Paine Albert Bigelow
The Boys' Life of Mark Twain
XXIV.
THE DISCOVERY OF "THE JUMPING FROG"
Mark Twain's daily letters to the "Enterprise" stirred up trouble for him in San Francisco. He was free, now, to write what he chose, and he attacked the corrupt police management with such fierceness that, when copies of the "Enterprise" got back to San Francisco, they started a commotion at the city hall. Then Mark Twain let himself go more vigorously than ever. He sent letters to the "Enterprise" that made even the printers afraid. Goodman, however, was fearless, and let them go in, word for word. The libel suit which the San Francisco chief of police brought against the Enterprise advertised the paper amazingly.
But now came what at the time seemed an unfortunate circumstance. Steve Gillis, always a fearless defender of the weak, one night rushed to the assistance of two young fellows who had been set upon by three roughs. Gillis, though small of stature, was a terrific combatant, and he presently put two of the assailants to flight and had the other ready for the hospital. Next day it turned out that the roughs were henchmen of the police, and Gillis was arrested.
Clemens went his bail, and advised Steve to go down to Virginia City until the storm blew over.
But it did not blow over for Mark Twain. The police department was only too glad to have a chance at the author of the fierce "Enterprise" letters, and promptly issued a summons for him, with an execution against his personal effects. If James N. Gillis, brother of Steve, had not happened along just then and spirited Mark Twain away to his mining-camp in the Tuolumne Hills, the beautiful gold watch given to the governor of the Third House might have been sacrificed in the cause of friendship.
As it was, he found himself presently in the far and peaceful seclusion of that land which Bret Harte would one day make famous with his tales of "Roaring Camp" and "Sandy Bar." Jim Gillis was, in fact, the Truthful James of Bret Harte, and his cabin on jackass Hill had been the retreat of Harte and many another literary wayfarer who had wandered there for rest and refreshment and peace. It was said the sick were made well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis's cabin. There were plenty of books and a variety of out-of-door recreation. One could mine there if he chose. Jim would furnish the visiting author with a promising claim, and teach him to follow the little fan-like drift of gold specks to the pocket of treasure somewhere up the hillside.
Gillis himself had literary ability, though he never wrote. He told his stories, and with his back to the open fire would weave the most amazing tales, invented as he went along. His stories were generally wonderful adventures that had happened to his faithful companion, Stoker; and Stoker never denied them, but would smoke and look into the fire, smiling a little sometimes, but never saying a word. A number of the tales later used by Mark Twain were first told by Jim Gillis in the cabin on Jackass Hill. "Dick Baker's Cat" was one of these, the jay-bird and acorn story in "A Tramp Abroad" was another. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories.
"They are not mine, they are Jim's," he said, once; "but I never could get them to sound like Jim—they were never as good as his."
It was early in December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at the humble retreat, built of logs under a great live-oak tree, and surrounded by a stretch of blue-grass. A younger Gillis boy was there at the time, and also, of course, Dick Stoker and his cat, Tom Quartz, which every reader of "Roughing It" knows.
It was the rainy season, but on pleasant days they all went pocket-mining, and, in January, Mark Twain, Gillis, and Stoker crossed over into Calaveras County and began work near Angel's Camp, a place well known to readers of Bret Harte. They put up at a poor hotel in Angel's, and on good days worked pretty faithfully. But it was generally raining, and the food was poor.
In his note-book, still preserved, Mark Twain wrote: "January 27 (1865). —Same old diet—same old weather—went out to the pocket-claim—had to rush back."
So they spent a good deal of their time around the rusty stove in the dilapidated tavern at Angel's Camp. It seemed a profitless thing to do, but few experiences were profitless to Mark Twain, and certainly this one was not.
At this barren mining hotel there happened to be a former Illinois River pilot named Ben Coon, a solemn, sleepy person, who dozed by the stove or told slow, pointless stories to any one who would listen. Not many would stay to hear him, but Jim Gillis and Mark Twain found him a delight. They would let him wander on in his dull way for hours, and saw a vast humor in a man to whom all tales, however trivial or absurd, were serious history.
At last, one dreary afternoon, he told them about a frog—a frog that had belonged to a man named Coleman, who had trained it to jump, and how the trained frog had failed to win a wager because the owner of the rival frog had slyly loaded the trained jumper with shot. It was not a new story in the camps, but Ben Coon made a long tale of it, and it happened that neither Clemens nor Gillis had heard it before. They thought it amusing, and his solemn way of telling it still more so.
