# A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mark Twain

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 28 Jun 2024, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a9f8aaf1-b12b-40b8-85aa-b08f0126e2b6/70cc2d76-aa91-4711-8893-b19b000e37cf/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

A bar fight and a stint on the lam transformed Samuel Clemens into Mark Twain — and changed the course of American literature. Settle in for Mark Twain's origin story. * Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, Jason English Written by Zaron Burnett Produced by Josh Fisher Editing and Sound Design: Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher Mixing and Mastering: Baheed Frazier Story Editor: Marisa Brown Research and Fact-Checking: Austin Thompson and Zaron Burnett Voice Actors: Frank Nemec, Zack Nemec, Elizabeth Dutton, and Jonathan Washington Original Music by Elise McCoy Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla Executive Producer: Jason English Special thanks to Bob Hirst from the Mark Twain Archive at UC Berkeley, and Joseph Amster from Emperor Norton's Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine. Want to email the show? We'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: This is an iHeart original. Let me take you back
[0:16] Speaker 1: to the eighteen sixties.
[0:19] Speaker 2: One evening, while the Civil War rages back east, a
[0:23] Speaker 2: newspaper man in San Francisco is on his way home,
[0:26] Speaker 2: far from the bloodshed tearing the nation asunder. He's peaceably
[0:30] Speaker 2: working to keep readers of the Pacific coast well informed.
[0:34] Speaker 2: But this man is not a man at peace. He
[0:37] Speaker 2: has a hair trigger and a set of brothers who've
[0:39] Speaker 2: trained him for fighting, and a sense of righteousness that
[0:42] Speaker 2: often boils over into quick anger. So this newspaperman, Steve Gillis,
[0:48] Speaker 2: while he's on his way home, he passes a saloon,
[0:50] Speaker 2: one of many, but this saloon, more like a bar,
[0:53] Speaker 2: stands out because he can hear a man shouting and
[0:57] Speaker 2: screaming inside. Steve Gillis stops, and then he steps inside
[1:01] Speaker 2: the saloon to see what's going down. Steve Gillis sees
[1:07] Speaker 2: a man he knows, Big Jim Casey, the proprietor of
[1:11] Speaker 2: the bar. Big Jim is busy beating on a much
[1:14] Speaker 2: smaller man. Now, Steve Gillis has a bad habit of
[1:22] Speaker 2: always standing up for the little guy, and so he
[1:25] Speaker 2: tells Big Jim Casey to stop beating on that fella. Surprisingly,
[1:30] Speaker 2: he does as Steve instructed. Big Jim turns the little
[1:33] Speaker 2: fellow loose. Then he refocuses his remaining anger at Steve Gillis.
[1:41] Speaker 2: He comes at him with big, long strides, and then
[1:44] Speaker 2: he marches right past Steve headed for the door. He
[1:48] Speaker 2: doesn't leave, though, Instead he takes the key locks the
[1:51] Speaker 2: saloon door. Then Big Jim tucks the key away in
[1:54] Speaker 2: one of his pockets. He tells Steve Gillis, now it's
[1:58] Speaker 2: your turn. The newspaper man, Steve Gillis, He's also on
[2:02] Speaker 2: the little side, but he has the beating heart of
[2:05] Speaker 2: a Scottish lion. Steve Gillis takes absolutely no guff. He
[2:10] Speaker 2: stays cool headed. He just calmly grabs a beer pitcher.
[2:14] Speaker 2: That way, when Big Jim rushes him, which he does,
[2:18] Speaker 2: Steve can smash that heavy glass beer pitcher right upside
[2:21] Speaker 2: the big man's head, which is exactly what he does.
[2:27] Speaker 2: Big Jim gets knocked out cold, but not only that,
[2:30] Speaker 2: He's circling the drain pipe of life and Steve is
[2:33] Speaker 2: there still locked inside the bar. By the time the
[2:36] Speaker 2: police arrive, he ends up arresting. Steve is taken to
[2:41] Speaker 2: the San Francisco Police headquarters, charged with AsSalt and battery.
[2:45] Speaker 2: Word quickly spreads. His best friend is awakened with the news.
[2:50] Speaker 2: Half awake, Sam Clemens jumps up and he springs into action.
[2:53] Speaker 2: He marches over to the layer of his enemy, the
[2:56] Speaker 2: chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Once there, Sam
[3:00] Speaker 2: Clemens arranges freedom for his friend. He bails out Steve Gillis.
[3:05] Speaker 2: What that means is he swears out of bond and
[3:07] Speaker 2: promises to pay five hundred dollars if Steve Gillis jumps bail.
[3:11] Speaker 2: That is about five hundred dollars more money than Sam
[3:14] Speaker 2: Clemens has to his name. That means if his buddy
[3:17] Speaker 2: Steve flees, which is more than likely than Sam Clemens
[3:21] Speaker 2: will subsequently be arrested, jailed, and subject to the will
[3:24] Speaker 2: of the horribly violent and vindictive SFPD of the eighteen sixties, who,
[3:29] Speaker 2: by the way, already hates Sam Clemens for what he
[3:33] Speaker 2: writes about the cops in the newspaper. Now, Steve Gillis
[3:36] Speaker 2: has two brothers, Jim and William Gillis. William records the
[3:40] Speaker 2: event of that night in a book that he wrote,
[3:43] Speaker 2: and he called his book Memories of Mark Twain and
[3:45] Speaker 2: Steve Gillis.
[3:47] Speaker 1: William writes that quote.
[3:49] Speaker 2: When the two friends left the Hall of Justice, they
[3:51] Speaker 2: walked along in silence for a short distance, with Sam
[3:54] Speaker 2: and the lead shaking his head and muttering to himself.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Sam's aloofness on this occasion was so unusual that Steve
[4:01] Speaker 2: couldn't comprehend it, so at last he hailed them. Hold on, Sam,
[4:04] Speaker 2: don't be in such a hurry. What's the matter with
[4:05] Speaker 2: you anyhow? Sam Clemens's pissed, That's what's the matter with
[4:09] Speaker 2: him anyhow. The truth is he's also scared, terrified actually,
[4:13] Speaker 2: because now the San Francisco Police Department possess a strong
[4:17] Speaker 2: legal reason to come after Sam.
[4:19] Speaker 1: And that's likely why he shouts back at his friend, Steve.
[4:23] Speaker 1: Haven't you got the brains in that thickhead of yours
[4:25] Speaker 1: to know that a policeman could come here at two
[4:27] Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning since snake me off to the
[4:29] Speaker 1: station house without them knowing that you were in trouble.
[4:33] Speaker 2: Hothead or not, Steve Gillis isn't about to be yelled
[4:35] Speaker 2: at for defending a smaller man from a beating, and
[4:38] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens equally hot headed, continues to yell back at
[4:42] Speaker 2: his best friend. Mind you, this all occurred long before
[4:46] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens became the old cat in the white suit,
[4:49] Speaker 2: that guy you see on the book covers with the
[4:51] Speaker 2: churlish mustache. This was back when Mark Twain was still
[4:55] Speaker 2: known by most folks as Sam Clemens, and Sam Clemens, well,
[4:59] Speaker 2: he was a bit of a badass. In the autumn
[5:02] Speaker 2: of eighteen sixty four, Sam Clemens was twenty nine years
[5:05] Speaker 2: old and a drinker, a rooftop carouser, a loyal friend,
[5:10] Speaker 2: and in this story, a man on the lamb hiding
[5:12] Speaker 2: out from the law. And thanks to Aul, these early
[5:15] Speaker 2: misadventures they transform Sam Clemens into the man we know
[5:20] Speaker 2: as Mark Twain. It's been said that all American literature
[5:24] Speaker 2: starts with Mark Twain. I'm here to tell you all
[5:27] Speaker 2: of American literature actually started with that badass name, Sam Clemens.
[5:31] Speaker 2: Because you'll see there was that bar fight and then
[5:33] Speaker 2: a flight from the law to save his best friend,
[5:35] Speaker 2: but also a magical frog and a hideout in the
[5:38] Speaker 2: Gold Country that all really seal the deal, crime and camaraderie.
[5:43] Speaker 2: That's how Sam Clemens becomes Mark Twain. This is the
[5:47] Speaker 2: story of the birth of a literary legend. This is
[5:51] Speaker 2: a portrait of the artist as a young Mark Twain.
[5:56] Speaker 1: Welcome to very special episodes in iHeart Original podcast. I'm
[6:00] Speaker 1: your host, Zarn Burnett, and this is portrait of the
[6:03] Speaker 1: artist as a young Mark Twain.
[6:10] Speaker 3: This episode is very exciting for me because I'm a
[6:13] Speaker 3: big Mark Twain fan. Oh really, I mean yeah, anyone
[6:16] Speaker 3: who was like in you know, a little English literature
[6:19] Speaker 3: nerd in like sixth grade, seventh grade, It's like, I
[6:21] Speaker 3: feel like we were reading Mark Twain and I was like, oh,
[6:24] Speaker 3: books can be funny, exactly.
[6:25] Speaker 4: That's a lot.
[6:27] Speaker 5: Yes, the picture of Mark Twain in my head is
[6:29] Speaker 5: always going to be the picture on the poster that
[6:32] Speaker 5: was probably in our fifth grade classroom, the old guy,
[6:35] Speaker 5: the wig, the not the wig, the crazy hair, and.
[6:38] Speaker 3: It might have been a wig you should have been.
[6:40] Speaker 5: We'll get into that. But getting to get the origin
[6:44] Speaker 5: story here, Sarah, I think you brought up this story
[6:46] Speaker 5: the first time we ever talked about doing the show,
[6:48] Speaker 5: that you wanted to do it in early Mark Twain history.
[6:51] Speaker 5: Have you always been always been drawn to him?
[6:54] Speaker 4: I'm a huge Mark Twain fan.
[6:56] Speaker 1: I love a churlish writer who's just kind of cantankerous
[6:59] Speaker 1: and doesn't really like kind of a missingthrope.
[7:01] Speaker 4: I just love him for that.
[7:01] Speaker 1: But also you can tell that he really does love humanity,
[7:04] Speaker 1: so it's like it's both ends of the extreme.
[7:06] Speaker 4: So I just love him for that.
[7:07] Speaker 1: And then I have on this board of my office
[7:10] Speaker 1: as all these images all over it, and it is
[7:12] Speaker 1: used for just random associations, and two of them happened
[7:15] Speaker 1: to be old Mark Twain, the exact cover you're talking about,
[7:18] Speaker 1: the white suit, the white hair, and next to him
[7:19] Speaker 1: is young Mark Twain. And I just always kept that
[7:21] Speaker 1: as like a how a writer ages or something, and
[7:24] Speaker 1: I don't know. And then I looked up at that
[7:25] Speaker 1: and I was like, I want to know the story
[7:26] Speaker 1: of how these two connect.
