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04 - Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch by William M. Clemens · Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch

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  Speaker 1: This is chapter four of Mark Twain, His Life and Work,
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  Speaker 1: a biographical sketch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Mark Twain, His Life and Work, A Biographical Sketch, Chapter
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  Speaker 1: four one of The Innocence, read by John Greenman. During
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  Speaker 1: the winter months of eighteen sixty six sixty seven, a
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  Speaker 1: coterie of bright journalists eked out a miserable existence in
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  Speaker 1: San Francisco. Prominent among the bohemians who lunched together at
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  Speaker 1: the Miners restaurant were Charles Warren Stoddard F. Brett Hart,
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  Speaker 1: Charles H. Webb, Prentice Mulford, and Mark Twain. None of
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  Speaker 1: these gentlemen were quite so poor and needy as Sam Clemens,
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  Speaker 1: who on several occasions ventured upon the dangerous border land
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  Speaker 1: of starvation. One day, a comedian from a local theater
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  Speaker 1: approached Mark on the street. See here. Clemens said, he
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  Speaker 1: I need a half dozen good Joe, get them up
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  Speaker 1: and I'll give you five dollars. Sorry, old man, answered
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  Speaker 1: Mark thoughtfully, But I'm afraid the scheme won't work. Why not, Well,
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  Speaker 1: the fact is I'm so damned poor. If I was
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  Speaker 1: found with five dollars on my person, people would say
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  Speaker 1: I stole them. On the other hand, if you got
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  Speaker 1: off any decent jokes, people would say you stole them too.
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  Speaker 1: In January eighteen sixty seven, Stoddard and Mulford gave several
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  Speaker 1: successful public entertainments in San Francisco, and fired with ambition,
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  Speaker 1: Mark Twain started forth upon a lecture tour through the
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  Speaker 1: smaller cities of California and Nevada. In those days, most
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  Speaker 1: any sort of an entertainment brought out a crowd, and
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  Speaker 1: when it was announced one day in Carson City that
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  Speaker 1: Mark was to deliver a lecture for the benefit of
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  Speaker 1: something or other at the Episcopal Church, it was generally
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  Speaker 1: understood that the house would be crowded. Well the night arrived,
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  Speaker 1: writes a friend who was present, Mark ascended the steps
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  Speaker 1: into the pulpit about eight o'clock, there being a whole
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  Speaker 1: lot of the boys and young women friends of his,
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  Speaker 1: as well as a good many old people in front.
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  Speaker 1: Mark made a very polite bow and then unfolded a
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  Speaker 1: gigantic roll of brown paper. People thought at first it
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  Speaker 1: was a map, but it turned out to be his lecture,
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  Speaker 1: written on great sheets of grocer's brown paper with an
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  Speaker 1: ordinary grocer's marking. Brush. After his bow, he turned his
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  Speaker 1: back around to the audience and craned his head up
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  Speaker 1: to the lamp, and thus read from the big sheets,
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  Speaker 1: as though it would be impossible for him to see
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  Speaker 1: any other way. The lecture was on the future of
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  Speaker 1: Nevada and was the funniest thing I ever heard. He
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  Speaker 1: prophesied the great era of prosperity that was before us,
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  Speaker 1: and sought to encourage us residents of the Sagebrush region
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  Speaker 1: by foretelling what appeared to be Goldcoonda like tales of
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  Speaker 1: impossible mineral discoveries. Right on the heels of it, however,
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  Speaker 1: came the remarkable discoveries of Virginia City, and then we
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  Speaker 1: thought he wasn't so far off in his humorous productions.
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  Speaker 1: Many a time have I thought of that lecture of
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  Speaker 1: Mark Twain. It ought to have been published. I have
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  Speaker 1: read all his books, and I never saw anything in
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  Speaker 1: any of them better than this. For several months, mister
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  Speaker 1: Clemens continued this platform experience with Prophet the while writing
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  Speaker 1: interesting letters to the Eastern newspapers and contributing sketches to
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  Speaker 1: the periodicals. In March eighteen sixty seven, he pumped first book,
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  Speaker 1: The Jumping Frog of calaveras a collection of his best
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  Speaker 1: fugitive sketches, and this immediately aroused public attention, not only
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  Speaker 1: in America, but also in England. Soon after, he sailed
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  Speaker 1: for New York by way of Panama, and, upon arriving there,
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  Speaker 1: having found that his little volume was well received, arranged
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  Speaker 1: for an English edition, which was published by Missus Routledge
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  Speaker 1: and Sons of London. From New York, Mark proceeded to Washington,
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  Speaker 1: where he endeavored to earn his living by writing letters
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  Speaker 1: to the San Francisco Alta and delivering a lecture or two.
