How the West Turned Samuel Clemens Headed Into Mark Twain

On this episode of Our American Stories, old West historian Roger McGrath is here to tell the story of a time before the world knew Samuel Clemons by his pen name, Mark Twain. The time he spent in the American West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided him with material that would make him America’s first celebrity author.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories. And the next story is
about a writer well whose name you know, but whose
story you may not. This is the story of a
time before the world knew Samuel Clemens by his pen
name Mark Twain. The time he spent in the American
West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided

(00:30):
him with material that would make him America's first celebrity author.
Here to tell the story of Samuel Clemens's life in
the Old West is Roger McGrath. McGrath is the author
of Gunfighters, Highlumen and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier. A
US marine and former history professor at UCLA, Doctor McGrath
has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries, and he's a

(00:52):
regular contributor for us. Here in our American Stories, here's McGrath.
Most people know m Clements is Mark Twain, the author
of Tom Sweer and Huckleberry Finn. They have no idea
that as a young man he spent the eighteen sixties
in the mining camps of Nevada and California, and it

(01:13):
was in those camps he wrote professionally for the first time.
Who was also in those camps that he learned from
older writers a style of writing common to the frontier West,
and adopted that style for his own. A book came
out of his experiences on the frontier, which is little
known but maybe his best work roughing it. Sam Clements

(01:39):
is born in Florida, Missouri, in November eighteen thirty five.
Is the sixth of seven children, three of whom die
in childhood. His parents are of Scotch, Irish, Cornish, and
the English descent. The family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, a
port on the Mississippi, when Sam is four. There's regular

(02:00):
river traffic in and out of the port, and there
are pioneers passing through the town on their way west.
From the young age, Clemens understands there is a larger
world outside of Hannibal. When Clemens is eleven, his father,
an attorney and judge, dies Less than a year later.

(02:21):
Clemens drops out of school and his apprentice to a printer.
Clements soon becomes an accomplished type setter, working long hours
during the day and reading in a library at night.
When he's thirteen, he watches one of his friends depart
for California in the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine,

(02:43):
Clemens later describes the scene. I still remembered the parts
are of the cavalcade when it spurred westward. We were
all there to see and to envy, And I can
still see the proud little chaps sailing by on a
great horse. We were all on hand to gaze and envy.
When he returned two years later, in unimaginable glory, for

(03:09):
he had traveled. None of us had ever been forty
miles from home, but he had crossed the continent. He
had been in the gold mines, that fairyland of our imagination.
We would have sold our souls to Satan for the
privilege of trading places with him. Clements continues working as

(03:32):
a type setter until eighteen fifty seven, when he meets
Horace Bixby, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. For
a price, Bixby agrees to take on Clements as an
apprentice pilot, or what's called a cub pilot. After training
under Bixby for two years, Clements receives his pilot's license

(03:54):
and begins serving on the steamer ab chambers. It's a
prestigious job and the pay is good, but in eighteen
sixty one, List Civil War erupts, closing most steamboat traffic
on the Mississippi. At the same time, Sam Clemens gets
his chance to go west, a dream since childhood. His

(04:17):
older brother, Orion, is a practicing attorney and a vigorous
supporter of Abraham Lincoln's campaign for president. Orian closes his
wall office and stumps throughout Missouri in behalf of Lincoln.
When Lincoln becomes president, Orian is appointed secretary of the

(04:38):
newly created Territory of Nevada. Orian has a problem, though
his months of campaigning for Lincoln have exhausted his personal savings.
Orion asks Sam to finance his trip to Nevada. Sam
agreeves if Orion takes him along and gives him a job,

(05:00):
but Ryan reckons he will need a private secretary and
Sam can be the secretary. Sam pays four hundred dollars
for the stagecoach fair for the two of them from
Saint Joseph, Missouri to Carson City, Nevada. The cost is
more than fifteen thousand and today's dollars. The company that