[7:27] Speaker 4: So that's why I pitched.
[7:28] Speaker 1: It to you.
[7:29] Speaker 5: That's a pretty good pitch. I think we should get
[7:31] Speaker 5: right back into your story. We'll talk about it on
[7:32] Speaker 5: the other side, all right.
[7:33] Speaker 1: Absolutely, Sam Clemens did not want to go out west,
[7:38] Speaker 1: not at first, but sadly he had to turn his
[7:42] Speaker 1: back on his first love, being a Mississippi river boat pilot.
[7:49] Speaker 1: He gets forced from the river in eighteen sixty one.
[7:52] Speaker 1: All the traffic was shut down on account of the
[7:55] Speaker 1: Civil War. When the Civil War first boomed a bloody life,
[8:00] Speaker 1: Sam Clemens endured a brief two week stint as a
[8:02] Speaker 1: Confederate militiaman. However, having seen no action and deciding he
[8:06] Speaker 1: was on the side of the Union, Sam Clemens went
[8:09] Speaker 1: a wall.
[8:10] Speaker 2: He traveled north to Keokuk, Iowa, where he met up
[8:14] Speaker 2: with his older brother, Orion and his brother. Orion was
[8:17] Speaker 2: an ardent Lincoln man. Orion had been named the new
[8:21] Speaker 2: Secretary to the Governor of the Territory of Nevada as
[8:24] Speaker 2: a Lincoln appointee. Orion Clemens he labored hard and earnestly
[8:28] Speaker 2: to get Lincoln elected.
[8:29] Speaker 1: This was his reward, a political appointment.
[8:32] Speaker 2: Out west, far from the horrors of the Civil War,
[8:35] Speaker 2: he offered to take his brother Sam with him, especially
[8:38] Speaker 2: if Sam footed the bills for their cross country travel.
[8:42] Speaker 2: Sam indeed paid for their trip with what money he
[8:44] Speaker 2: had left from his well paid salary as a riverboat pilot.
[8:48] Speaker 2: The two brothers were off to see America via an
[8:50] Speaker 2: overland stagecoach west. It was to be quite the adventure,
[8:54] Speaker 2: crossing the continent all the way out to the Nevada Territory.
[9:00] Speaker 2: In August eighteen sixty one the two brothers arrived in
[9:03] Speaker 2: Carson City, Nevada, the soon to be capital of the territory.
[9:07] Speaker 2: It's an underwhelming sight when compared to the city's back east.
[9:11] Speaker 2: Yet the sagebrush boomtown is filled with life and color
[9:15] Speaker 2: and sensation. Sam Clemens dashes off a letter to his
[9:18] Speaker 2: mother in the rough language of the time, telling her
[9:22] Speaker 2: about the great desert land and all his hopes for
[9:24] Speaker 2: their futures in the West.
[9:26] Speaker 6: The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, granite, chalk,
[9:35] Speaker 6: plaster of Paris, gypsum, thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, chinamen, spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes,
[9:49] Speaker 6: poets and preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a gentleman
[9:53] Speaker 6: say the other day that it was the damnedest country
[9:55] Speaker 6: under the sun, and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to.
[10:00] Speaker 2: By eighteen sixty one, when Sam Clemens first arrives, many
[10:04] Speaker 2: many folks have already traveled out West. They showed up
[10:07] Speaker 2: in the decade just prior. When the California gold rush
[10:10] Speaker 2: launched in eighteen forty eight, eighteen forty nine, they came
[10:13] Speaker 2: west to take part in that mad frenzy to pull
[10:16] Speaker 2: what was called the color from the hills. Faster than
[10:20] Speaker 2: you can say jumpin Jack Sprat, hundreds of thousands of people,
[10:24] Speaker 2: all looking to strike it rich quick with a gold strike,
[10:27] Speaker 2: flooded into the soon to be US state. That gold
[10:31] Speaker 2: mining mania lasted for years. Then in eighteen fifty nine,
[10:35] Speaker 2: a massive silver deposit was discovered on the other side
[10:39] Speaker 2: of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near what would later be
[10:41] Speaker 2: called Virginia City, Nevada. The silver deposit was known as
[10:45] Speaker 2: the Comstock Load. When Sam Clemens and his brother Oriyan
[10:49] Speaker 2: pull into the territory, they're too late for the gold rush,
[10:52] Speaker 2: but they're just in time for the silver craze gripping Nevada.
[10:56] Speaker 2: And at first Sam takes no interest in mining for silver,
[10:59] Speaker 2: But soon enough he decides he'd like to try his
[11:02] Speaker 2: hand at silver mining. See what all the fuss is about.
[11:05] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens finds a place himself in the Humboldt mining region.
[11:09] Speaker 2: He helps establish a tiny mining camp with a few
[11:11] Speaker 2: fellow prospectors. Men work the mountains searching for ledges that
[11:16] Speaker 2: bear the signs and stripes of color, which suggests there
[11:19] Speaker 2: might be gold or silver present within the rocky face.
[11:23] Speaker 2: Men buy mining claims, lease others the miners. They make
[11:28] Speaker 2: some fines, but not many. Sometimes out of boredom or
[11:31] Speaker 2: due to bad weather, Sam Clemens writes letters from the
[11:35] Speaker 2: mining camp. He sends them into Virginia City to be
[11:37] Speaker 2: published in the local papers, the Territorial Enterprise and the
[11:42] Speaker 2: esmarel To Star. He signs the letters he sends Josh
[11:46] Speaker 2: as in just joshing or joking around. The letters are
[11:49] Speaker 2: meant to be Little Vignette's humorous accounts of life in
[11:52] Speaker 2: the mining camps, but his letters have this quality to them.
[11:56] Speaker 2: They're more than just funny letters. Eventually those letters will
[12:00] Speaker 2: set sam Clemens on a new path away from the
[12:03] Speaker 2: dust of mining.
[12:04] Speaker 7: He's doing that only because he's been trying to hit
[12:07] Speaker 7: it big in the mines and that didn't work out.
[12:11] Speaker 2: That's Robert Hurst. He's the head of the Mark Twain papers.
[12:14] Speaker 2: You see Berkeley's archive of Twain's published works, letters, sketches stories.
[12:19] Speaker 7: He's really out of money. He and his brother are
[12:22] Speaker 7: both been trying to kind of, you know, find a
[12:25] Speaker 7: mind that really will make them millionaires, etc. And they
[12:28] Speaker 7: come close, but they don't make it a lot. I
[12:30] Speaker 7: can like a lot of people while he's out there
[12:32] Speaker 7: in the mines, you know, just really digging. I mean
[12:36] Speaker 7: Mark Plan is not a big physical guy, but he was,
[12:39] Speaker 7: you know, he used to pick et cetera shovel.
[12:44] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens gets offered a job at the Territorial Enterprise.
[12:47] Speaker 2: The twenty five dollars per week he's promised sounds far
[12:51] Speaker 2: better than the backbreaking nothing that he's making as a miner.
[12:55] Speaker 2: So in August of eighteen sixty two, Sam Clemens gives
[12:58] Speaker 2: up on working his silver mining claim and then Devata Territory.
[13:02] Speaker 2: He then hEFS his pack up onto his shoulder and
[13:05] Speaker 2: hikes one hundred and thirty miles, crossing desert and mountains
[13:10] Speaker 2: until he reaches the Boomtown, Virginia City. Sam Clemens arrives
[13:14] Speaker 2: in town exhausted, dust covered, and trail sore. Thankfully for
[13:21] Speaker 2: the future of American literature. He's welcomed into Virginia City
[13:25] Speaker 2: by a group of wild eyed journalists who spend their
[13:27] Speaker 2: days running a Boomtown newspaper. It's a respected paper, but
[13:31] Speaker 2: it's also one that's known more for its colorful prose
[13:34] Speaker 2: than for its sober treatment of the news of the day,
[13:37] Speaker 2: sam Clemens finds he's in good company. The men all
[13:40] Speaker 2: become fast friends. The proprietor and chief editor, a man
[13:46] Speaker 2: named Joseph Goodman, offers sam Clemens steady employment. His days
[13:51] Speaker 2: spent as a typesetter back home in Missouri come in handy.
[13:54] Speaker 2: He takes the job, and within a year sam Clemens
[13:57] Speaker 2: emerges as the defecto leader of that rowdy bunch of
[14:01] Speaker 2: mining camp newspapermen. The next year, eighteen sixty three, amid
[14:06] Speaker 2: the the ongoing horrors of the Civil War. Safe there
[14:10] Speaker 2: in the far West, sam Clemens stays busy giving the
[14:13] Speaker 2: news to minors working the comstock load. He's sent to
[14:17] Speaker 2: Carson to report on the territorial capital and its legislature.
[14:22] Speaker 2: Nevada is debating statehood. Now the capital isn't the liveliest beat,
[14:26] Speaker 2: but his editor trust Sam Clemens can make his reporting
[14:29] Speaker 2: come alive. With his unique observations and his rare wit.
[14:33] Speaker 2: He's already in getting known for his voice on the page.
[14:36] Speaker 2: It's at his first professional writing gig there at the
[14:39] Speaker 2: Territorial Enterprise, that young Sam Clemens finds he has a
[14:42] Speaker 2: natural born gift for telling stories, funny ones, so he.
[14:47] Speaker 7: Should hire as a reporter. And the reporter's job is
[14:50] Speaker 7: visited to go around Virginia City and find out, you know,
[14:54] Speaker 7: brief stories, brief squibs about what's going on. Okay, but
[15:00] Speaker 7: of course, because he's got a sense of humor that
[15:04] Speaker 7: it's so in parallel. All those things are amazingly funny,
[15:09] Speaker 7: and he is eventually given the role of an out
[15:14] Speaker 7: of town writer. Letter writer, send him to Carson where
[15:18] Speaker 7: the legislature is taking place.
[15:21] Speaker 2: Unlike with mining, Sam Clemens is an instant success as
[15:24] Speaker 2: a political reporter.
[15:26] Speaker 7: Clemens is first of all just extremely outgoing and able
[15:32] Speaker 7: to kind of talk to all kinds of people, and
[15:35] Speaker 7: then he's able to kind of give a report that is, well,
[15:40] Speaker 7: it's not what you and I would think of as news.
[15:43] Speaker 7: It's part story, part fiction, part a joke, a hoax,
[15:48] Speaker 7: all kinds of things like that.