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  Speaker 1: His lecture experience in Washington's brief, but interesting, and he
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  Speaker 1: tells about it in his inimical way, as follows, well,
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  Speaker 1: now I'll have to tell you something about that lecture.
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  Speaker 1: It was a little the hardest and roughest experience I
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  Speaker 1: ever underwent in my whole career as lecturer. Now I
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  Speaker 1: had not been in Washington more than a day or
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  Speaker 1: two before a friend of mine came to my room
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  Speaker 1: at the hotel early one morning, wakened me out of
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  Speaker 1: a sound sleep, and nearly stunned me by asking if
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  Speaker 1: I was aware of the fact that I was to
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  Speaker 1: deliver a lecture at Lincoln Hall that evening. I told
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  Speaker 1: him no, and that he must be crazy to get
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  Speaker 1: out of bed at such an unseemly hour to ask
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  Speaker 1: such a foolish question. But he soon assured me that
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  Speaker 1: he was perfectly sane by showing me the morning papers,
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  Speaker 1: which all announced that Mark Twain was to lecture that evening,
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  Speaker 1: and that his subject would be the Sandwich Islands. To
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  Speaker 1: say that I was surprised would be putting it mildly.
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  Speaker 1: I was mad, for I thought some one had put
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  Speaker 1: a game on me. Well, on careful inquiry, I learned
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  Speaker 1: that an old theatrical friend of mine thought he would
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  Speaker 1: do me a favor. So he made all the necessary
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  Speaker 1: arrangements for me to lecture, with the exception of the
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  Speaker 1: slight circumstance that he neglected to inform me of any
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  Speaker 1: of his intentions. He rented Lincoln Hall, builled the town,
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  Speaker 1: and sent the newspapers advertisements and notices about the coming lecture.
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  Speaker 1: And the worst of it was he had done all
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  Speaker 1: his work thoroughly. After learning this, I was in Alemma.
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  Speaker 1: I had never prepared any lecture on the Sandwich Islands.
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  Speaker 1: What was I to do? I could not back out
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  Speaker 1: by telling the people that I was unprepared. Now that
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  Speaker 1: that was out of the question because the people wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: believe it. The billing of the town had been too
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  Speaker 1: well done for that. So there was only one thing
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  Speaker 1: left for me to do, and that was to lock
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  Speaker 1: myself in my room and write that lecture between the
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  Speaker 1: breakfast hour and half past seven that evening. Well, I
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  Speaker 1: did it, and was on hand at the advertised hour,
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  Speaker 1: facing one of the biggest audiences I ever addressed. I
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  Speaker 1: did not use my manuscript, but in those days I
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  Speaker 1: always had my lecture in writing and kept it on
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  Speaker 1: the reading stand at one end of the place where
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  Speaker 1: I stood on the platform. I was very good at
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  Speaker 1: memorizing and rarely had any trouble in speaking without notes.
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  Speaker 1: But the very fact that I had my manuscript near
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  Speaker 1: at hand, where I could readily turn to it without
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  Speaker 1: having to undergo the mortification of pulling it from my pocket,
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  Speaker 1: gave me courage and kept me from making awkward pauses.
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  Speaker 1: But the writing of that Sandwich Island lecture in one
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  Speaker 1: day was the toughest job ever put to me. One afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: while sitting in his dingy little room smoking his cob pipe,
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  Speaker 1: Mark became deeply interested in reading about the contemplated trip
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  Speaker 1: of the steamship Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land,
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  Speaker 1: and saw the chance of his He wrote to General
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  Speaker 1: John McComb one of the proprietors of the San Francisco
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  Speaker 1: Daily Alta, California, asking for an advance of one thousand,
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  Speaker 1: two hundred dollars in gold, proposing to pay it in
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  Speaker 1: letters at fifteen dollars apiece. It was no small request
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  Speaker 1: to make of a San Francisco newspaper in the sixties,
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  Speaker 1: but macombe induced his partners to grant the request. That
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  Speaker 1: was how Mark Twain formed one of the party who
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  Speaker 1: sailed in the steamship Quaker City Captain Duncan for an
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  Speaker 1: extended excursion to Palestine and the Holy Land. This voyage
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  Speaker 1: to the different seaports of Southern Europe and the Orient
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  Speaker 1: gave him an opportunity of which he made abundant use.
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  Speaker 1: The excursion was a very exclusive sort of affair, and
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  Speaker 1: Captain Duncan his authority for the statement that Clemens had
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  Speaker 1: represented himself when he applied for passage on the Quaker
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  Speaker 1: City as a Baptist minister in ill health from San
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  Speaker 1: Franciscomans had accompanied the excursion party solely as a newspaper correspondent.
