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

“Mark Twain as He Was Known during His Stay on the Pacific Slope” (1887)

[47] === “Mark Twain as He Was Known during His Stay on the Pacific Slope” (1887) George E. Barnes In early June 1864, after taking a room with Gillis in the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, Twain joined the staff of the San Francisco Morning Call, edited and co-owned by George E. Barnes (d. 1897). Over the next several weeks Twain occasionally crossed swords with Martin G. J. Burke (d. 1906), the corrupt chief of the San Francisco police. Meanwhile, Twain’s holdings of “feet,” or stock, in Comstock mines, particularly the Hale & Norcross, crashed in value. In mid October, Barnes permitted him to quit before he was fired. As Twain explained in chapter 58 of Roughing It, “I neglected my duties and became about worthless as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal” (404). As Barnes explained, Twain earned a living during the next few months by writing San Francisco “letters” to the Territorial Enterprise and contributing to the local literary weeklies, the Golden Era and the Californian. See also Mark Twain in Eruption, 254–60. about 1864 mr. clemens came to San Francisco. It cannot be said he made many friends in Nevada. There were some who affected his company on account of his writings, but he had not the faculty of winning friendship. Before he arrived in the city he had accumulated . . . a good deal of money, every stiver of which he sunk in Hale & Norcross.1 Then he took up the burden of literary life again. He wrote San Francisco letters to his old paper , the Territorial Enterprise, and for some real or fancied cause attacked the local police so persistently and fiercely that Martin G. J. Burke, who was chief of the force at the time, brought a suit for libel against the paper. Such envenomed communications as Mr. Clemens wrote on this subject have rarely been penned. They made the official equanimity of the old City Hall boil like a caldron of asphaltum, the fume and stench being in proportion. [48] He also contributed for Charley Webb (“Inigo”) to the Californian,2 for the Golden Era,3 and did all sorts of literary work whereby he could turn a cent. It was a terrible uphill business, and a less determined man than himself would have abandoned the struggle and remained at the base. Mr. Clemens was at Steamboat Springs, Nevada, for his health, when the letter was written offering him a place on the Call. He came down shortly after, but judging from his appearance, fortune had been playing scurvy tricks with him in the interim. Without doing the gentleman any injustice, it can be freely stated that although at the time a good general writer and correspondent, he made but an indifferent reporter. He only played at itemizing. Considering his experience in the mountains, he had an inexplicable aversion to walking , and in putting his matter on paper he was, to use his own expression, “slower than the wrath to come.” Many funny and characteristic incidents occurred during his few months’ stay on the Call. He only wanted to remain long enough, he said, when he engaged to go to work, to make “a stake,” but on leaving, his purse was no heavier than when he came. The most notable thing he did, that can now be recalled, was a philippic against some undertaking employee, where the morgue happened to be—for the death house, in those days, like the old fashioned plan with the country schoolmistress and the villagers, was “boarded round,” each undertaker accommodating the coroner in turn. It appears someone about the place refused to give Mr. Clemens information, or to let him see “the slate,” and next morning he got such a dose, commencing “These body-snatchers,” that a general apology was immediately made by every man in the establishment.4 The proprietor was East at the time, but when he read the article he shivered, as he confessed afterward, and considered his business ruined. Mr. Clemens parted from the Call people on the most friendly terms, when it was found necessary to make the local department more efficient, admitting his reportorial shortcomings and expressing surprise they were not sooner discovered. Notes 1. Twain soon filed a complaint about the fluctuations in the...