Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“Jos. Goodman’s Memories of Humorist’s Early Days” (1910)

[20] === “Jos. Goodman’s Memories of Humorist’s Early Days” (1910) [ Joseph T. Goodman] Twain covered the second Nevada legislative session in Carson City, convened on 11 November 1862, for the Territorial Enterprise. “I was there every day in the legislature to distribute compliment and censure with evenly balanced justice and spread the same over half a page of the Enterprise every morning; consequently I was an influence” (Autobiography [1924] 2:307–8). After the close of the session on 20 December, Twain sent a series of letters from Carson to the newspaper, and in them he coined the pseudonym “Mark Twain.” joseph t. goodman of 1415 Benton street, Alameda, fifty years ago editor and part proprietor of the Territorial Enterprise, published at Virginia City, Nev., and in those pioneer times the biggest daily newspaper between Chicago and San Francisco, was Samuel L. Clemens’s first journalistic “boss.” The credit for discovering Mark Twain is due to Mr. Goodman, though he is too modest to claim it. . . . “Let me see—it was in 1862 that Sam Clemens came to work for us on the Territorial Enterprise. He was prospecting in Esmeralda County and had sent us some voluntary contributions. They struck us as so funny that we sent him word to come to Virginia City and take a job on the paper. “He came, and we put him to work reporting local affairs. Later on we sent him to Carson to report a session of the legislature, and it was from Carson that he sent us his first article signed ‘Mark Twain.’ He had asked me if he might sign a name to some stories apart from the regular reports of the daily proceedings in the legislature, and I had told him he might. So he wrote a humorous series of letters on what he called ‘The Third House,’ which described amusingly the carrying-on of a number of congenial leg- [21] islators that were in the habit of gathering for a jolly social time after both houses of the legislature had adjourned over night. . . .” According to Mr. Goodman, Samuel Clemens did not originate “Mark Twain” as a nom de plume. He says that the author explained to him he had borrowed it from an old Mississippi river captain named Sellers who, after retiring from active service on the old-time stern-wheelers, had taken to writing the news of the river and its steamboating, and signed his stories “Mark Twain.”1 . . . “We employed twenty-five of the best printers on the Coast, and Virginia City was a tremendously flourishing place in the days when Mark Twain’s first articles were helping to make the Territorial Enterprise read by everyone . The town had a population of perhaps 25,000,2 besides which there was a large floating population in the many camps and goldfields, and everyone bought the paper.” Notes 1. See Scharnhorst 153. 2. The combined population of Virginia City and nearby Gold Hill made it at the height of the mining boom the largest city in Nevada and the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco. [Joseph T. Goodman], “Jos. Goodman’s Memories of Humorist’s Early Days,” San Francisco Examiner, 22 April 1910, 3. [Joseph T. Goodman] ...