"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's better than any other frog," became a catch phrase among the mining partners; and, "I 'ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."
Out on the claim, Clemens, watching Gillis and Stoker anxiously washing, would say, "I don't see no pints about that pan o' dirt that's any better than any other pan o' dirt." And so they kept the tale going. In his note-book Mark Twain made a brief memorandum of the story for possible use.
The mining was rather hopeless work. The constant and heavy rains were disheartening. Clemens hated it, and even when, one afternoon, traces of a pocket began to appear, he rebelled as the usual chill downpour set in.
"Jim," he said, "let's go home; we'll freeze here."
Gillis, as usual, was washing, and Clemens carrying the water. Gillis, seeing the gold "color" improving with every pan, wanted to go on washing and climbing toward the precious pocket, regardless of wet and cold. Clemens, shivering and disgusted, vowed that each pail of water would be his last. His teeth were chattering, and he was wet through. Finally he said:
"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work too disagreeable."
Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt.
"Bring one more pail, Sam," he begged.
"Jim I won't do it. I'm-freezing."
"Just one more pail, Sam!" Jim pleaded.
"No, sir; not a drop—not if I knew there was a million dollars in that pan."
Gillis tore out a page of his note-book and hastily posted a thirty-day-claim notice by the pan of dirt. Then they set out for Angel's Camp, never to return. It kept on raining, and a letter came from Steve Gillis, saying he had settled all the trouble in San Francisco. Clemens decided to return, and the miners left Angel's without visiting their claim again.
Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of dirt they had left standing on the hillside, exposing a handful of nuggets, pure gold. Two strangers, Austrians, happening along, gathered it up and, seeing the claim notice posted by Jim Gillis, sat down to wait until it expired. They did not mind the rain—not under the circumstances—and the moment the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few pans farther and took out, some say ten, some say twenty, thousand dollars. In either case it was a good pocket that Mark Twain missed by one pail of water. Still, without knowing it, he had carried away in his note-book a single nugget of far greater value the story of "The Jumping Frog."
He did not write it, however, immediately upon his return to San Francisco. He went back to his "Enterprise" letters and contributed some sketches to the Californian. Perhaps he thought the frog story too mild in humor for the slope. By and by he wrote it, and by request sent it to Artemus Ward to be used in a book that Ward was about to issue. It arrived too late, and the publisher handed it to the editor of the "Saturday Press," Henry Clapp, saying:
"Here, Clapp, is something you can use in your paper."
The "Press" was struggling, and was glad to get a story so easily. "Jim Smiley and his jumping Frog" appeared in the issue of November 18, 1865, and was at once copied and quoted far and near. It carried the name of Mark Twain across the mountains and the prairies of the Middle West; it bore it up and down the Atlantic slope. Some one said, then or later, that Mark Twain leaped into fame on the back of a jumping frog.
Curiously, this did not at first please the author. He thought the tale poor. To his mother he wrote:
I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth—save piloting.
To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!—"Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog"—a squib which would never have been written but to please Artemus Ward.
However, somewhat later he changed his mind considerably, especially when he heard that James Russell Lowell had pronounced the story the finest piece of humorous writing yet produced in America.
XXV.
HAWAII AND ANSON BURLINGAME
Mark Twain remained about a year in San Francisco after his return from the Gillis cabin and Angel's Camp, adding to his prestige along the Coast rather than to his national reputation. Then, in the spring of 1866 he was commissioned by the "Sacramento Union" to write a series of letters that would report the life, trade, agriculture, and general aspects of the Hawaiian group. He sailed in March, and his four months in those delectable islands remained always to him a golden memory—an experience which he hoped some day to repeat. He was young and eager for adventure then, and he went everywhere—horseback and afoot—saw everything, did everything, and wrote of it all for his paper. His letters to the "Union" were widely read and quoted, and, though not especially literary, added much to his journalistic standing. He was a great sight-seer in those days, and a persevering one. No discomfort or risk discouraged him. Once, with a single daring companion, he crossed the burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea, racing across the burning lava, leaping wide and bottomless crevices where a misstep would have meant death. His open-air life on the river and in the mining-camps had nerved and hardened him for adventure. He was thirty years old and in his physical prime. His mental growth had been slower, but it was sure, and it would seem always to have had the right guidance at the right time.