[15:50] Speaker 2: Long before Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolf would invent
[15:53] Speaker 2: gonzo journalism as a blend of fact in fiction, Sam
[15:57] Speaker 2: Clemens is out there pulling that same sort of literary
[16:00] Speaker 2: stunt with his letters from Carson.
[16:02] Speaker 7: We don't have those letters. They are so early that
[16:06] Speaker 7: no one has only preserved brief descriptions zone. It's just
[16:11] Speaker 7: clear from what we've gathered over the years that Martroy
[16:15] Speaker 7: liked publishing those things that he wrote for himself without
[16:19] Speaker 7: ever really thinking of himself as a professional writer. That
[16:24] Speaker 7: would take a while before he got there.
[16:27] Speaker 2: Now that he has essentially found his tribe and his calling,
[16:30] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens gets to work making a name for himself.
[16:33] Speaker 1: As a reporter.
[16:36] Speaker 2: While he's working in Virginia City for the Territorial Enterprise,
[16:39] Speaker 2: he's also sending letters down to a bigger paper in
[16:41] Speaker 2: San Francisco.
[16:43] Speaker 1: Those readers fall.
[16:44] Speaker 2: In love with his accounts from the rough and tumble
[16:46] Speaker 2: part of the West. Most of his writing in those
[16:49] Speaker 2: days as a Territorial reporter doesn't carry his byline, as
[16:53] Speaker 2: in there's no name given for the author. But then
[16:56] Speaker 2: on February second, eighteen sixty three, Sam Clemens sends in
[16:59] Speaker 2: a letter reporting on the political events going down in Carson,
[17:03] Speaker 2: and this time he signs the letter for publication Mark Twain.
[17:08] Speaker 2: That's the first time he uses that name in print,
[17:10] Speaker 2: February second, eighteen sixty three. Apparently Sam feels it fits
[17:15] Speaker 2: him well, because from that day forward, Sam Clemens uses
[17:18] Speaker 2: the new name in print, and soon enough in life
[17:21] Speaker 2: he becomes Mark Twain.
[17:25] Speaker 7: It's not like it is today, right, I mean, if
[17:28] Speaker 7: you're a stand up comic today here at the top
[17:30] Speaker 7: of the a list, right, that's not the way it
[17:33] Speaker 7: was in Mark Twain Stein. It really wasn't that way
[17:35] Speaker 7: for the whole of the nineteenth century. It's a low form,
[17:39] Speaker 7: and so a pseudonym is used as a kind of
[17:42] Speaker 7: protection against being too much identified with this not very
[17:48] Speaker 7: respectable journalist and form. It is a mask. I mean,
[17:52] Speaker 7: the humors we know, if we know them at all,
[17:56] Speaker 7: we know them by their pseudonym.
[17:58] Speaker 2: Well, Sam Clemens is working as a reporter at the
[18:00] Speaker 2: Territorial Enterprise, carousing with that wild group of fellow newspapermen.
[18:05] Speaker 2: One of the most famous humorists of the comes to town.
[18:09] Speaker 2: He's there to entertain the denizens of the boomtown for
[18:12] Speaker 2: some of that silver jingling in their pockets. His name
[18:15] Speaker 2: is Artemis Ward, which, well, as you might guess.
[18:19] Speaker 7: Artemis Ward is asuday, it's not his real name. Charles
[18:22] Speaker 7: Brown is his real name.
[18:24] Speaker 2: Artemis Ward stays in Virginia City for eleven days. In
[18:28] Speaker 2: that time, Mark Twain reviews his show for the enterprise.
[18:31] Speaker 2: He witnesses first hand the comic wit of Artemis Ward
[18:34] Speaker 2: and his stage presence, how he has mastered the effect
[18:38] Speaker 2: of his voice to share truths, not facts. This performance
[18:42] Speaker 2: will stay with Twain, and it also marks the beginning
[18:45] Speaker 2: of their friendship. Artemis Ward was a fellow newspaper guy.
[18:49] Speaker 2: The two men quickly bond as both friends and peers.
[18:53] Speaker 2: Those eleven days are memorable for all involved. Artemis Ward
[18:58] Speaker 2: keeps in touch with Sam Clemens, writing to him from
[19:00] Speaker 2: another mining camp in Nevada. I shall always remember Virginia
[19:04] Speaker 2: as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must,
[19:07] Speaker 2: or rather cannot be, as it were. But not only that,
[19:11] Speaker 2: He also urges his comrade and Ink to recognize the
[19:14] Speaker 2: unique power of his own voice. Artemis Ward writes to
[19:17] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens.
[19:19] Speaker 1: Sir, do not flatter yourself that you are the only
[19:21] Speaker 1: chastely humorist rater onto the Pacific slopes. Goodbye, oh boy,
[19:27] Speaker 1: and God bless you. The matter of which I spoke
[19:30] Speaker 1: to you so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended
[19:34] Speaker 1: to now. That matter was Artemis Ward's offer to get
[19:38] Speaker 1: editors in New York to read and publish Sam Clemens's work. However,
[19:42] Speaker 1: Sam remains doubtful.
[19:44] Speaker 7: Well, I certainly didn't hurt us say to have someone
[19:47] Speaker 7: like Artemis Ward say you should make yourself known to
[19:50] Speaker 7: the Eastern journals. It was encouraging.
[19:54] Speaker 2: But first Sam Clemens will have to leave behind those
[19:57] Speaker 2: happy days at the Territorial Enterprise. One day, while his
[20:08] Speaker 2: boss Joseph Goodman is away at the time down in
[20:10] Speaker 2: San Francisco on a holiday and Sam Clemens is acting
[20:14] Speaker 2: as editor in chief, he uses the opportunity to renew
[20:17] Speaker 2: a personal feud.
[20:19] Speaker 1: James L.
[20:20] Speaker 2: Laird is the fuddy duddy editor of the rival Virginia
[20:24] Speaker 2: city paper, The Daily Union.
[20:26] Speaker 1: For a number of.
[20:27] Speaker 2: Days, Sam Clemens amuses himself and his newspaper buddies by
[20:30] Speaker 2: sending challenges to Laird, demanding that he partake in a duel.
[20:35] Speaker 2: But then the editor Laird actually does take Sam Clemens
[20:38] Speaker 2: up on his joking offer. A time and a place
[20:41] Speaker 2: are set for the writer's deadly play with firearms. True
[20:45] Speaker 2: to that time in his life. His friend Steve Gillis
[20:48] Speaker 2: is integral to the story that follows. You see via
[20:52] Speaker 2: one well placed little white lie, Steve saves Sam's hide.
[20:57] Speaker 1: The deed went down like this.
[20:59] Speaker 2: Steve is helping Sam get ready for his future duel
[21:02] Speaker 2: with some target practice. But the thing is Sam Clemens
[21:05] Speaker 2: is a hopeless gunman.
[21:08] Speaker 8: I began on the rail, I couldn't hit the rail.
[21:11] Speaker 8: Then I tried the barn door, but I couldn't hit
[21:15] Speaker 8: the barn door. There was nobody in danger but stragglers
[21:18] Speaker 8: around on the flanks of that mark. I was thoroughly discouraged,
[21:22] Speaker 8: and I didn't cheer up anyone. I presently heard pistol
[21:24] Speaker 8: shots over the next little ravine. I knew what that was.
[21:29] Speaker 8: That was Laird's gang out practicing him.
[21:32] Speaker 2: Laird and his gang do, indeed hear Sam's gunshots. Naturally,
[21:37] Speaker 2: they come over the rise to see what sort of
[21:39] Speaker 2: shot Sam Clemens is, which, as you know, is the
[21:42] Speaker 2: terrible kind. This is where his buddy Steve Gillis steps
[21:45] Speaker 2: in to save him. A tiny bird catches Steve's eye.
[21:49] Speaker 2: He whips out his pistol and he fires. He dots
[21:52] Speaker 2: that bird with a bullet right in its eye. The
[21:55] Speaker 2: bird's head explodes in a cloud of feathers. What little
[21:58] Speaker 2: remains falls to the earth, cold and dead, barely. A
[22:02] Speaker 2: few moments later, Laird and his boys walk into the scene.
[22:08] Speaker 8: We ran down to pick up the bird, and then
[22:10] Speaker 8: sure enough mister Lard and his people came over the
[22:12] Speaker 8: ridge and they joined us. When Laard second saw that
[22:15] Speaker 8: bird with his head shot off, he lost color, he faded,
[22:19] Speaker 8: and you could see he was interested. He said who
[22:22] Speaker 8: did that? Before I could answer, Steve spoke it. He said,
[22:26] Speaker 8: quite calmly, a matter of fact, way Clements did it.
[22:30] Speaker 8: The second said, why, that's a wonderful How far off
[22:33] Speaker 8: was that bird? Steve said, oh, not far, about thirty yards.
[22:38] Speaker 8: The second said, well, that's astonishing shooting. How often can
[22:40] Speaker 8: he do that? Steve said, languidly, about four out of five.
[22:45] Speaker 8: I knew that little rascal was lying. I didn't say anything.
[22:49] Speaker 8: Second said, why that's amazing shooting. I suppose he couldn't
[22:53] Speaker 8: hit a church.
[22:56] Speaker 2: This well timed lie by Steve slyly saves Sam Clemens's life, since,
[23:01] Speaker 2: as he later learns.
[23:03] Speaker 8: Lard had hit his mark four out of six right along.
[23:07] Speaker 8: If the duel had come off, he would have filled
[23:09] Speaker 8: my skin with so many bullet holes that it wouldn't
[23:12] Speaker 8: have held my principles.
[23:15] Speaker 2: After he avoids near certain death and a duel, Sam
[23:17] Speaker 2: Clemens decides it's high time for he and Steve de
[23:20] Speaker 2: Van moose from Virginia City, especially after they hear from
[23:24] Speaker 2: the territorial governor. The governor gets word to them it
[23:27] Speaker 2: would be a good idea for us to leave the
[23:29] Speaker 2: territory by the first stage coach.
[23:31] Speaker 1: Now.
[23:31] Speaker 2: If they missed that early bird stage coach the next day,
[23:34] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens will be the first man prosecuted under the
[23:37] Speaker 2: new state law forbidding dueling, and it carries a sentence
[23:41] Speaker 2: of two years in prison at hard labor.
[23:46] Speaker 8: I've never had anything to do with duels since I
[23:50] Speaker 8: thoroughly disprove the duels. I consider them unwise, and I
[23:55] Speaker 8: know they are dangerous also sinful. If a man should
[23:59] Speaker 8: challenge me now, I would go to that man, taken
[24:03] Speaker 8: kindly and forgivenly by his hand, lead him to a
[24:07] Speaker 8: quiet retired spot, and kill him.
