Mark Twain’s stories from San Francisco
San Francisco police officers ought to be made of wax, said one of the most famous men ever to set foot in town.
“Wax figures, besides being far more economical, would be about as useful,” the fellow wrote. “Punishment of lawbreakers is, in some favored cases, almost obsolete.”
So said none other than a 29-year-old newspaperman named Mark Twain, in a cache of writings that Twain scholars at UC Berkeley have recently uncovered, authenticated and promulgated upon the public.
The writings — most of which are marking their 150th birthday — shed light on one of America’s greatest writers
while he was a young buck who, during his year or so in San Francisco, was still figuring out whether he wanted to be a writer at all.
Letter from S.F.
In San Francisco, Twain’s job was to write a 2,000-word story, or “letter,” every day and send it off by stagecoach for publication in the Territorial Enterprise newspaper of Virginia City, Nev. Twain did some of his writing from a desk in the offices of a brand new newspaper known as the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, which later shortened its name to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Much of what Twain wrote for the Territorial Enterprise was lost in a series of fires that burned back issues of the paper, said Bob Hirst, editor of the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley. But over the years, Twain scholars rediscovered his San Francisco stories by combing back issues of other Western U.S. newspapers, many of which reprinted the Territorial Enterprise letters.
Some of the recently found letters, assembled bit by bit from newspaper archives and historical societies, were unsigned. Hirst says that a close examination of their style proves that Twain was the author.
“This is new stuff, even for Mark Twain fans,” Hirst said.
Fighting with chief
In one letter, Twain picked a fight with the San Francisco police chief, one Martin Burke. Twain wrote that the chief was like a dog chasing its own tail to “show off before his mistress.” Following an outcry from Burke's cronies, the young Twain wrote an “explanation” in which he said he was referring to the dog, not the chief.
“Chief Burke don’t keep a mistress,” Twain wrote. “On second thoughts, I only wish he did. ... Even if he kept a mistress, I would hardly parade it in the public prints. Nor would I object to his performing any gymnastic miracle ... to afford her wholesome amusement.”
The chief's cronies shut up after that, wisely wishing to avoid any further “explanations.”
As for San Francisco high culture, Twain dropped by the opera house one night for a performance of “Martha” and strongly suggests that he fell asleep, as opera patrons have done in San Francisco ever since.
“I could close one eye in an opera and tell ‘Traviata’ from ‘Trovatore,’ ” Twain wrote. “I began to acknowledge to myself that this was tolerably true — and finally I deliberately decided that it was entirely and unquestionably true.”
A tall tale
With 2,000 words a day to dash off, Twain found himself dealing in stories that were true, mostly true, occasionally true and possibly true. Twain didn’t have the time or inclination to be particular, and it is unclear into which of those categories his San Francisco letter of Oct. 20, 1865, belongs.
In it, he recounts the harrowing tale of two gold mine speculators who nearly died when a rope broke while they were inspecting a Tuolumne County shaft.
The two men had been lowered in a bucket into the shaft, Twain reported. The bucket was tied to a rope that was tied to an old horse named Cotton who was fond of taking breaks for what Twain called “profound meditation.” Then the rope snapped.
“The bucket broke loose and went thundering down to the bottom, apparently 70 or 80 feet, leaving the two adventurers clinging desperately to the rope and glaring in each other’s faces,” Twain wrote. “Just then, Cotton stopped to meditate.”
The two men yelled, prayed, wailed and cussed.
“Johnny,” said one of the dangling men to the other, as reported by Twain, “I've not lived as I ought to have lived. D— that infernal horse! But, Johnny, if we are saved I mean to be a good man and a Christian. Oh Lord, Johnny! We’ve got to die in this dark hole.”
Even a casual Twain fan will see the problem. Twain was not himself in the mine shaft, but at his desk in San Francisco. His reporting at length of the exact words of two men who were in the shaft — or of the state of mind of a horse — might be more of a stretch than whatever caused the rope to break.
Eventually, Twain reported, the horse decided he had nothing better to do and saved the two men’s lives. The men bought the mine for $75,000, horse included.
Corruption the rule
In another letter, Twain said San Francisco cops of 1865 might as well be made of wax, for all the crime-stopping they were doing.
“Blackmail, corruption and bribery is the rule, and not the exception, among the municipal body, all of whom are ... like so many shoplifters or highwaymen. ” he wrote. “The correspondent suggests the necessity of hanging half the policemen ...”
From the free-spirited sound of the letters, it might come as a surprise that the young Twain was in personal distress at the time, nearly broke, drinking too much and doubting that a writer of humor would ever amount to much. It was a tough time in the life of a young man who had navigated Mississippi River steamboats with skill, but who was unsure of how to do the same for his own future.
Expression of despair
In a little-known 1865 letter to his brother, Twain wrote that he was contemplating suicide unless his fortunes improved.
“If I do not get out of debt in three months — pistols or poison for one — exit me,” Twain wrote. This time, Hirst doesn’t believe that Twain, the famous exaggerator, was exaggerating.
“He was in the middle of an identity crisis,” Hirst said. “He was facing debt and had not embraced his talent. He was tormented by it. He was drinking too much and didn’t know what to do with himself. He thought humor was literature of a low order.”
But some months later — presumably with his debts settled and with the blessing of his Chronicle editors and members of the police force who remained unhanged — Twain left San Francisco, boarded a boat for Hawaii, and decided that a life of writing novels, in which it was OK to make things up, suited him better than that of writing newspaper stories, in which doing so is not generally recommended. Within a few years, Twain had dashed off “Innocents Abroad” and launched his career as a lecturer and novelist.
All those wonderful things began after the young man’s days of struggle in San Francisco were over. Twain scholars say his career and reputation ascended only after he decided that it was OK for a humorist to be funny — and after he had forsaken newspapering and departed from The Chronicle. Of course that was a coincidence, they say, most likely.