(05:23):
operates the line is the Central Overland, California and Pike's
Peak Express Company. The company is owned by William Russell
Alexander Majors and William Waddell. They become famous not only
for their stagecoach service to California, but also for their
creation of the Pony Express. On July twenty sixth, the

(05:48):
Clemens brothers climb aboard a Central Overland stagecoach and begin
a seventeen hundred mile journey over the Great Plains, through
the Rocky Mountains, and across the Greats into Carson City.
Sam is dressed in a woolen shirt and pans and
high top boots. He carries a Smith and Wesson revolver,

(06:11):
which he hasn't practiced much with, but he feels bully
and is ready for his grand adventure. Sam and Orion
are among the first to take a stage coach over
the Central Route, surface begins only a week before their departure.
The coach is used by the company are the famous Concord,

(06:32):
which weighed nearly a ton interpulled by six horse teams.
The Concord gives its passengers a relatively smooth ride. Suspension
is provided by two thick leather straps called thoroughbraces, that
run between the coach's axles and suspend the coach's body.

(06:53):
Passengers experience a rolling motion and not the jolting ride
of a wagon as it will run for a team
of horses is ten to thirteen miles. Teams are then
changed at what are called swing stations. Every fourth station
is a home station, where not only are teams changed,

(07:16):
but also drivers. For passengers such as Sam Clemens and
his brother Orion, there is no turning in. The overland
stage runs on and around the clock schedule to make
the trip from Saint Joseph to Sacramento in twenty days,
an average speed of ten miles per hour. Passengers get

(07:37):
out to stretch their legs at each station and to
eat at home stations, but other than that they live
on the stagecoach. Approaching a home station in Wyoming, Sam
begins to hear stories about a division superintendent named Jack Slade.
Sam's told that Slade has killed more than twenty men,

(07:59):
not counting Indians. Slade had one old enemy, Jules Benny,
tied to a post in a station crowd. Slade had
almost died from bullets he suffered when ambushed by Benny,
so he was now going to kill Benny slowly. First,
Slade cut off Benny's ears for souvenirs. Slade allowed Benny

(08:23):
to suffer earless at the post for hours, and then
Slade began taking target practice on his old enemy. One
of Slade's bullets took off one of Benny's fingers, another
round tore flesh off Benny's leg, and a third bullet
ripped flush off Benny's arm. Slade kept firing until Benny

(08:46):
beg to be put out of his misery. Slade then
sent a bullet through Benny's head. Now, who do you
suppose happens to be at the home station? Sam Clemens
is approaching, Yes, other than Jack Slade. When the stage
coach reaches the station, Sam, his brother Ryan, and the

(09:07):
other passengers sit down to eat breakfast with, as Sam says,
a half savage, half civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen,
and station employees. Sam winds up seated right next to
Jack Slade himself. Oh, Sam doesn't know it at first.

(09:30):
Then someone calls Slade by name, and Sam almost collapses, says,
Sam never has youth stared and shivered as I did
when I heard them call him Slade. And you've been
listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of Samuel Clemens

(09:50):
in the West. When we come back more of this
remarkable storytelling here on our American stories, and we continue
here with our American stories. And now let's return to

(10:14):
Roger McGrath and continue with the story of Samuel Clemens
in the Old West. Much Sam's surprise, he finds Slade
gentlemanly and pleasant. Nonetheless, Sam maintains a healthy fear. When
the coffee is nearly gone and Slade is about to
take last cup, Slade notices that Sam's cup is empty.