[24:13] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens and his buddy Steve Gillis read the shifting
[24:16] Speaker 2: winds and recognize it's time they try their hands working elsewhere,
[24:20] Speaker 2: perhaps for one of the big newspapers down in San Francisco.
[24:24] Speaker 2: On May twenty ninth, eighteen sixty four, Sam and Steve
[24:27] Speaker 2: leave Virginia City by stagecoach.
[24:30] Speaker 1: Then they take a riverboat back to the Bay.
[24:34] Speaker 2: Back east, young men like Sam Clemens and Steve Gillis
[24:38] Speaker 2: are dying by the thousands in muddy, bloody battlefields of
[24:42] Speaker 2: the Civil War. Meanwhile, these two young newspaper men, both
[24:46] Speaker 2: from the South, are lucky to be way out west
[24:49] Speaker 2: where they can chase libertine pleasures and literary futures. In
[24:54] Speaker 2: San Francisco. One hundred years before the Summer of Love
[24:57] Speaker 2: put the city by the Bay on the map as
[24:59] Speaker 2: the capital of the hippie counterculture, there was this prior
[25:02] Speaker 2: era of Bohemian rebellion. You see, back in the eighteen sixties,
[25:06] Speaker 2: a free space, sirited era first royaled the status quo
[25:09] Speaker 2: of the city. A perfect example the type of folks
[25:12] Speaker 2: who were drawn to San Francisco at that time was this.
[25:15] Speaker 1: Man named Emperor Norton. That's not his government name. He
[25:19] Speaker 1: was born Joshua Abraham Norton, a commodities dealer when he
[25:23] Speaker 1: first arrives, but after a disastrous loss when he tries
[25:26] Speaker 1: to corner the local rice market, he loses everything, including
[25:30] Speaker 1: his marbles. Free of his sanity, he reinvents himself as
[25:34] Speaker 1: the Emperor of the United States, because why not, and
[25:37] Speaker 1: as Emperor Norton, he becomes this beloved figure in this loose, free,
[25:41] Speaker 1: willing city. Now, in order to time travel back to
[25:45] Speaker 1: those days, we caught up with Emperor Norton's fantastic San
[25:49] Speaker 1: Francisco time machine, and we asked the historical reenactor who
[25:53] Speaker 1: gives guided tours of the city dressed mind you as
[25:56] Speaker 1: Emperor Norton, to take us back to the San Francisco
[25:59] Speaker 1: haunts that Sam Clemens would have known.
[26:04] Speaker 9: So we are now within the wicked, wicked Barbary Coast.
[26:08] Speaker 9: When the beginning of the tour around Maiden Lane formerly
[26:11] Speaker 9: Morton shut but I said that was like take that,
[26:15] Speaker 9: multiply it by a hundred add in gambling halls, opium dens,
[26:20] Speaker 9: concert saloons, every vice imaginable, some unimagined.
[26:27] Speaker 7: You would have.
[26:28] Speaker 9: The Barbary Coast gold miners would come down the Sierra
[26:32] Speaker 9: loaded down with their gold dust and gold ore and
[26:34] Speaker 9: take it down appropriately named gold Street. Here you are
[26:38] Speaker 9: looking at Safrus from the eighteen fifties. Literally, the gold
[26:43] Speaker 9: miner would scoop up that cash and make a b
[26:45] Speaker 9: line to the establishments around here to get all the
[26:48] Speaker 9: things he couldn't get up in the Sierra. Let's just
[26:52] Speaker 9: say wine, women and song. You know, a whole lot
[26:57] Speaker 9: of it. A lot of that activity took place well
[26:59] Speaker 9: applock up there on Pacific Street, which then had the
[27:03] Speaker 9: nickname of Terrific Street because of all the things you
[27:06] Speaker 9: could get there.
[27:09] Speaker 2: This was the vibe in San Francisco when Sam Clemens
[27:11] Speaker 2: and Steve Gillis arrive in May of eighteen sixty four.
[27:16] Speaker 2: At that time, it's a boisterous city of around one
[27:19] Speaker 2: hundred thousand people, filled with boundless optimism, enthusiasm, and plenty
[27:24] Speaker 2: of unchecked greed, as well as the interlocking labyrinths of
[27:29] Speaker 2: the underworld community. Sam Clemens he plans to strike it
[27:33] Speaker 2: rich now. His new idea is to buy and sell
[27:35] Speaker 2: stocks in the silver and gold mines.
[27:38] Speaker 1: Less work. That way, He finds lodgings for himself at
[27:41] Speaker 1: a swanky joint, the Occidental Hotel.
[27:45] Speaker 8: I lived at the best hotels, exhibited my clothes in
[27:48] Speaker 8: the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to
[27:53] Speaker 8: seemen raptured with music, which oftener afflicted my agorant ear
[27:59] Speaker 8: than enchanted it.
[28:02] Speaker 2: As he's infesting the opera, waiting on his imminent wealth
[28:05] Speaker 2: to arrive from his many mining stocks. His fortune never
[28:10] Speaker 2: does arrive, it never materializes. Instead, the value of his
[28:13] Speaker 2: mining stocks come crashing down.
[28:15] Speaker 1: He loses it all.
[28:18] Speaker 8: The wreckage was complete. I was an early bigger and
[28:22] Speaker 8: a thorough one.
[28:24] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens turns back to his writing. He cobbles together
[28:27] Speaker 2: an income from a few literary journals and newspapers in
[28:31] Speaker 2: San Francisco. Meanwhile, he also befriends men whose names would
[28:35] Speaker 2: later earn them fame. Back to our tour guide, Emperor Norton.
[28:39] Speaker 9: What studier of eighteen fifty three to nineteen fifty nine
[28:43] Speaker 9: was this building? The Montgomery Block, affectionately known as the
[28:48] Speaker 9: Monkey Block, It was the first modern office block in
[28:52] Speaker 9: San Francisco. It was home to artists and writers like
[28:56] Speaker 9: Ambrose Spears, Brett Hart, Jack London, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Lola Montez,
[29:03] Speaker 9: and Lotta Crabtree all had offices in the Montgomery Block
[29:08] Speaker 9: at one time or another, as did a relatively obscure
[29:12] Speaker 9: writer by the name of Samuel Clemons. Well, that was
[29:16] Speaker 9: his name when he got By the time he leaves
[29:19] Speaker 9: San Francisco, he's world famous and known as Mark Twain.
[29:26] Speaker 2: Back then, the real Emperor Norton and Sam Clemens were
[29:28] Speaker 2: quite familiar with each other. Some claim the King from
[29:31] Speaker 2: the King and the Duke from Huckleberry Finn is based
[29:34] Speaker 2: on Emperor Norton.
[29:36] Speaker 7: Our pas costs many times.
[29:38] Speaker 9: After all, he worked here, I lived there At one point.
[29:43] Speaker 9: His office was right next door to the Eureka Logics
[29:47] Speaker 9: boarding house where I lived.
[29:49] Speaker 4: He wrote about me on a number of occasions, but.
[29:54] Speaker 10: Not a very flattering torture in that book says I
[29:58] Speaker 10: was a drunken, a grifter who that Stiggs. We're going
[30:03] Speaker 10: to have very stern words with Clemens the next time
[30:07] Speaker 10: we encounter him.
[30:08] Speaker 7: I can assure you it's to be very upsetting.
[30:12] Speaker 1: That claim, by the way, is disputed by the head
[30:15] Speaker 1: of the Mark Twain Archive, Bob Hurst. But we'll let
[30:18] Speaker 1: the Emperor have his story. Why argue?
[30:21] Speaker 2: Now flatbusted and needing a job and qualified for few,
[30:25] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens finds work at the San Francisco Morning Call,
[30:28] Speaker 2: located there at six hundred and twelve Commercial Street. For
[30:32] Speaker 2: the newspaper, sam Clemens writes about the local events, Penn's
[30:35] Speaker 2: theater reviews. He handles crime reporting. His day starts at
[30:39] Speaker 2: the courthouse middle hours of the day. He spends patting
[30:43] Speaker 2: about the city, sniffing after any story of the day.
[30:47] Speaker 2: At night, he attends the theater. He sees the shows
[30:50] Speaker 2: people are talking about.
[30:51] Speaker 1: He reviews those.
[30:53] Speaker 2: Then finally he retires to his chambers around eleven pm.
[30:58] Speaker 1: There he writes.
[30:59] Speaker 2: Into the small hours of the morning. Typically he turns
[31:02] Speaker 2: in sometime around.
[31:04] Speaker 1: Two or three am. At nine am the next day
[31:08] Speaker 1: he's back at the courthouse.
[31:10] Speaker 8: It was fearful drudgery, soul of drudgery, almost destitute of interest.
[31:17] Speaker 8: It was an awful slavery for a lazy man.
[31:21] Speaker 2: Also, The Morning Call is a inexpensive newspaper, one aimed
[31:25] Speaker 2: at the working class, predominantly Irish population. It's known as
[31:29] Speaker 2: a washerwoman's paper, not the ideal for a young writer
[31:33] Speaker 2: with literary aspirations, mostly though in practical terms it means
[31:37] Speaker 2: the stories he writes have to accord with the cultural
[31:40] Speaker 2: prejudices of his readers. That grates on Sam Clemens until finally,
[31:45] Speaker 2: in October of eighteen sixty four, Sam Clemens makes the
[31:48] Speaker 2: damnable mistake of going against the overt prejudices of his readers.
[31:54] Speaker 8: One Sunday afternoon, I saw some muddlms chasing and stone
[31:57] Speaker 8: in a chinaman who was heavily laden with the weak
[32:01] Speaker 8: waship Christian customers. And I noticed that a policeman was
[32:05] Speaker 8: observing this performance with us interest nothing more, He did
[32:09] Speaker 8: not intervene. I wrote up the incident with considerable wimpth
[32:13] Speaker 8: and holy indignation, and so I sought for it in
[32:17] Speaker 8: the paper the next morning with eagerness. It wasn't there.
[32:21] Speaker 8: The foreman said mister Barnes had found in a gallery
[32:23] Speaker 8: poof and or its extinction. He said that the Call
[32:27] Speaker 8: gathered its livelihood from the poor and must respect their
[32:30] Speaker 8: prejudices or perish.
[32:34] Speaker 2: After his editorial against anti Chinese racism gets killed, so
[32:39] Speaker 2: dies his future at the paper. Yet even after he
[32:42] Speaker 2: fires him, his editor still encourages Sam that he's quote
[32:46] Speaker 2: capable of better things in literature.