Clemens had been in the islands three months when one day Anson Burlingame arrived there, en route to his post as minister to China. With him was his son Edward, a boy of eighteen, and General Van Valkenburg, minister to Japan. Young Burlingame had read about Jim Smiley's jumping frog and, learning that the author was in Honolulu, but ill after a long trip inland, sent word that the party would call on him next morning. But Mark Twain felt that he could not accept this honor, and, crawling out of bed, shaved himself and drove to the home of the American minister, where the party was staying. He made a great impression with the diplomats. It was an occasion of good stories and much laughter. On leaving, General Van Valkenburg said to him:
"California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will be, too, no doubt." Which was certainly a good prophecy.
It was only a few days later that the diplomats rendered him a great service. Report had come of the arrival at Sanpahoe of an open boat containing fifteen starving men, who had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days—sailors from the missing ship Hornet of New York, which, it appeared, had been burned at sea. Presently eleven of the rescued men were brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital.
Mark Twain recognized the great importance as news of this event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the castaways and be the first to get their story in his paper. There was no cable, but a vessel was sailing for San Francisco next morning. It seemed the opportunity of a lifetime, but he was now bedridden and could scarcely move.
Then suddenly appeared in his room Anson Burlingame and his party, and, almost before Mark Twain realized what was happening, he was on a cot and, escorted by the heads of two legations, was on his way to the hospital to get the precious interview. Once there, Anson Burlingame, with his gentle manner and courtly presence, drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of the burning of the vessel, followed by the long privation and struggle that had lasted through forty-three fearful days and across four thousand miles of stormy sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make notes. That night he wrote against time, and next morning, just as the vessel was drifting from the dock, a strong hand flung his bulky manuscript aboard and his great beat was sure. The three-column story, published in the "Sacramento Union" of July 9, gave the public the first detailed history of the great disaster. The telegraph carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a sensation.
Mark Twain and the Burlingame party were much together during the rest of their stay in Hawaii, and Samuel Clemens never ceased to love and honor the memory of Anson Burlingame. It was proper that he should do so, for he owed him much—far more than has already been told.
Anson Burlingame one day said to him: "You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors; always climb."
This, coming to him from a man of Burlingame's character and position, was like a gospel from some divine source. Clemens never forgot the advice. It gave him courage, new hope, new resolve, new ideals.
Burlingame came often to the hotel, and they discussed plans for Mark Twain's future. The diplomat invited the journalist to visit him in China:
"Come to Pekin," he said, "and make my house your home."
Young Burlingame also came, when the patient became convalescent, and suggested walks. Once, when Clemens hesitated, the young man said:
"But there is a scriptural command for you to go."
"If you can quote one, I'll obey," said Clemens.
"Very well; the Bible says: `If any man require thee to walk a mile, go with him Twain.'"
The walk was taken.
Mark Twain returned to California at the end of July, and went down to Sacramento. It was agreed that a special bill should be made for the "Hornet" report.
"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" asked one of the proprietors.
Clemens said: "Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole 'Union' office; call it a hundred dollars a column."
There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he took it to the office for payment.
"The cashier didn't faint," he wrote many years later, "but he came rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they only laughed in their jolly fashion, and said it was robbery, but `no matter, pay it. It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a paper."6
XXVI.
MARK TWAIN, LECTURER
In spite of the success of his Sandwich Island letters, Samuel Clemens felt, on his return to San Francisco, that his future was not bright. He was not a good, all-round newspaper man—he was special correspondent and sketch-writer, out of a job.
He had a number of plans, but they did not promise much. One idea was to make a book from his Hawaiian material. Another was to write magazine articles, beginning with one on the Hornet disaster. He did, in fact, write the Hornet article, and its prompt acceptance by "Harper's Magazine" delighted him, for it seemed a start in the right direction. A third plan was to lecture on the islands.
This prospect frightened him. He had succeeded in his "Third House" address of two years before, but then he had lectured without charge and for a church benefit. This would be a different matter.
One of the proprietors of a San Francisco paper, Col. John McComb, of the "Alta California," was strong in his approval of the lecture idea.
"Do it, by all means," he said. "Take the largest house in the city, and charge a dollar a ticket."
Without waiting until his fright came back, Mark Twain hurried to the manager of the Academy of Music, and engaged it for a lecture to be given October 2d (1866), and sat down and wrote his announcement. He began by stating what he would speak upon, and ended with a few absurdities, such as:
A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
is in town, but has not been engaged
Also
A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS will be on exhibition in the next block.
A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they please.
Doors open at 7 o'clock. The trouble to begin at 8 o'clock.