(10:38):
Slade politely offers to fill Sam's cup, but Sam, though
he wants another cup, quickly and politely declines the offer.
Says Sam. I was afraid he had not killed anybody
that morning and he might be needing diversion. Slade insists
on filling Sam's cup. I thanked him and drank it,

(10:59):
says Sam. But it gave me no comfort, for I
could not feel sure that it would not be sorry
presently that he had given it away and proceed to
kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss. Because
Orion Clemens, as the new Secretary of Nevada Territory, has

(11:19):
to meet with territorial officials of Utah Territory. Sam gets
to spend a couple of days in Salt Lake City.
He's greatly impressed with the Mormon splendid city they had
built from scratch, but not so much with the Book
of Mormon. West of the Great Salt Lake, the stagecoach

(11:39):
rules across a barren level plain before entering Nevada and
coming to the Humboldt River. Here the travelers come upon
a tribe of Shoshonee Indians called ghoshoot Sam's not greatly
impressed with Ghoshoote, saying they are very considerably inferior to
even this spy digger Indians of California, and inferior to

(12:03):
all races of savages on our continent. And those are
the nicest things he says about the ghost Shoot. On
the nineteenth day out from Saint Joseph, Missouri, including the
two day layover in Salt Lake City, Sam Clements finds
himself in the waterless forty mile Desert, which lies between

(12:26):
the Humboldt Sink and the Carson River in Nevada. As
Sam Clements describes it, the coach wheel sunk from six
inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of
the way across. That is to say, we got out
and walked. It was a dreary pull, and a long

(12:47):
and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one
extremity of this desert to the other, the road was
white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have
walked the forty miles and set our feet on a
bone at every step. The desert was one prodigious graveyard,

(13:12):
and the log chains, wagon tires, and rotting wrecks of
vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. On the
afternoon of the twentieth day of the overland journey, the
stage coach rolls into Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory,

(13:33):
earlier known as wash Show. The area is in the
midst of a boom because of two great strikes, one
of Virginia City and the other at Aurora, Nevada Territories
first governor as James Nye. Before his appointment, he was
an attorney in New York and a major general in
the state militia. He was also very active in Republican

(13:56):
politics in New York during the eighteen fifties. He brings
several of his old political allies with him to Nevada
to fill various jobs. He also brings Bridget Murphy, a motherly, talented, energetic,
and fearless proprietor of a boarding house in New York City.
She sets up a boarding house in Carson City, and

(14:17):
most of nye's brigade moves into it, including Sam and
Ryan Clemens. They call the boarding house the Ranch. While
May is trying to place all those at the boarding
house and official jobs, he keeps them busy with various
make work jobs, including surveying a possible railroad route. On

(14:38):
the survey job, they run into tarantulas again and again
and begin to take the big hairy spiders back to
the boarding house, keeping them under glass tumblers in a
large dormitory like bedroom. Sam Clements hates the sight of them.
Late one night, a tremendous wind sends a portion of

(14:59):
a roof slamming into the side of the boarding house.
A shelf with a dozen tumbler covered tarantulas crashes to
the floor. Turned out boys, yells one of the boarders.
The tarantulas are loose. Sam Clements describes the scene in
the dark room. No warning, ever, sounded so dreadful nobody

(15:24):
tried to leave the room lest they might step on
a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a
bed and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence,
a silence of grizzly suspense. It was too waiting, expectancy fear.
It was dark as pitch, and one had to imagine

(15:46):
the spectacle of those scant clad men roosting gingerly on
trunks and beds. Saint Clements doesn't say how long all
the men remain frozen in place, but he has say
different men at different times or certain a tarantula was
crawling over them, and no one was willing to cross

(16:07):
the floor to light a lantern. Suddenly the door to
the room swings open, and there's Missus Murphy with a
lantern in her hand. She shakes her head in disgust,
and fourteen grown men sheepishly climbed down from their perchase
on boxes, trunks, and bids. During the next several months,

(16:30):
Sam prospects for gold in various mining districts and tries
to take a claim on timberlands on the shores of
Lake Tahoe. Early in eighteen sixty two, Sam and several
of his friends set off for Aurora, the newest strike
in Nevada, with a slouch hat on his head and
high top boots on his feet, Wearing a woolen shirt