[32:48] Speaker 7: He says, Barnes gave him a chance to retire, to resign,
[32:52] Speaker 7: and instead of just firing him, I mean the Call
[32:55] Speaker 7: job was not well suited to him. He was doing
[32:58] Speaker 7: nothing but local items. And this piece that gets turned
[33:01] Speaker 7: down was actually more ambitious than almost anything else that
[33:05] Speaker 7: we know about that he actually published.
[33:07] Speaker 2: Hoping to stave off the dolgrums of poverty, Sam writes
[33:11] Speaker 2: ambitious pieces for Brett Hart's stylish new weekly The Californian
[33:15] Speaker 2: in the eighteen sixties. San Francisco is home to a
[33:18] Speaker 2: rare group of writers. Collectively, they're known as the Bohemians.
[33:22] Speaker 2: This informal group includes Brett Hart, Ambrose Spears, Henry George,
[33:27] Speaker 2: Joaquin Miller, and Mark Twain, although Twain more often he
[33:31] Speaker 2: prefers the company of a separate San Francisco literary society,
[33:35] Speaker 2: the Argonauts, and there are also others, such as the Romancers.
[33:39] Speaker 2: It was a fertile literary grounds in which to grow.
[33:42] Speaker 2: But why San Francisco in the eighteen sixties. What brought
[33:46] Speaker 2: this literary scene together?
[33:48] Speaker 7: It was a relatively unburned free atmosphere in which you
[33:53] Speaker 7: were allowed to say things, print things which might not
[33:58] Speaker 7: be printed if you were in New York, or in
[34:00] Speaker 7: Washington or even Denver.
[34:02] Speaker 2: Since he's no longer a paid reporter for a daily paper,
[34:05] Speaker 2: money grows tight quickly. Literary aspirations often do leave hungry bellies, underemployed, broke.
[34:12] Speaker 2: Yet again, Sam Clemens falls into what we would think
[34:15] Speaker 2: of as a deep depression. He gives up his room
[34:18] Speaker 2: at the Nice Hotel. He moves into a cheap rooming
[34:21] Speaker 2: house for months. The Blues are his constant companion.
[34:28] Speaker 7: And Mark Twain. When he comes back from the Angels camp,
[34:31] Speaker 7: he's still unemployed, and he goes from about February eighteen
[34:35] Speaker 7: sixty five until October eighteen sixty five, it's unemployed. Maybe
[34:41] Speaker 7: writing a few things for the Californian, so some income,
[34:45] Speaker 7: but not committed to being a writer. And we know
[34:49] Speaker 7: from a very important letter that he writes in October
[34:53] Speaker 7: eighteen sixty five that a reason for not committing himself
[34:57] Speaker 7: to this profession is that humor was well. As he said,
[35:02] Speaker 7: it's my strongest suit, but there's nothing to be proud of.
[35:06] Speaker 7: It's literature of a low order. I issuees.
[35:10] Speaker 2: In his book Roughing It, Sam Clemens writes about this
[35:14] Speaker 2: sense of shame at his prospects, in the deep embarrassment
[35:17] Speaker 2: of his poverty, such that it prevents him from seeing
[35:20] Speaker 2: his friends.
[35:21] Speaker 8: I slunk from backstreet to backstreet. I slunk away from
[35:25] Speaker 8: approaching faces that looks familiar. I slunk to my knees.
[35:30] Speaker 8: And at midnight, after wanderings were but slinking away from
[35:34] Speaker 8: cheerfulness and light, I slunk to my bed. I felt
[35:39] Speaker 8: meaner and lonelier and more despicable than the worms. During
[35:45] Speaker 8: all this time, I had but one piece of money,
[35:49] Speaker 8: a silver ten cent piece. I clung to my dime desperately,
[35:54] Speaker 8: till it was smooth with handling. I held onto it
[35:58] Speaker 8: and would not spend it on any account, lest the
[36:01] Speaker 8: consciousness coming strong upon me I was entirely penniless. Might
[36:07] Speaker 8: suggest suicide.
[36:09] Speaker 2: And in a marginal note he records in his manuscript
[36:13] Speaker 2: for the book Roughing It, Sam Clemens documents his lowest
[36:16] Speaker 2: moment as he writes of how he decides perhaps he
[36:19] Speaker 2: ought to end it all.
[36:21] Speaker 8: I put the pistol to my head, and I wasn't
[36:24] Speaker 8: man enough to pull the trigger. Many times I've been
[36:29] Speaker 8: sorry I did not succeed, but I was never ashamed
[36:32] Speaker 8: of han't tried.
[36:37] Speaker 1: Despite this brush with self annihilation, his humor and sarcasm
[36:42] Speaker 1: remain intact. Sam later jokes about thoughts of self harm
[36:45] Speaker 1: the same way he'd joke about missing out on a
[36:47] Speaker 1: failing mining stock. Luckily for the floundering writer. About this
[36:51] Speaker 1: same time, an old friend comes back into his life.
[36:54] Speaker 7: Joe Goodman could see what Clemens was all about. He
[36:58] Speaker 7: knew this was a genius.
[37:01] Speaker 2: Joe was still at the Enterprise, so he rehires Sam
[37:04] Speaker 2: Clemens as a San Francisco correspondent. In daily Letters from
[37:08] Speaker 2: the Heart of the City, you see they flip it
[37:10] Speaker 2: around now he writes about the city for the folks
[37:12] Speaker 2: in Gold Country.
[37:14] Speaker 7: These are two thousand words and they are a gold
[37:19] Speaker 7: mine of early Mark Twain's writing. I mean he is
[37:22] Speaker 7: able to do things in these letters which show you
[37:27] Speaker 7: where he's going to go.
[37:29] Speaker 1: Writing in the Enterprise, Sam Clemens often pens critiques of
[37:32] Speaker 1: the San Francisco Police that captured the attention of Police
[37:35] Speaker 1: Chief Martin J.
[37:36] Speaker 8: Burke.
[37:37] Speaker 2: You have to understand at the time, the police in
[37:39] Speaker 2: San Francisco were not normal cops. The early Gold Rush
[37:43] Speaker 2: era San Francisco Police Department had been taken over by
[37:46] Speaker 2: a group called the Committee of Vigilance, and Sam Clemens
[37:50] Speaker 2: was quick to criticize these former self appointed vigilantes turn
[37:54] Speaker 2: police and their ideas of law and order through applied
[37:58] Speaker 2: violence and by running the vice operations themselves. The festering
[38:03] Speaker 2: tensions between sam Clemens and the San Francisco Police Department
[38:06] Speaker 2: were bound to come to a head just as sure
[38:09] Speaker 2: as the sun will come up tomorrow. The bubble finally
[38:12] Speaker 2: bursts for Sam when Steve Gillis gets in that bar
[38:16] Speaker 2: fight with Big Jim Casey.
[38:18] Speaker 7: Well, oh, first of all, let's realize that what would
[38:22] Speaker 7: happen if he had stayed was that he'ld be imprisoned
[38:24] Speaker 7: because he couldn't meet the bail. I mean, what he
[38:27] Speaker 7: had done was to basically bail Steve out with the
[38:31] Speaker 7: little money that he had, and if you stuck around,
[38:34] Speaker 7: he would be hit up for the rest of that
[38:36] Speaker 7: which he didn't have.
[38:38] Speaker 1: And add to that, Sam Clemens is keenly aware of
[38:41] Speaker 1: the fact the chief of Police can now use this
[38:43] Speaker 1: opportunity to get his personal revenge against the young newspaper man,
[38:48] Speaker 1: the one who's printed all those disparaging opinions about his
[38:51] Speaker 1: police force.
[38:52] Speaker 7: He's been sitting on their toes for a couple of
[38:55] Speaker 7: months in the Enterprise, so you ain't got a lot
[38:57] Speaker 7: of friends there.
[38:58] Speaker 1: He knows that Sam Clemens knows for certain that if
[39:01] Speaker 1: Steve Gillis jumps bail and makes a run for it,
[39:04] Speaker 1: which is likely, he'll have to pay the full bay amount,
[39:07] Speaker 1: which he does not have.
[39:08] Speaker 2: If he fails to pay up the San Francisco Police Department,
[39:12] Speaker 2: we'll get their bloody revenge on Sam Clements. They will
[39:15] Speaker 2: beat some respect into him.
[39:17] Speaker 1: Now. Aside from that bodily pressure, Bob Hurst believes Sam
[39:21] Speaker 1: Clemens also felt a more personal motivation to flee San Francisco.
[39:26] Speaker 7: My own view is that other things were really motivating
[39:29] Speaker 7: him to get out of town. And part of it
[39:32] Speaker 7: is just not knowing what he's going to do with
[39:35] Speaker 7: his own life. I mean, not knowing what kind of job,
[39:39] Speaker 7: what kind of career, what kind of profession he's going
[39:41] Speaker 7: to pursue. It's clear, as he says, humor is my
[39:44] Speaker 7: strongest suit. It's just nothing to be proud of.
[39:48] Speaker 2: And so when Steve suggests they make a run for it,
[39:51] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens listens to his friend say.
[39:55] Speaker 11: Sam says, Steve, if I have to go back to
[39:58] Speaker 11: Virginia City, and I guess I'd better you go up
[40:01] Speaker 11: to my two brothers on Jackass Hill and you stay
[40:03] Speaker 11: with them until this thing blows over. They will be
[40:06] Speaker 11: delighted to have you with him. There will be a
[40:08] Speaker 11: splendid vacation and adding for you, and you will have
[40:11] Speaker 11: the time of your life. It won't interfere in your
[40:14] Speaker 11: engagements with the papers for which you are writing here,
[40:16] Speaker 11: and you will be able to pick up a lot
[40:18] Speaker 11: of things that will help you as a writer.
[40:21] Speaker 2: On the lamb, sam Clemens can stay safe and free
[40:24] Speaker 2: from the violence of the SFPD, and it also gives
[40:27] Speaker 2: this rootless, underemployed young man with few prospects the time
[40:31] Speaker 2: he needs to decide what he should and what he
[40:34] Speaker 2: wants to do next. Should he listen to the advice
[40:37] Speaker 2: of his friend Artemis Warden, write for the big publishers
[40:40] Speaker 2: back east, or continue on as he would want to
[40:43] Speaker 2: as a newspaper man on the Pacific coast. All of
[40:46] Speaker 2: his answers would come to him at a place called
[40:49] Speaker 2: Jackass Hill. That's where Sam Clemens will finally strike it rich.
[40:54] Speaker 2: Only it isn't the gold he's always imagined. Rather, this
[40:57] Speaker 2: gold will arrive in the form of a magical frog.