Mark Twain was well known in San Francisco, and was pretty sure to have a good house. But he did not realize this, and, as the evening approached, his dread of failure increased. Arriving at the theater, he entered by the stage door, half expecting to find the place empty. Then, suddenly, he became more frightened than ever; peering from the wings, he saw that the house was jammed—packed from the footlights to the walls! Terrified, his knees shaking, his tongue dry, he managed to emerge, and was greeted with a roar, a crash of applause that nearly finished him. Only for an instant—reaction followed; these people were his friends, and he was talking to them. He forgot to be afraid, and, as the applause came in great billows that rose ever higher, he felt himself borne with it as on a tide of happiness and success. His evening, from beginning to end, was a complete triumph. Friends declared that for descriptive eloquence, humor, and real entertainment nothing like his address had ever been delivered. The morning papers were enthusiastic.
Mark Twain no longer hesitated as to what he should do now. He would lecture. The book idea no longer attracted him; the appearance of the "Hornet" article, signed, through a printer's error, "Mark Swain," cooled his desire to be a magazine contributor. No matter—lecturing was the thing. Dennis McCarthy, who had sold his interest in the "Enterprise," was in San Francisco. Clemens engaged this honest, happy-hearted Irishman as manager, and the two toured California and Nevada with continuous success.
Those who remember Mark Twain as a lecturer in that early day say that on entering he would lounge loosely across the platform, his manuscript —written on wrapping-paper and carried under his arm—looking like a ruffled hen. His delivery they recall as being even more quaint and drawling than in later life. Once, when his lecture was over, an old man came up to him and said:
"Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"
In those days it was thought proper that a lecturer should be introduced, and Clemens himself used to tell of being presented by an old miner, who said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first is that he's never been in jail, and the second is, I don't know why."
When he reached Virginia, his old friend Goodman said, "Sam, you don't need anybody to introduce you," and he suggested a novel plan. That night, when the curtain rose, it showed Mark Twain seated at a piano, playing and singing, as if still cub pilot on the "John J. Roe:"
"Had an old horse whose name was Methusalem,
Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
A long time ago."
Pretending to be surprised and startled at the burst of applause, he sprang up and began to talk. How the audience enjoyed it!
Mark Twain continued his lecture tour into December, and then, on the 15th of that month, sailed by way of the Isthmus of Panama for New York. He had made some money, and was going home to see his people. He had planned to make a trip around the world later, contributing a series of letters to the "Alta California," lecturing where opportunity afforded. He had been on the Coast five and a half years, and to his professions of printing and piloting had added three others—mining, journalism, and lecturing. Also, he had acquired a measure of fame. He could come back to his people with a good account of his absence and a good heart for the future.
But it seems now only a chance that he arrived at all. Crossing the Isthmus, he embarked for New York on what proved to be a cholera ship.
For a time there were one or more funerals daily. An entry in his diary says:
"Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on the ship—a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.
"But the winter air of the North checked the contagion, and there were no new cases when New York City was reached."
Clemens remained but a short time in New York, and was presently in St. Louis with his mother and sister. They thought he looked old, but he had not changed in manner, and the gay banter between mother and son was soon as lively as ever. He was thirty-one now, and she sixty-four, but the years had made little difference. She petted him, joked with him, and scolded him. In turn, he petted and comforted and teased her. She decided he was the same Sam and always would be—a true prophecy.
He visited Hannibal and lectured there, receiving an ovation that would have satisfied even Tom Sawyer. In Keokuk he lectured again, then returned to St. Louis to plan his trip around the world.
He was not to make a trip around the world, however—not then. In St. Louis he saw the notice of the great "Quaker City" Holy Land excursion —the first excursion of the kind ever planned—and was greatly taken with the idea. Impulsive as always, he wrote at once to the "Alta California," proposing that they send him as their correspondent on this grand ocean picnic. The cost of passage was $1.200, and the "Alta" hesitated, but Colonel McComb, already mentioned, assured his associates that the investment would be sound. The "Alta" wrote, accepting Mark Twain's proposal, and agreed to pay twenty dollars each for letters. Clemens hurried to New York to secure a berth, fearing the passenger-list might be full. Furthermore, with no one of distinction to vouch for him, according to advertised requirements, he was not sure of being accepted. Arriving in New York, he learned from an "Alta" representative that passage had already been reserved for him, but he still doubted his acceptance as one of the distinguished advertised company. His mind was presently relieved on this point. Waiting his turn at the booking-desk, he heard a newspaper man inquire:
"What notables are going?"
A clerk, with evident pride, rattled off the names:
"Lieutenant-General Sherman, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mark Twain; also, probably, General Banks."
It was very pleasant to hear the clerk say that. Not only was he accepted, but billed as an attraction.
