20 November 1868 • Cleveland, Ohio (MS: NPV, UCCL 02766)
I played against the eastern favorite, Fanny Kemble, in Pittsburgh, last night. She had 200 in her house, & I had upwards of 1,500.1explanatory note All the seats were sold, wi (in a driving rain storm, 3 days ago,) as reserved seats at 25 cents extra, even those in the second & third tiers—& when the last seat was gone the box office had not been open more than 2 hours. When I reached the theatre they were turning people away & the house was crammed. 150 or 200 stood up, all the evening.2explanatory note I go to Elmira to-night. I am simply lecturing for societies, at $100 a pop.
Frances (Fanny) Anne Kemble (1809–93), of the renowned English theatrical family, was an acclaimed actress, author, and lecturer who had gained great popularity for her public readings of Shakespeare. She began a series of readings in Pittsburgh’s Lafayette Hall on 19 November, the same evening Clemens lec tured at its Academy of Music. The Pittsburgh Gazette commented that Kemble’s “audience, though of a first-class order as regards intelligence and appreciation, was not such a one as the entertainment should receive, which, however, was no doubt influenced by the lecture attraction in another part of the city” (Pittsburgh Gazette: “Amusements,” 19 Nov 68, 8; “Mrs. Fanny Kemble,” 20 Nov 68, 8).
The Pittsburgh Gazette reported that Clemens had spoken “before one of the largest and most intelligent audiences ever assembled in our city,” adding that he
is a pleasing talker and puts just enough jest into his composition to make it pleasing and palatable. He does not fall into the error of those who have taken the lecture field to amuse rather than instruct an audience, of extravagant joking or straining of words to make sentences appear funny. There is no extravagance about Mark Twain’s style, and yet he is entitled above all living men to the name of American humorist. (“Mark Twain at the Academy,” 20 Nov 68, 8)
The Pittsburgh success occasioned comment even on the West Coast. On 17 December the San Francisco Alta California reported:
By the Pittsburgh papers we see that “Mark Twain,” our travelling correspondent, has struck a harvest with his lecture “The American Vandal Abroad.” He was requested to repeat his lecture in Pittsburgh, with a promise of a full house at “reserved seats” price (every seat was taken the first night), but as he had made engagements for twenty-one lectures in twenty-five nights at different places, he was obliged to decline. The banks will soon be bidding for the privilege of keeping his account. (“Success of the ‘American Vandal,’” 1)
But the Pittsburgh lecture was not unanimously applauded, for in his 29 December letter to Jervis Langdon, Clemens reported that an “unjust & angry criticism” of it appeared in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, presumably in the issue of 20 November. Although no copy of the newspaper or its review has been found, the Pittsburgh Post recalled a year later that the Dispatch had “styled him a great fraud, said there was nothing in him, and as a lecturer he was a failure. Yes, and even ventured to tell the Young Men’s Library Association that if they wished to make their lectures a success, they would not engage Twain” (Vandal, 1).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 282–283; MTL , 1:155–56.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.