[41:05] Speaker 2: In the first days of December eighteen sixty four, Sam
[41:08] Speaker 2: Clemens flees San Francisco like a thief. In the night,
[41:12] Speaker 2: he sneaks out of town on a steamship. He's again
[41:15] Speaker 2: back on a riverboat, this time headed east. The next day,
[41:19] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens takes the morning stagecoach into the Gold Country
[41:23] Speaker 2: to a town called Sonora. After long, dusty travel, he
[41:27] Speaker 2: finally arrives on December fourth. He makes his way to
[41:30] Speaker 2: the Gillis Cabin at the summit of Jackass Hill. The
[41:34] Speaker 2: nearest town is a small mining camp called Tuttletown, fifteen
[41:39] Speaker 2: hundred feet above sea level in the foothills of the Sierras. Now,
[41:43] Speaker 2: when Sam Clemens arrives, most of the gold is already gone.
[41:47] Speaker 2: The big gold strikes, the Bonanzas mother loads, they're all
[41:50] Speaker 2: things of the past. However, that doesn't stop Sam Clemens
[41:54] Speaker 2: from jumping into gold mining.
[41:56] Speaker 1: Since the big gold.
[41:57] Speaker 2: Deposits are all mined out, that leaves only small pockets
[42:00] Speaker 2: of gold which are picked over by what's called pocket miners.
[42:04] Speaker 2: That's what the brother of Steve Gillis does.
[42:07] Speaker 7: It's a very tenuous kind of existence as not as
[42:10] Speaker 7: if you're going to make it big in doing this,
[42:12] Speaker 7: and that's pretty clear that the Gillises and others who
[42:17] Speaker 7: were there with him just liked the freedom from civilized
[42:21] Speaker 7: city life. They liked being out in the country often
[42:24] Speaker 7: where is a good way to think of it, I think,
[42:27] Speaker 7: And because there were skilled at this, they could in
[42:30] Speaker 7: fact easily support themselves.
[42:35] Speaker 2: Living in the Gillis cabin with Sam or Steve Gillis's brothers,
[42:38] Speaker 2: Jim and William Gillis, and their mining partner Dick Stoker.
[42:42] Speaker 2: The Gillis Cabin is bitterly cold in winter, has no
[42:46] Speaker 2: indoor plumbing.
[42:47] Speaker 1: Not even an outhouse.
[42:48] Speaker 2: The men they all sleep in one big room on
[42:52] Speaker 2: wooden planks.
[42:53] Speaker 1: They cover themselves in.
[42:54] Speaker 2: Old, damp, mildewed, flea infested blankets. Add to this mix
[42:59] Speaker 2: that Dick Stoker brought with him and a menagerie of
[43:02] Speaker 2: animals he has with him in the cabin, a pig,
[43:06] Speaker 2: a jay, a skunk, and a cat. And now also
[43:13] Speaker 2: add in the dog that Jim Gillis takes with him
[43:16] Speaker 2: everywhere he goes. You can practically smell this cabin. The
[43:21] Speaker 2: place was ripe with life, and not nearly enough room
[43:24] Speaker 2: to house at all. Since it's deep in the winter.
[43:28] Speaker 2: When sam Clemens arrives, the men often spend a week
[43:32] Speaker 2: or more cooped up together, snowbounds stuck inside. For sam Clemens,
[43:37] Speaker 2: though life on the lamb from the law, life at
[43:39] Speaker 2: the Gillis Cabin, it feels like simple, rustic heaven, he
[43:43] Speaker 2: writes about it in his autobiography.
[43:46] Speaker 6: It was the most singular and the most touching and
[43:48] Speaker 6: melancholy exile that fancy can imagine we lived in a
[43:51] Speaker 6: small cabin on a verdant hillside, and then we're not
[43:53] Speaker 6: file of the cabins in view over the wide expanse
[43:56] Speaker 6: of hill and forest.
[43:58] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens he's up there on Jackass Hill for a
[44:00] Speaker 2: total of eighty eight days. For that nearly three months stretch,
[44:04] Speaker 2: living life on the lamb, he spends a lot of
[44:07] Speaker 2: time writing in his journals instead of doing any serious mining.
[44:12] Speaker 2: He fills out four notebooks while he's in Gold Country.
[44:17] Speaker 2: Over his time there at the Gillis Cabin. Enraptured by
[44:20] Speaker 2: this surrounding beauty and all the unfettered simplicity of nature,
[44:24] Speaker 2: sam Clemens just thinks, and he breathes, and he lets
[44:29] Speaker 2: life happen. At this point, he knows he wants to write,
[44:34] Speaker 2: but he hates that the writing he's best at is humor,
[44:38] Speaker 2: as Bob Hurst put it, quote that lowest form of writing.
[44:41] Speaker 2: And because of this, sam Clemens struggles with ideas for
[44:44] Speaker 2: his future. Meanwhile, up there in Gold Country, sam Clemens
[44:49] Speaker 2: also finds a couple of healthy distractions, namely a pair
[44:53] Speaker 2: of sisters. He relaxes with them for afternoon picnics, He
[44:57] Speaker 2: talks with them on long walks, and he spends many
[45:00] Speaker 2: hours in shady glens with them and Jim Gillis. They're
[45:05] Speaker 2: called the Danielle Sisters, Nellie and Molly. In her book
[45:08] Speaker 2: The Saga of Old tuolemy Edna Buckby describes the sisters
[45:12] Speaker 2: in a way that they come to life with the
[45:14] Speaker 2: broad brush that she paints them with.
[45:16] Speaker 7: They boasted of having the slimmest wastes, the largest bustles.
[45:21] Speaker 3: And the stiffest starched petticoats in the entire locality.
[45:26] Speaker 1: Sam Clemens will also later write about the sisters in
[45:29] Speaker 1: his book The Innocence Adrift.
[45:31] Speaker 8: They were sisters seventeen eighteen years old, respectively, beautiful creatures,
[45:37] Speaker 8: clean minded, good hearted, well meaning, favorites with old and young.
[45:42] Speaker 8: Yet they could outswear satan. It was the common speech
[45:47] Speaker 8: of the remote, thinly celled region. They had come by
[45:51] Speaker 8: it naturally, and if there was any harm in it,
[45:53] Speaker 8: they were not aware of it.
[45:55] Speaker 2: Despite this time spent squiring the Danielle's sisters around Gold
[45:59] Speaker 2: Country hills, Sam quickly grows to dislike life as a
[46:02] Speaker 2: pocket miner, enduring the poor weather, bad food, and worst coffee. Eventually,
[46:08] Speaker 2: he and Jim Gillis relocate to better accommodations in a
[46:11] Speaker 2: place called Angels Camp. He and Jim Gillis get rooms
[46:15] Speaker 2: at the Angel's Hotel. There they spend considerable time together
[46:19] Speaker 2: at the hotel's saloon. It's the only real hotel in
[46:22] Speaker 2: the camp. Thus it's the camp's main hangout spot. It's
[46:26] Speaker 2: where everyone stays dry and swaps stories by the wood stove.
[46:29] Speaker 2: So there he is in Angels Camp, hanging around a
[46:32] Speaker 2: tavern in this hotel, swapping tall tales and short stories
[46:36] Speaker 2: passed around a wood stove, and Sam Clemens meets an
[46:39] Speaker 2: old river boat pilot. The two men get to talking.
[46:43] Speaker 2: The fellow riverboat pilot tells him a story about a
[46:46] Speaker 2: peculiar jumping frog. It isn't the story per se, but
[46:50] Speaker 2: rather the way the man tells it. His funny little
[46:53] Speaker 2: yarn stays with Sam Clemens. He jots down the important
[46:57] Speaker 2: details in one of his notebooks. He records in his
[47:00] Speaker 2: notes just a scant amount of words. Coleman with his
[47:04] Speaker 2: jumpin frog, a stranger of fifty dollars. Stranger had no frog,
[47:09] Speaker 2: and see got him one. In the meantime, the stranger
[47:12] Speaker 2: filled cs frog full of shot and he couldn't jump.
[47:15] Speaker 2: The stranger's frog won. Sam Clemens lets the story ruminate
[47:21] Speaker 2: and percolate inside him for a while. Meanwhile, something in
[47:25] Speaker 2: him also signals.
[47:26] Speaker 1: It's time to leave Gold Country return to life in
[47:29] Speaker 1: San Francisco. One long and dusty stagecoach ride, later followed
[47:35] Speaker 1: by a slow riverboat trip, he's back home. When he
[47:38] Speaker 1: arrives back in the city, Sam Clemens finds the heat
[47:41] Speaker 1: was off, the cops aren't looking for him. Seems all
[47:44] Speaker 1: has been forgotten or swept away by the steady passage
[47:47] Speaker 1: of time and crime in the city. However, returning home,
[47:51] Speaker 1: Sam receives some bad news. He's missed important mail. It's
[47:55] Speaker 1: from his old friend Artemis Ward, as Sam later records
[47:58] Speaker 1: in his.
[47:58] Speaker 6: Notebook, February twenty sixth Home again, Home Again. At the
[48:03] Speaker 6: Occidental Hotel, San Francisco, find letters from Artemis asking me
[48:07] Speaker 6: to write a sketch for his new book of Nevada
[48:09] Speaker 6: Territory Travels, which is soon to come out.
[48:12] Speaker 7: Too late.
[48:14] Speaker 6: Oh to have gotten the letters three months ago. They're
[48:16] Speaker 6: dated in early November.
[48:18] Speaker 2: Away from the city, He's missed his big chance, or
[48:21] Speaker 2: so he thinks. Regardless, Sam Clemens starts to work on
[48:25] Speaker 2: stories he believes might interest Artemis ward stories he heard
[48:29] Speaker 2: up in Angels Camp, stories told at the Gillis Cabin
[48:32] Speaker 2: on Jackass Hill. But Sam Clemens.
[48:34] Speaker 1: Can't get any of these stories to work, not the
[48:37] Speaker 1: way he wants. He struggles with writer's block, he falls
[48:41] Speaker 1: into another of his blue spells. Then one afternoon he
[48:45] Speaker 1: has a dream about the frog, the frog from the
[48:49] Speaker 1: jumping contest story he heard back in Angels Camp from
[48:52] Speaker 1: the Riverboat Pilot. The frog comes to him in his dream,
[48:55] Speaker 1: and this jumping frog whispers that Sam should write his story,
[49:01] Speaker 1: as Sam records it in a letter.
[49:03] Speaker 6: One dismal afternoon, as I lay on my hotel bed,
[49:07] Speaker 6: determined to inform Ourtemis, I had nothing appropriate for his collections,
[49:10] Speaker 6: a still small voice began to make itself heard.
[49:14] Speaker 7: Try me, Try me.
