§ 131. San Francisco Letter
24 or 26 December 1865
This installment of Clemens' daily correspondence to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise is not a sustained comic attack on Albert Evans and the Alta California, but his ridicule of them is scattered so promiscuously throughout the rambling and rather diffuse letter that it has seemed best to reproduce virtually all of it here.1 The letter was written on 22 December 1865 and probably appeared in the Enterprise shortly thereafter, on December 24 or 26 (December 25 was a Monday, the day on which the Enterprise did not publish). The full text was preserved by Clemens in the Yale Scrapbook, where he later struck through the clipping—presumably in January or February 1867, while preparing copy for his Jumping Frog book.
Although both “Editorial Poem” and “More Wisdom!” needle the Alta for its banality, the central element in the letter is Clemens' attack in “Facetious,” where he pounces on Evans' most glaring weakness as a reporter: his painfully labored efforts at humor. Like other local reporters, Evans strove to inject at least incidental humor into the budget of daily items. To this end he had invented, in 1864, the character Armand Leonidas Stiggers—a dandified bohemian who loafed about the Alta office, where he was not wanted. Stiggers (whose surname Evans later changed to “Fitz Smythe”) was portrayed as a bungler whose awkward predicaments regularly found their way into Evans' column of city news. Clemens, no doubt deliberately mistaking Evans' intention, soon identified Fitz Smythe with his creator and the two became one, not only for Clemens, but for his fellow journalists on the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle and the Californian as well.
San Francisco, Dec. 22.
. . . .
editorial poem.
The following fine Christmas poem appears in the Alta Ⓔexplanatory note of this morning, in the unostentatious garb of an editorial. This manner of “setting it” robs it of half its beauty. I will arrange it as blank verse, and then it will read much more charmingly:
“christmas comes but once a year.”
“The Holidays are approaching. We hearOf them and see their signs every day.
The children tell you every morn
How long it is until the glad New Year.
The pavements all are covered o'er
With boxes, which have arrived
Per steamer and are being unpacked
In anticipation sweet, of an unusual demand.
The windows of the shops
Montgomery street along,
Do brilliant shine
With articles of ornament and luxury;
The more substantial goods,
Which eleven months now gone
The place have occupied,
Having been put aside for a few revolving weeks,
Silks, satins, laces, articles of gold and silver,
[begin page 338] Jewels, porcelains from Sevres,
And from Dresden;
Bohemian and Venetian glass,
Pictures, engravings,
Bronzes of the finest workmanship
And price extravagant, attract
TheⒶemendation eye at every step
Along the promenades of fashion.
The hotels
With visitors are crowded, who have come
From the ultimate interior to enjoy
Amusements metropolitan, or to find
A more extensive market, and prices lower
For purchases, than country towns afford.
Abundant early rains a prosperous year
Have promised—and the dry
And sunny weather which prevailed hath
For two weeks past, doth offer
Facilities profound for coming to the city,
And for enjoyment after getting here.
The ocean beach throughout the day,
And theatres, in shades of evening, show
A throng of strangers glad residents as well.
All appearances do indicate
That this blithe time of holiday
In San Francisco will
Be one of liveliness unusual, and brilliancy withal!”Ⓐemendation
[Exit Chief Editor, bowing low—impressive music.]
I cannot admire the overstrong modesty which impels a man to compose a stately anthem like that and run it together in the solid unattractiveness of a leading editorial.
facetious.
This morning's Alta is brilliant. The fine poem I have quoted is coppered by a scintillation of Fitz Smythe's in the same columnⒺexplanatory note. He calls the thieving scalliwags of the Fourteenth InfantryⒺexplanatory note “niptomaniacs.” That is not bad considering that it much more intelligently describes their chief proclivity than “kleptomaniac” describes the weakness of another kind of thieves. The merit of this effort ranks so high that it is a mercy it is only a smart remark instead of a joke—otherwise Fitz Smythe must have perished, [begin page 339] and instantly. For fear that this remark may be obscure to some persons I will explain by informing the public that the soothsayers were called in at the time of Fitz Smythe's birth, and they read the stars and prophecied that he was destined to lead a long and eventful life, and to arrive to great distinction for his untiring industry in endeavoring, for the period of near half a century, to get off a joke. They said that many times during his life the grand end and aim of his existence would seem to be in his reach, and his mission on earth on the point of being fulfilled; but again and again bitter disappointment would overtake him; what promised so fairly to be a joke would come forth still-born; but he would rise superior to despair and make new and more frantic efforts. And these wise men said that in the evening of his life, when hope was well nigh dead with him, he would some day, all unexpectedly to himself, and likewise to the world, produce a genuine joke, and one of marvelous humor—and then his head would cave in, and his bowels be rent asunder, and his arms and his legs would drop off and he would fall down and die in dreadful agony. “Niptomaniac” is a felicitous expression, but God be thanked it is not a joke. If it had been, it would have killed him—the mission of Armand Leonidas Fitz Smythe would have been accomplished.