The "Quaker City" would not sail for two months yet, and during the period of waiting Mark Twain was far from idle. He wrote New York letters to the "Alta," and he embarked in two rather important ventures —he published his first book and he delivered a lecture in New York City.
Both these undertakings were planned and carried out by friends from the Coast. Charles Henry Webb, who had given up his magazine to come East, had collected "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches," and, after trying in vain to find a publisher for them, brought them out himself, on the 1st of May, 1867.[7] It seems curious now that any publisher should have declined the little volume, for the sketches, especially the frog story, had been successful, and there was little enough good American humor in print. However, publishing was a matter not lightly undertaken in those days.
Mark Twain seems to have been rather pleased with the appearance of his first book. To Bret Harte he wrote:
The book is out and is handsome. It is full of . . . errors….but be a friend and say nothing about those things. When my hurry is over, I will send you a copy to pizen the children with.
The little cloth-and-gold volume, so valued by book-collectors to-day, contained the frog story and twenty-six other sketches, some of which are still preserved in Mark Twain's collected works. Most of them were not Mark Twain's best literature, but they were fresh and readable and suited the taste of that period. The book sold very well, and, while it did not bring either great fame or fortune to its author, it was by no means a failure.
The "hurry" mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to Bret Harte related to his second venture—that is to say, his New York lecture, an enterprise managed by an old Comstock friend, Frank Fuller, ex-Governor of Utah. Fuller, always a sanguine and energetic person, had proposed the lecture idea as soon as Mark Twain arrived in New York. Clemens shook his head.
"I have no reputation with the general public here," he said. "We couldn't get a baker's dozen to hear me."
But Fuller insisted, and eventually engaged the largest hall in New York, the Cooper Union. Full of enthusiasm and excitement, he plunged into the business of announcing and advertising his attraction, and inventing schemes for the sale of seats. Clemens caught Fuller's enthusiasm by spells, but between times he was deeply depressed. Fuller had got up a lot of tiny hand-bills, and had arranged to hang bunches of these in the horse-cars. The little dangling clusters fascinated Clemens, and he rode about to see if anybody else noticed them. Finally, after a long time, a passenger pulled off one of the bills and glanced at it. A man with him asked:
"Who's Mark Twain?"
"Goodness knows! I don't."
The lecturer could not ride any farther. He hunted up his patron.
"Fuller," he groaned, "there isn't a sign—a ripple of interest."
Fuller assured him that things were "working underneath," and would be all right. But Clemens wrote home: "Everything looks shady, at least, if not dark." And he added that, after hiring the largest house in New York, he must play against Schuyler Colfax, Ristori, and a double troupe of Japanese jugglers, at other places of amusement.
When the evening of the lecture approached and only a few tickets had been sold, the lecturer was desperate.
"Fuller," he said, "there'll be nobody in Cooper Union that night but you and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the house, Fuller. You must send out a flood of complimentaries!"
"Very well," said Fuller. "What we want this time is reputation, anyway —money is secondary. I'll put you before the choicest and most intelligent audience that was ever gathered in New York City."
Fuller immediately sent out complimentary tickets to the school-teachers of New York and Brooklyn–a general invitation to come and hear Mark Twain's great lecture on the Sandwich Islands. There was nothing to do after that but wait results.
Mark Twain had lost faith—he did not believe anybody in New York would come to hear him even on a free ticket. When the night arrived, he drove with Fuller to the Cooper Union half an hour before the lecture was to begin. Forty years later he said:
"I couldn't keep away. I wanted to see that vast Mammoth Cave, and die. But when we got near the building, I saw all the streets were blocked with people and that traffic had stopped. I couldn't believe that these people were trying to get to the Cooper Institute—but they were; and when I got to the stage, at last, the house was jammed full—packed; there wasn't room enough left for a child.
"I was happy and I was excited beyond expression. I poured the Sandwich Islands out on those people, and they laughed and shouted to my entire content. For an hour and fifteen minutes I was in paradise."
So in its way this venture was a success. It brought Mark Twain a good deal of a reputation in New York, even if no financial profit, though, in spite of the flood of complimentaries, there was a cash return of something like three hundred dollars. This went a good way toward paying the expenses, while Fuller, in his royal way, insisted on making up the deficit, declaring he had been paid for everything in the fun and joy of the game.
"Mark," he said, "it's all right. The fortune didn't come, but it will. The fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book just out, you are going to be the most-talked-of man in the country. Your letters to the 'Alta' and the 'Tribune' will get the widest reception of any letters of travel ever written."