[49:16] Speaker 6: It was the poor little jumping frog. Because of the
[49:19] Speaker 6: insistence of its pleading, and for want of a better subject,
[49:22] Speaker 6: I immediately got up and wrote out the tale. If
[49:25] Speaker 6: it hadn't been for that little fellow's apparition in this
[49:28] Speaker 6: strange fashion, I would have never written about him.
[49:30] Speaker 2: Sam Clemens doesn't question the dream's logic, nor the dictates
[49:35] Speaker 2: of the frog. Instead, he writes, and he writes some more,
[49:38] Speaker 2: and he writes some more after that, until he has
[49:40] Speaker 2: the story down on paper. What results is dubbed Jim
[49:49] Speaker 2: Smiley and His Jumping Frog, but the story will soon
[49:52] Speaker 2: be retitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. In
[49:58] Speaker 2: October of eighteen sixty five, with the Civil War now
[50:02] Speaker 2: over and the nation tending to its wounds as the
[50:05] Speaker 2: people stitched the country together, Sam Clemens sends his jumping
[50:09] Speaker 2: frog story back east. He sends it to George W. Carlton,
[50:14] Speaker 2: publisher for Artemis Ward. He sends it for a possible
[50:17] Speaker 2: inclusion in the upcoming book Artemis Ward His Travels, but
[50:21] Speaker 2: it's too late to include his jumping frog story. Instead,
[50:25] Speaker 2: the publisher Carlton forwards the story to the editor of
[50:28] Speaker 2: the Saturday Press. There the story is published, and it
[50:32] Speaker 2: is an instant's success, a comic delight for a nation
[50:36] Speaker 2: that's in the mood for a good old fashioned laugh.
[50:39] Speaker 2: As Bob Hurst reads it, you can hear that voice
[50:41] Speaker 2: of the narrator indeed come alive.
[50:46] Speaker 7: Well. This year Smiley had rat Terrius and Chickencox and
[50:49] Speaker 7: Tom Kats and all them kind of things till you
[50:52] Speaker 7: couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to
[50:55] Speaker 7: bid on, but he'd match you. He catched a frog
[50:58] Speaker 7: one day and took him home and said he calculated
[51:00] Speaker 7: to educated. And so we never done nothing for three months.
[51:04] Speaker 7: Was set in his backyard and learn that frog to jump.
[51:07] Speaker 7: And you bet you he did learn him. He'd give
[51:10] Speaker 7: him a little hunch behind. The next minute, you see
[51:13] Speaker 7: that frog whirling in the air like a donut. See
[51:16] Speaker 7: him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he
[51:19] Speaker 7: got a good start and come down flat footed and
[51:21] Speaker 7: all right like a cat. He got him up so
[51:24] Speaker 7: in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in
[51:26] Speaker 7: practice so constant that he'd dale a fly every time
[51:30] Speaker 7: as far as he could see him. Smiley said all
[51:32] Speaker 7: a frog wanted was education, and he could do most anything.
[51:36] Speaker 7: And I believe him.
[51:39] Speaker 2: The jumping frog story gets reprinted all around the country
[51:43] Speaker 2: in newspaper after newspaper. Then it's reprinted all around the world.
[51:48] Speaker 2: It's a global phenomenon. One of the first. The jumping
[51:52] Speaker 2: frog story is also the beginning of Mark Twain's literary fame.
[51:57] Speaker 7: I think the basic plot, if you will is minimal.
[52:00] Speaker 7: It is, in fact, not really why we enjoy the
[52:03] Speaker 7: Jumping Frog story.
[52:05] Speaker 2: Bob Hurst also speaks to how how this narrator captivates readers.
[52:09] Speaker 7: Still, the substance of what he's saying isn't what's important.
[52:14] Speaker 7: It's how he's saying it, and that he's loquacious. He's
[52:18] Speaker 7: talking and he's not hesitating about how to describe this,
[52:22] Speaker 7: and you have an absolutely vivid picture of what these
[52:25] Speaker 7: animals were like. Now he's invested in them all kinds
[52:29] Speaker 7: of I guess projection, right, but I think that is
[52:33] Speaker 7: really what he's after here. It's the ingenuousness of the speech.
[52:38] Speaker 7: And now whatether that means he wants to elevate uneducated
[52:43] Speaker 7: characters above the rest of us. I wouldn't take it
[52:46] Speaker 7: that way. It's more that in their unlearnedness is a
[52:51] Speaker 7: kind of freshness.
[52:53] Speaker 2: And that's what sets Mark Twain's early writing apart. It's
[52:56] Speaker 2: what gives people of America a sense of this country's
[52:59] Speaker 2: own unique voice. With that noted freshness of perspective.
[53:04] Speaker 7: We enjoy the Jumping fris story because Mark Twain is
[53:08] Speaker 7: able to describe this guy's speech, the way he speaks
[53:13] Speaker 7: and what he says when he's trying to tell his story.
[53:17] Speaker 7: But the point is, the pleasure of this story isn't
[53:20] Speaker 7: in what happens. It isn't in the plot. It's in
[53:23] Speaker 7: the way Jim speaks. He is speaking in a way
[53:27] Speaker 7: which is deliberately not sophisticated, but is wonderfully evocative and
[53:35] Speaker 7: makes you see what's going on and understand what this
[53:38] Speaker 7: guy is all about in a way that no other
[53:41] Speaker 7: kind of formal dialect w a while. It's really an
[53:45] Speaker 7: amazing discovery.
[53:47] Speaker 2: In the Jumping Frog story, Sam Clemens finally discovers gold
[53:51] Speaker 2: his comic voice. There's an immediacy to it, even though
[53:55] Speaker 2: it's loquacious and talks around the situation.
[53:58] Speaker 7: That's, of course, the great innovation that he's going to
[54:02] Speaker 7: make is to tell an entire novel, entire story in
[54:07] Speaker 7: someone's voice. I mean, that's what Hemingway and all the
[54:11] Speaker 7: others are coming out. They see that as a liberation.
[54:15] Speaker 7: You don't have to be Henry James, you don't have
[54:18] Speaker 7: to have this very proper Bostonian or whatever English voice
[54:22] Speaker 7: telling the story. You can tell the story through a character.
[54:26] Speaker 2: The simple but consequential innovation is not an easy thing.
[54:30] Speaker 1: That he's accomplished and.
[54:31] Speaker 7: Not a simple thing at all. And I think really
[54:34] Speaker 7: that's what strikes Hemingway and everyone else. You'd be hard
[54:37] Speaker 7: to find a twentieth century writer, American writer who wouldn't
[54:41] Speaker 7: say Mark Twain started. And it's such a radical idea that,
[54:47] Speaker 7: I mean, you don't find it in short stories before this,
[54:51] Speaker 7: you don't find it in the literature before Mark Twin
[54:53] Speaker 7: did it. I think you could doubt that if it
[54:55] Speaker 7: were just English professors saying it. But it isn't just
[54:58] Speaker 7: English professor. It's basically writers saying it, and they should know.
[55:03] Speaker 2: Thanks to that magical frog, Sam Clemens breaks free from
[55:07] Speaker 2: all convention, all fear. He's able to hear and authentically
[55:11] Speaker 2: speak in the voice of the West. What results, although
[55:14] Speaker 2: wholly constructed, feels uniquely American. For the first time, America
[55:19] Speaker 2: can hear itself speak in the voice of Sam Clemens
[55:23] Speaker 2: and the people they laugh in response. The huge reception
[55:28] Speaker 2: to the Jumping Frog Story comes as a terrible shock
[55:31] Speaker 2: to one man, Sam Clemens. He feels his frog story
[55:36] Speaker 2: isn't literature. If anything, it was a lark, something he's
[55:39] Speaker 2: sent off to his friend for a book he cannot understand.
[55:43] Speaker 2: Why the whole world loves his dumb little frog story
[55:45] Speaker 2: so much. In a letter to his mother and sister
[55:49] Speaker 2: dated January twentieth, eighteen sixty six, Sam writes.
[55:53] Speaker 6: To think that after writing many an article, a man
[55:55] Speaker 6: might be excused for thinking we're tolerably good. Those New
[55:59] Speaker 6: York people should single out of Villain's backwoods sketch to
[56:02] Speaker 6: compliment me on Jim Smiley and is jumping from a
[56:05] Speaker 6: squip which never would have been written but to please
[56:07] Speaker 6: Artemis Ward, and then it reached New York too late
[56:10] Speaker 6: to appear in his book.
[56:13] Speaker 2: All things being equal, Sam Clemens would have rather been
[56:16] Speaker 2: a pilot on the Mississippi River. But he gets over
[56:19] Speaker 2: his nostalgia and his writer's block, and he will go
[56:23] Speaker 2: on to write the novels and books that will launch
[56:26] Speaker 2: American literature.
[56:27] Speaker 1: The author H. L.
[56:29] Speaker 2: Mankin once wrote that quote Twain was the first American
[56:32] Speaker 2: author of world rank to write a genuinely colloquial and
[56:35] Speaker 2: native American. More famously, Ernest Hemingway said, more to the point,
[56:41] Speaker 2: all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
[56:45] Speaker 2: Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There
[56:49] Speaker 2: was nothing before and there's been nothing as good since now.
[56:53] Speaker 2: Even though Sam Clemens doesn't necessarily like the jumping frog Storry,
[56:57] Speaker 2: his resulting fame sends him to Hawaii, which results in
[57:00] Speaker 2: his book Innocents Abroad. This is the book that launches
[57:03] Speaker 2: his career as a public speaker and as a personality.
[57:07] Speaker 2: All of it begins with those eighty eight days on
[57:10] Speaker 2: Jackass Hill. On January twenty sixth, eighteen seventy, Sam Clemens
[57:15] Speaker 2: writes this letter to his old friend, the pocket miner
[57:18] Speaker 2: Jim Gillis, brother of Steve. He reminisces about their time
[57:22] Speaker 2: spent on Jackass Hill and how those days forever changed
[57:25] Speaker 2: the course of his life and his literary path.
[57:30] Speaker 8: It makes my heart ache yet to call to mind
[57:33] Speaker 8: some of those days. Yet it shouldn't, for the right depths,
[57:38] Speaker 8: of their poverty and their pocket minding bag of bondage
[57:42] Speaker 8: lay the germ of my coming good fortune. You remember
[57:45] Speaker 8: that one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal
[57:49] Speaker 8: sojourn in the rain and mud of angels Camp. I
[57:52] Speaker 8: mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and
[57:54] Speaker 8: heard that chap tell about the frog and how they
[57:56] Speaker 8: filled them with shot and you remember how we quoted
[57:59] Speaker 8: from that yarn and laughed over it. I jotted down
[58:03] Speaker 8: the story in my notebook that day and would have
[58:05] Speaker 8: been glad to get down our fifteen dollars for it.