mayo and aldrichⒺexplanatory note .
The last news from Frank Mayo will be gratifying to his host of friends and admirers in California and Nevada. His rank is “StockⒶemendation Star,” and he plays the leading characters in heavy pieces, and, the Boston papers say, plays them as well as is done by any great actor in America, and make no exceptions. He traveled through the chief cities with the KeansⒺexplanatory note, starring by himself in afterpieces, and playing with the Keans when there was no afterpiece—taking such parts as “Henry VIII.” The Philadelphia papers said the Keans were very well, but Mr. Mayo was the best actor in the lot!
Louis Aldrich, in his new Boston engagement, will take high rank also, and play “first old man” and such characters. He will do well in the East. You never saw a man make such striding advances in professional excellence as Aldrich has done since he first played in Virginia. He “holds over” Mayo in one respect—he will study, and study hard, too—and Mayo won't.
[begin page 340]financial.
In an editorial setting forth the palpable fact that California and Nevada are cutting their own throats by their mistaken sagacity in hanging on to their double-eagle circulating medium, instead of smoothing the way for the adoption of greenbacksⒶemendation as our currency, the Flag touches upon several matters of immediate interest to Washoe, and I make an extractⒺexplanatory note:
In the large city of Virginia, the San Francisco system of moneyed exclusiveness prevails completely. Two or three usurers have taken advantage of the necessities of the community and, upon loans at exorbitant interest, obtained some sort of possession of nearly all of the real estate and houseⒶhistorical collation property in the city. The Bank of California through its various connections, has worked itself into the proprietorship of the most valuable mines, and this has been accomplished by first depreciating the stock and then buying it under the stress of “a stock panic.” Men who cannot sustain the depreciation, maintain their credit and transact their business independent of a high value of their mining stock, must yield in order to ease their fall, and then, as they become ruined, they witness the outrage of their ruin, and retire in despair from enterprise and competition. The stock market has lately been unusually depressed. The California speculators and Specific Contract fellows of the two States have caused the depression, and now, having absorbed nearly all of the mining property, they are preparing to create a “revival” of stock speculation whereby they will again deceive the publicⒶemendation, realize enormous sums and effect new ruin in every direction but their own.
personal.
I do not know why I should head these two items from the Call “personal,” but I do:
The “Territorial Enterprise.”—This admirably conducted paper has entered on its eighth year of existence.
Changed.—The Virginia Union has changed from a morning to an evening paper. It manifests a restlessness which may precede speedy dissolution.
mock duel—almost.
A French broker on Montgomery street quarreled with his rival in a tender affair, the other day, and a challenge passed, and was accepted. The seconds determined to merely load the pistols with [begin page 341] blank cartridges, and have some fun out of the matter; but they got to drinking rather freely, ran all night, and when the party arrived on the dueling ground, at early dawn, the seconds were not sober enough to act their part with sufficient gravity to carry their plan through successfully. The principals discovered that they were being trifled with, and indignantly left the ground. I could get no names. All I could find out was that the seconds were two well-known “sports,” that the challenge was sent and accepted in good faith, and that one of the principals was a broker.
“more wisdom!”
