LETTERS 1866-67.THE LECTURER.SUCCESS ON THE COAST.IN NEW YORK.
THE GREAT OCEAN EXCURSION
It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco and wrote in his note-book, "Home again.No--not home again--in prison again, and all the wild sense of freedom gone.City seems so cramped and so dreary with toil and care and business anxieties.God help me, Iwish I were at sea again!"
The transition from the dreamland of a becalmed sailing-vessel to the dull, cheerless realities of his old life, and the uncertainties of his future, depressed him--filled him with forebodings.At one moment he felt himself on the verge of suicide--the world seemed so little worth while.
He wished to make a trip around the world, a project that required money.He contemplated making a book of his island letters and experiences, and the acceptance by Harper's Magazine of the revised version of the Hornet Shipwreck story encouraged this thought.
Friends urged him to embody in a lecture the picturesque aspect of Hawaiian life.The thought frightened him, but it also appealed to him strongly.He believed he could entertain an audience, once he got started on the right track.As Governor of the Third House at Carson City he had kept the audience in hand.Men in whom he had the utmost confidence insisted that he follow up the lecture idea and engage the largest house in the city for his purpose.The possibility of failure appalled him, but he finally agreed to the plan.
In Roughing It, and elsewhere, has been told the story of this venture--the tale of its splendid success.He was no longer concerned, now, as to his immediate future.The lecture field was profitable.His audience laughed and shouted.He was learning the flavor of real success and exulting in it.With Dennis McCarthy, formerly one of the partners in the Enterprise, as manager, he made a tour of California and Nevada.
To Mrs.Jane Clemens and others, in St.Louis:
VIRGINIA CITY, Nov.1, 1866.
ALL THE FOLKS, AFFECTIONATE GREETING,--You know the flush time's are past, and it has long been impossible to more than half fill the Theatre here, with any sort of attraction, but they filled it for me, night before last--full--dollar all over the house.
I was mighty dubious about Carson, but the enclosed call and some telegrams set that all right--I lecture there tomorrow night.
They offer a full house and no expense in Dayton--go there next.Sandy Baldwin says I have made the most sweeping success of any man he knows of.
I have lectured in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, Grass Valley, Nevada, You Bet, Red Dog and Virginia.I am going to talk in Carson, Gold Hill, Silver City, Dayton, Washoe, San Francisco again, and again here if I have time to re-hash the lecture.
Then I am bound for New York--lecture on the Steamer, maybe.
I'11 leave toward 1st December--but I'll telegraph you.
Love to all.
Yrs.
MARK.
His lecture tour continued from October until December, a period of picturesque incident, the story of which has been recorded elsewhere.
--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, by the same author]-- It paid him well;he could go home now, without shame.Indeed, from his next letter, full of the boyish elation which always to his last years was the complement of his success, we gather that he is going home with special honors--introductions from ministers and the like to distinguished personages of the East.
To Mrs.Jane Clemens and family, in St.Louis:
SAN F., Dec.4, 1866.
MY DEAR FOLKS,--I have written to Annie and Sammy and Katie some time ago--also, to the balance of you.
I called on Rev.Dr.Wadsworth last night with the City College man, but he wasn't at home.I was sorry, because I wanted to make his acquaintance.I am thick as thieves with the Rev.Stebbings, and I am laying for the Rev.Scudder and the Rev.Dr.Stone.I am running on preachers, now, altogether.I find them gay.Stebbings is a regular brick.I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev.
Dr.Tyng, and other eminent parsons in the east.Whenever anybody offers me a letter to a preacher, now I snaffle it on the spot.I shall make Rev.Dr.Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get to New York.Bellows is an able, upright and eloquent man--a man of imperial intellect and matchless power--he is Christian in the truest sense of the term and is unquestionably a brick....
Gen.Drum has arrived in Philadelphia and established his head-quarters there, as Adjutant Genl.to Maj.Gen.Meade.Col.Leonard has received a letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will come there.I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan't lecture much in the States.
The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing away a fortune in not going in her.I firmly believe it myself.
I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 5th inst., positively and without reserve.My room is already secured for me, and is the choicest in the ship.I know all the officers.
Yrs.Affy MARK.
We get no hint of his plans, and perhaps he had none.If his purpose was to lecture in the East, he was in no hurry to begin.
Arriving in New York, after an adventurous voyage, he met a number of old Californians--men who believed in him--and urged him to lecture.He also received offers of newspaper engagements, and from Charles Henry Webb, who had published the Californian, which Bret Harte had edited, came the proposal to collect his published sketches, including the jumping Frog story, in book form.Webb himself was in New York, and offered the sketches to several publishers, including Canton, who had once refused the Frog story by omitting it from Artemus Ward's book.It seems curious that Canton should make a second mistake and refuse it again, but publishers were wary in those days, and even the newspaper success of the Frog story did not tempt him to venture it as the title tale of a book.