[58:08] Speaker 8: I was just that blind. But then we were so
[58:12] Speaker 8: hard up. I published that story, and I became widely
[58:15] Speaker 8: known in America, India, China, England, and the reputation for
[58:23] Speaker 8: me has paid me thousands and thousands of dollars since.
[58:33] Speaker 5: And that was another very special episode. Great jobs, Aaron.
[58:37] Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you.
[58:38] Speaker 1: I always liked the idea that sometimes crime can save culture.
[58:41] Speaker 1: I mean, I just think that that tickles me. I
[58:43] Speaker 1: don't know why, but I love crime as we all know.
[58:46] Speaker 3: You love crime as we all know.
[58:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly what did you guys think about the San
[58:49] Speaker 1: Francisco history of it all? Finding out that San Francisco
[58:52] Speaker 1: has always been this libertine, free wheeling kind of culture,
[58:55] Speaker 1: I mean, gave me hope that San Francisco will return
[58:57] Speaker 1: the one that we knew then.
[58:59] Speaker 5: Yeah, A lot of the stuff you get into makes
[59:01] Speaker 5: me feel like a kind of sketch comedy troops like
[59:05] Speaker 5: competing coming up up at the same time.
[59:08] Speaker 1: Totally.
[59:08] Speaker 5: When we get into the casting later, I think that
[59:11] Speaker 5: that informed all my thoughts on who should play all
[59:14] Speaker 5: these people.
[59:15] Speaker 3: Oh that's very exciting in terms of casting, Zarn, where
[59:18] Speaker 3: are you at? Because I feel like you've probably given
[59:20] Speaker 3: this a lot of thought.
[59:21] Speaker 1: I have, and I had only a hard time with
[59:24] Speaker 1: one role to cast, and that was, of course, Mark Twain.
[59:26] Speaker 1: I was like, who can play Mark Twain? How Holbrook
[59:29] Speaker 1: killed the part when he played Mark Twain, so it's
[59:31] Speaker 1: like who and he's gone now, so who? And then
[59:33] Speaker 1: I realized Tom Hanks doing his best hel Hoolebrook, Right,
[59:38] Speaker 1: you can see it for young Sam Clemens. I was
[59:40] Speaker 1: thinking Casey Affleck, he just seems to have the right
[59:43] Speaker 1: vibe for the Gillis brothers Jim Gillis, William Gillis and
[59:47] Speaker 1: Steve Gillis. I'm like, okay, where we get three brothers.
[59:50] Speaker 1: Came to me the Jonas brothers. Give him an acting part.
[59:54] Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's interesting because you had Casey Affleck
[59:57] Speaker 3: right there. You're not doing that for the brothers, You're
[59:59] Speaker 3: saving him.
[1:00:00] Speaker 4: Yeah, right, it's right there.
[1:00:01] Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think Ben Affleck can play
[1:00:03] Speaker 1: older Mark Twain. I don't think he can be one
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: of the gillises he'll be we You're like, why is
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: he fighting his brother or should they be together? You know,
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: I don't know, so I thought, you know, go Jonas brothers.
[1:00:12] Speaker 1: Give them their first chance on screen, you know, really
[1:00:14] Speaker 1: see what they can do.
[1:00:15] Speaker 3: I'm going to be dating myself. They used to have
[1:00:18] Speaker 3: a Disney Channel television show, so they haven't been on screen.
[1:00:22] Speaker 3: It was called Jonas.
[1:00:24] Speaker 4: Yeah, the big screen though, have we? They then on
[1:00:26] Speaker 4: the big screen?
[1:00:26] Speaker 3: Well, if you think of camp Rock as a cinematic experience, which.
[1:00:31] Speaker 1: Yes, yeah I did look past that. Oh my god,
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: I'm so embarrassed. So see the Danielle sisters. I was
[1:00:38] Speaker 1: thinking the Sydney Sweeney and Anna Taylor Joy For some reason,
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: I thought they had, like, you know, pre iPhone faces
[1:00:45] Speaker 1: enough to really nail that role.
[1:00:47] Speaker 4: For Also for the Sheriff.
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: Of San Francisco, same thing, pre iPhone face requirement.
[1:00:51] Speaker 4: Jesse Plemmons, love.
[1:00:52] Speaker 3: Jesse Plemmons for this. Put him in a period piece
[1:00:55] Speaker 3: and I'm thrilled, Right, I.
[1:00:56] Speaker 4: Just got period piece face. And then Big Jim Casey.
[1:00:59] Speaker 1: The proprietor of the bar, I wanted to bring back
[1:01:02] Speaker 1: a WWE wrestler. You could pick your favorite I'm going
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: with the big show. A seven foot tall, fifty year
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: old man is perfect for this role.
[1:01:09] Speaker 4: And then last up, Emperor Norton. I think I've cast
[1:01:13] Speaker 4: him before. Bet.
[1:01:14] Speaker 1: I love the guy Sam Rockwell. He just has the
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: chaotic energy he can pull this off.
[1:01:18] Speaker 4: So there you go. There's my casting. What do y'all think.
[1:01:21] Speaker 3: Sam Rockwell as Ember Norton is kind of inspired.
[1:01:25] Speaker 5: I love that.
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: I always think of him as Zafad Biebelbrockx and the
[1:01:29] Speaker 1: Hitchhiger's Guide of the Galaxy, and that let me see
[1:01:32] Speaker 1: how far that guy's willing to go.
[1:01:34] Speaker 5: So tell us about your interview with the Emperor. Is
[1:01:37] Speaker 5: he someone that you interact with usually? And when you're
[1:01:41] Speaker 5: in San Francisco?
[1:01:42] Speaker 1: I do look for him. Anytime I'm in that area
[1:01:44] Speaker 1: of town, I look to see because he does. At
[1:01:47] Speaker 1: eleven o'clock he'll be out there in the Union Square
[1:01:50] Speaker 1: getting ready to start his tourist Then I know now
[1:01:52] Speaker 1: and know which way he goes, So if I'm over
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: there around noon, I'm looking for him. The guy is
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: super fun. I recommend it to anybody who goes to
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: San Francisco. It's one of the coolest guided tours. I've
[1:02:00] Speaker 1: ever done. I've only done like three in my life,
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: so that's kind of a low bar, but still very good.
[1:02:04] Speaker 3: All right, next time I'm in San Francisco.
[1:02:07] Speaker 4: The list, Oh nicee, I'll let him know.
[1:02:09] Speaker 5: Do you think historical characters should be almost like AI
[1:02:13] Speaker 5: just in if you want to interact with them, they
[1:02:16] Speaker 5: should be there and willing to tell that story. He
[1:02:18] Speaker 5: was great, great, great decision to go talk to him
[1:02:21] Speaker 5: and get him to fill in some of the details.
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, he was just a really fun guy and he
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: seemed to have the spirit. He embodied the spirit of
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: the story and also reminding me never let money get
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: in the way of a good time, so if you
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: have it, you don't have it, never letting get in
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: the way.
[1:02:34] Speaker 4: So there you go.
[1:02:35] Speaker 5: Well, he was my very special character, so he wins
[1:02:38] Speaker 5: this segment for me.
[1:02:39] Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of the Emperor myself. I have
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: to agree with Jason there. He's a character I've talked
[1:02:44] Speaker 3: about on my podcast Noble Blood. He also I don't
[1:02:48] Speaker 3: know if any of you have read Neil Gaman Sandman,
[1:02:50] Speaker 3: but he's a character in that. Oh no, yeah, it's
[1:02:55] Speaker 3: just he's great. So if anyone also hasn't read Sandman.
[1:02:57] Speaker 3: Just go read all of it.
[1:02:59] Speaker 4: Okay, that's on my list. Now I'm gonna go do it.
[1:03:02] Speaker 9: Yeah.
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: Did you guys notice how Mark Twain's friends in this
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: story were constantly giving them him the perspective, like we
[1:03:08] Speaker 1: had Artemis Ward who pulls him off his path? Right,
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: So I was thinking, that's a lesson I think people
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: should take away from this is be thankful when your
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: friends see something about you that you don't.
[1:03:17] Speaker 5: A lot of good lessons in this one. I love
[1:03:19] Speaker 5: your line about he finally discovers gold and it's not gold.
[1:03:25] Speaker 5: I mean, he's getting into the gold rush. It would
[1:03:28] Speaker 5: be like getting into NFTs today. This is where I'm
[1:03:31] Speaker 5: gonna make my mark here.
[1:03:34] Speaker 3: That is a great lesson.
[1:03:35] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[1:03:36] Speaker 5: I love seeing him at that period where oh there's
[1:03:38] Speaker 5: something that people like that I do and I'm a
[1:03:41] Speaker 5: little bit ashamed of what that is.
[1:03:43] Speaker 1: That tension I relate.
[1:03:45] Speaker 4: I get it.
[1:03:46] Speaker 5: We're all better for it.
[1:03:47] Speaker 4: Oh totally.
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: Also, if anytime you have a magical animal appear to
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: you in a dream, you've got to listen to the
[1:03:52] Speaker 1: magic animal. I mean that's just the rule and my
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: other good lesson.
[1:03:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, these are the lessons listen to your friends and
[1:03:57] Speaker 3: listen to Magic Animals. This is a very very special
[1:03:59] Speaker 3: episode with all the wisdom we're dolling out.
[1:04:05] Speaker 5: Very special episodes is made by some very special people.
[1:04:08] Speaker 5: This show was hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
[1:04:11] Speaker 5: me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Zaren Burnett.
[1:04:15] Speaker 5: Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
[1:04:19] Speaker 5: Josh Fisher and Jonathan Washington. Mixing and mastering by Beheth Frasier.
[1:04:24] Speaker 5: Original music by Elise McCoy. Our story editor is Barisa Brown.
[1:04:29] Speaker 5: Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson. Show logo by
[1:04:32] Speaker 5: Lucy Quintinia. We have some special guests and voice actors
[1:04:36] Speaker 5: to thank today. Mark Twain was portrayed by Frank Nemick,
[1:04:40] Speaker 5: Sam Clemens by Zack Nemeck, Edna Buckbee by Elizabeth Dutton,
[1:04:45] Speaker 5: William Gillis by Jonathan Washington. As I want to thank
[1:04:48] Speaker 5: Bob Hirsch from the Mark Twain Archive at UC Berkeley
[1:04:51] Speaker 5: and Joseph Amster, Emperor Norton himself from the Emperor Norton's
[1:04:55] Speaker 5: Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine. I am your executive producer.
[1:04:59] Speaker 5: If you'd like to email the show. You can reach
[1:05:02] Speaker 5: us at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. Very
[1:05:05] Speaker 5: Special Episodes is a production. Buy her Podcasts M

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