The Alta is most unusually and astonishingly brilliant this morning. I cannot do better than give it space and let it illumine your columns. It lets off a level column of editorial to prove that bees eat clover; mice eat bees; cats eat mice; cats bask in the sun; the spots on the sun derange the electric currents; that derangement produces earthquakes; earthquakes make cold weather; and the bees, and the mice, and the cats, and the spots on the sun, and the electric currents, and the earthquakes, and the cold weather, mingling together in one grand fatal combination, produce cholera! Listen to the Alta: Ⓔexplanatory note
We know that we have sometimes to go a long way around to trace an effect to its cause. Darwin, in “The Origin of Species,” states a fact which may be used with advantage in illustration, viz.: The presence of a large number of cats in a village is favorable to the spread of red clover. The reader will at once exclaim—what on earth can cats have to do with that species of the genus trifolium? The answer is—the humble-bee, by a peculiarity of its organization, can alone extract the nectar from the flower of the red clover. In passing from flower to flower it conveys the pollen necessary for the fertilization and consequent spread of the plant. The field mice prey upon the humble-bee, break up its nests, and eat its stores of honey, while the cats destroy the mice; hence it follows that in the natural propagation of the plant in question, the feline tribe perform anⒶhistorical collation Ⓐemendation important part.
Bearing such curious revelations as these in mind, it is easy enough to present a theory to cover the case of mother earth at this time, namely: that the spots on the face of the sun derange the electic currents of the earth; that the derangement of the electric currents produces earthquakes; that earthquakes contribute to cold weather, by permitting the escape of some of the caloric of the interior of the globe, and that all these changes, in some way, are the cause of the rinder-pest and cholera.Ⓐemendation
Solomon's wisdom was foolishness to this.
Mark Twain.
The holidays are approaching. We hear of them and see their signs every day. The children tell you every morning how long it is till New Year. The pavements are covered with boxes, which have arrived by steamer, and are being unpacked in anticipation of an unusual demand. The windows of the shops along Montgomery street are brilliant with articles of ornament and luxury; the more substantial goods, which during the last eleven months occupied the place, having been put aside for a few weeks. Silks, satins, laces, articles of silver and gold, jewels, porcelain from Sevres and Dresden, Bohemian and Venitian glass, pictures, engravings, bronzes of the finest workmanship and the most extravagant price, attract the eyes at every step along the promenades of fashion. The hotels are crowded with visitors who have come from the interior to enjoy the amusements of the metropolis, or to find a more extensive market and lower prices for their holiday purchases than their country towns afford. The abundant and early rains have promised a year of prosperity, and the dry and sunny weather which has prevailed for two weeks past offers facilities for reaching the city, and for enjoyment after getting here. The ocean beach during the day, and the theatres during the evening, show a throng of strangers as well as of residents. All the appearances indicate that this holiday season in San Francisco will be one of unusual liveliness and brilliancy.
As Henry Nash Smith pointed out in 1957, Clemens' rendering of this passage into blank verse testified to “his intense interest in the theater; for his ‘blank verse’ is imitated from nineteenth-century theatrical pseudo-Shakespearian verse of the sort used by Bulwer-Lytton in The Lady of Lyons” ( MTCor , p. 81).
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 24 or 26 December 1865 (TEnt). The only known copy of this printing, in a clipping in the Yale Scrapbook (pp. 54–55), is copy-text for all but four items that Mark Twain quotes from San Francisco newspapers:
AF “California and Nevada—Both under the False Financial Rule,” San Francisco Weekly American Flag, 30 December 1865, p. 4, is copy-text from 340.8 through 340.27;MC “The ‘Territorial Enterprise’ ” and “Changed,” San Francisco Morning Call, 22 December 1865, p. 1, is copy-text from 340.31 through 340.35;
AC “The Condition of Mother Earth,” San Francisco Alta California, 22 December 1865, p. 2, is copy-text from 341.21 through 342.4.
The article that Mark Twain quotes and paraphrases from the San Francisco Alta California at 337.7 through 338.28 has been so completely altered by him that copy-text is necessarily TEnt. On the other hand, collation suggests that clippings of AF, MC, and AC were part of Mark Twain's manuscript. Two minor changes in the text of AC are here presumed to be revisions imposed by him, and are adopted as needed emendations of AC from TEnt, while one substantive variant between AF and TEnt is presumed to be compositorial and has been rejected. The reader may consult the original of the Alta paraphrase in the explanatory notes. Copies: PH of the Yale Scrapbook, pp. 54–55 (TEnt); PH from Bancroft (MC, AC); California State Library, Sacramento (AF).
The opening section of the letter—“How Long, O Lord, How Long?”—is omitted from the present text. It is scheduled to appear in the collection of social and political writings in The Works of Mark Twain. There are no textual notes.