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  Speaker 1: He fell in with a crowd of good, respectable bourgeois
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  Speaker 1: and bourgeoisises, and if the exaggerated narrative of the Innocence Abroad,
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  Speaker 1: published two years later is to be relied upon, he
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  Speaker 1: certainly must have kept his pious minded fellow voyagers in
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  Speaker 1: a constant state of nervous excitement. The story of that
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  Speaker 1: eventful tour has been well told in Innocence Abroad. He
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  Speaker 1: set out to explore the Holy Land and Egypt, stopping
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  Speaker 1: by the way at Athens. His description of the city
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  Speaker 1: at night as one of the most vivid vignettes on record.
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  Speaker 1: The full moon was riding high in the heavens now.
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  Speaker 1: We sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the
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  Speaker 1: lofty battlements of the citadel and looked down a vision,
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  Speaker 1: and such a vision Athens by moonlight. It lay in
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  Speaker 1: the level plain right under our feet, all spread abroad
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  Speaker 1: like a picture, and we looked upon it as we
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  Speaker 1: might be looking at it from a balloon. We saw
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  Speaker 1: no semblance of a street, but every house, every window,
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  Speaker 1: every clinging vine, every projection were marked as clearly as
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  Speaker 1: it were at noonday, and yet there was no glare,
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  Speaker 1: no glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive. The harshest city was
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  Speaker 1: flooded with the yellowest light that ever streamed from the moon,
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  Speaker 1: and seemed like some living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber.
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  Speaker 1: On its further side was a little temple whose delicate
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  Speaker 1: pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich luster that
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  Speaker 1: chained the eye like a spell. And nearer by the
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  Speaker 1: Palace of the King, reared its creamy walls out of
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  Speaker 1: the mist of a great garden of shrubbery that was
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  Speaker 1: flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights,
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  Speaker 1: a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in
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  Speaker 1: the glory of the moon, and glinted softly upon the
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  Speaker 1: sea of dark foliage, like the pallid star of the
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  Speaker 1: milky Way. Overhead, the stately columns, majestic still in their ruin.
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  Speaker 1: Under foot, the dreaming city in the distance, the silver sea.
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  Speaker 1: The picture needed nothing. It was perfect, equally realistic, vivid
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  Speaker 1: and interesting were his sketches of scenes and incidents in
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  Speaker 1: Palestine and Egypt, of his experience with a camel in
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  Speaker 1: se Syria, he wrote as follows in a vein of
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  Speaker 1: the richest humor in Syria. At the headwaters of the Jordan,
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  Speaker 1: A camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents
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  Speaker 1: were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye,
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  Speaker 1: all over with as much interest as if he had
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  Speaker 1: an idea of getting one made like it. And then
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  Speaker 1: after he was done figuring on it as an article
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  Speaker 1: of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article
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  Speaker 1: of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted
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  Speaker 1: one of the sleeves out with his teeth and chewed
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  Speaker 1: and chewed at it, gradually taking it in and all
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  Speaker 1: the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind
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  Speaker 1: of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything
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  Speaker 1: so good as an overcoat before in his life. Then
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  Speaker 1: he smacked his lips once or twice and reached after
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  Speaker 1: the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and
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  Speaker 1: smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain
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  Speaker 1: to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing
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  Speaker 1: about an overcoat. The tales went next, along with some
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  Speaker 1: percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig paste from Constantinople,
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  Speaker 1: and then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took
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  Speaker 1: a chance in that manuscript letters written from the home papers.
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  Speaker 1: But he was treading on dangerous ground. Now. He began
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  Speaker 1: to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was
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  Speaker 1: weighty on his stomach, and occasionally he would take a
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  Speaker 1: joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth.
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  Speaker 1: It was getting to be perilous times with him, but
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  Speaker 1: he held his grip with good courage, and hopefully till
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  Speaker 1: at last he began to stumble on statements that not
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  Speaker 1: even a camel could swallow. With impunity, he began to
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  Speaker 1: gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and
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  Speaker 1: his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of
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  Speaker 1: a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's
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  Speaker 1: work bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I
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  Speaker 1: went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and
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  Speaker 1: found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on
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  Speaker 1: one of the mildest and gentlest statements of act that
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  Speaker 1: I ever laid before a trusting public. The trip of
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  Speaker 1: the Quaker City was not designed as a lengthy tour
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  Speaker 1: of Europe, but merely a midsummer excursion of a few months.
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  Speaker 1: Brief as was the voyage, however, Mark Twain made the
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  Speaker 1: most of it and gathered the material not only enough
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  Speaker 1: in quantity to produce a large volume, but enough in
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  Speaker 1: quality to give him everlasting fame. Returning to New York,
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  Speaker 1: he proceeded to Washington, where he commenced a new career
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  Speaker 1: as the special correspondent of newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago,
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  Speaker 1: and elsewhere. End of chapter three of Mark Twain His
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  Speaker 1: Life and Work, a biographical sketch read by John Greenman,