sam came down from Sacramento on the steamboat Capital, where he found a pamphlet issued by an insurance company about various insurable risks.
August 18 Saturday – Sam’s eighteenth letter to the Union dated “HONOLULU, JULY, 1866: AT SEA AGAIN”:
August 20 Monday – Sam, in San Francisco, completed the multi-dated letter to his mother, and sister Pamela he began on July 30.
“I have been up to Sacramento & squared accounts with the Union. They paid me a great deal more than they promised me. I suppose that means that I gave satisfaction, but they did not say so….Orion & Mollie are here. They leave for Santa Cruz tomorrow” [MTL 1: 353].
August 24 Friday – Sam’s nineteenth letter to the Union dated “KONA, JULY, 1866: STILL IN KONA - CONCERNING MATTERS AND THINGS”:
August 25 Saturday – Sam was probably staying at the Occidental Hotel [MTL 1: 359n2; Sanborn 295]. Sam received and answered a letter from his old Hannibal and pilot friend, Will Bowen. You write me of the boats, thinking I may yet feel an interest in the old business. You bet your life I do. It is about the only thing I do feel any interest in & yet I can hear least about it. If I were two years younger, I would come back & learn the river over again. But it is too late now.
August 30 Thursday – Sam’s twentieth letter to the Union from Kealakekua Bay:
GREAT BRITAIN’S QUEER MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK
September 5 Wednesday – Sam’s opinion of photographs ran in the Daily Hawaiian Herald:
September 6 Thursday – Sam’s 21 st letter to the Union dated “KEALAKEKUA BAY, JULY, 1866 A FUNNY SCRAP OF HISTORY” ran:
September 10 to 15 Saturday – Sam covered the thirteenth annual fair of the California State Agricultural Society, held in Sacramento, for the Sacramento Union [MTL 1: 361].
September 14 Friday – Sam was quoted on Captain Cook by the Daily Hawaiian Herald [Schmidt].
September 22 Saturday – Sam’s 22 nd letter to the Union dated “KEALAKEKUA BAY, JULY, 1866
THE ROMANTIC GOD LONO” ran: (Sam arrived back in Honolulu on June 18):
September 26 Wednesday – Sam’s 23 rd letter to the Union “HONOLULU, SEPTEMBER 10 1866
THE HIGH CHIEF OF SUGARDOM”: This letter was dated Sept. 10, even though Sam left the islands on July 19. It describes the “principal labor used on plantations…that of Kanaka men and women—six dollars to eight dollars a month and find them, or eight to ten dollars and let them find themselves” [Day 270].
September 29 Saturday – Sam’s article, “Origin of Illustrious Men,” ran in the Californian:
You have done fair enough about Franklin and Shakespeare, and several parties not so well known—parties some of us never heard of, in fact—but you have shirked the fellows named below. Why this mean partiality?
September, mid to late – Although they’d traveled in the same regions, from the Mediterranean to the Mississippi to Washoe mining camps, there is no record before this month that Sam and J. Ross Browne ever met. Browne was a humorist in the Western vein of John Phoenix, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain. He was also an excellent travel writer, currently collecting mining statistics in the West for the U.S. Treasury Department. He was living with his family in Oakland.
October 2 Tuesday – Sam’s first stage appearance took place at the Academy of Music on Pine Street in San Francisco, a new hall owned by Tom Maguire, who suggested Sam try to make his fortune by entering the lecture field and offering his experiences in the Sandwich Islands. He’d offered the hall to Sam at half price, 50 dollars, in exchange for half the profits. Sam agreed and spent 150 dollars on advertising. He had posters made up announcing the Honolulu Correspondent for the Sacramento Union, “Mark Twain,” would be speaking. “Doors open at 7 o’clock.
October 3 Wednesday – Newspaper reviews to Sam’s talk were very positive, as witnessed by this excerpt from the San Francisco Evening-Bulletin of Oct. 3:
October 6 Saturday – Sam’s article, MARK TWAIN ON ETIQUETTE, was reprinted in the Daily Hawaiian Herald. (See May 22 entry for excerpt).
October 11 to November 27, 1866
October 11 to November 27 Tuesday – Sam and Denis McCarthy, former part-owner of the Territorial Enterprise, (who Sam now labeled “The Orphan,” quickly organized a lecture tour in California and Nevada. (Lorch gives strong reasoning that the subsequent lecture tour was most likely organized well before this Oct. 2 debut [35-6]). The lecture, titled “Sandwich Islands” made sixteen engagements between these dates at locations where Sam was well known [Sanborn 298-9]. Dates in Silver City, Dayton, and Washoe were canceled.
October 15 Monday – Sam and Denis McCarthy traveled by riverboat to Marysville, California (named for Mary Murphy, a survivor of the Donner Party). There, Sam gave the lecture “Sandwich Islands” at Maguire’s New Theatre [Sanborn 299].
October 17 Wednesday – Sam’s article dated “Sept. 24, San Francisco, An Epistle from Mark Twain THE QUEEN’S ARRIVAL / ALPHABET WARREN / MISC.” ran in the Daily Hawaiian Herald [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].
October 20 Saturday – Sam and McCarthy traveled by stage through gold boomtowns, Timbuctoo, Smartsville, and Rough and Ready (in modern days nearly empty). Sam gave the lecture “Sandwich Islands” in Hamilton Hall, Grass Valley, California. The Grass Valley Daily Union reported:
October 23 Tuesday – Sam gave the lecture “Sandwich Islands,” in the Nevada Theatre in Nevada City, California, a short distance from Grass Valley. Sam stayed at the National Exchange Hotel. The local newspaper Transcript wrote: “Mark Twain” as a lecturer is far superior to “Artemus Ward” or any of that class….We bespeak for him large audiences wherever he goes [Sanborn 300].