(16:52):
and trousers, and armed with a cult revolver. Sam looks
the part of a prospector. He doesn't think you will
have occasion to use the gun, but says he carries
it indifference to popular sentiment and an order that I
might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous and a

(17:14):
subject of remark. In Aurora, Sam begins writing professionally under
the non to plume Josh. He writes several pieces for
the Esmeral the Star, one of the town's two daily newspapers.
He also starts sending articles describing events in Aurora to

(17:35):
the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, again as Josh. Sam
does some mining, but most of the time he's found
in one or another of Aurora's many saloons, sipping whiskey
and telling stories. He's a gifted storyteller and always has
an audience. Meanwhile, Count Higbee, Sam's trustee partner, who has

(18:00):
been prospecting from sun up to sundown strikes a vein
of war. That night, the two men talk of the
riches that await them, says Sam Higbye. And I went
to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie
broad awake and think dream scheme. The floorless, tumble down

(18:20):
cabin was a palace. The ragged gray blanket's silk, the
furniture rosewood and mahogany, each new splendor that burst out
of my visions of the future, whirled me bodily over
in bed erjerked me to a sitting pusture, just as
if an electric battery had been applied to me by

(18:42):
a complicated series of events. Clemens and Higbee lose the claim,
and their dreams are becoming millionaires are dashed. And you're
listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of Samuel Clemens
and my goodness. At thirteen years old, he watches in
awe as another young man departs for gold Rush Territory.

(19:03):
And why was he in awe? Well, Clemens said it
best before he had traveled. When we come back more
of this remarkable story. Roger McGrath on Samuel Clemens in
the West, Here, on our American stories and we continue

(19:39):
here with our American stories and Roger McGrath telling the
story of Samuel Clemens and his time spent in the
American West. By the way, if you've read Huck Finn
and loved it, do read roughing it because it is
as good as Ulysses S. Grant's memoir. It's that good.
And if you haven't read Grant's memoir, pick it up.
You won't put it down. You'll than me. Let's continue

(20:02):
with McGrath. After six months in Aurora, Sam gives up
on mining and leads for Virginia City. In September eighteen
sixty two, Sam Clemens walks into the Territorial Enterprise office,
introduces himself to Irishman Dennis McCarthy, the co owner and

(20:23):
editor of the newspaper, and says, my name is Clemens,
and I've come to write for the paper. The Territorial
Enterprise is Nevada's first and most important newspaper. By the
early eighteen sixties, it has supplanted the Sacramento Union as
the miner's bible. The Enterprise wields enormous influence not only

(20:47):
in Virginia City but throughout the West. It's read on
every mining frontier. The paper is full of hard, factual news,
but its reporters are allowed to indulge themselves on paper three.
They then become essayists, poets, philosophers, humorists. They penned stories
about imaginary mining strikes or mining disasters, or about anything

(21:11):
that strikes their fancy. The co owners and editors of
the Territorial Enterprise, Dennis McCarthy and Joe Goodman, tell the
writers they are free to write anything they want on
page three, but they must take personal responsibility for any
explosive reaction by the public. As a result of this policy,

(21:33):
the newspaper becomes a training school for original and versatile writers.
The one who achieves the greatest prominence and success is
Sam Clemens, although it's by his new non the plume
Mark Twain that he gains fame. Sam takes the name
from his River Pilot days, when Dick Hands called out

(21:55):
depth readings. Each Mark is six feet or one fathom.
Twain is two fathoms or twelve feet, the depth needed
for safe passage of the typical steamboat. Sam first attaches
the name to one of his Territorial Enterprise articles in
February eighteen sixty three. Sam's first of many tongue in

(22:19):
cheek pieces with the Territorial Enterprise appears in October eighteen
sixty two. Titled Petrified Man, Sam describes the discovery of
a man's body perfectly petrified, that is put on display
by a local politician in front of a crowd of onlookers.

(22:39):
The petrified man's arms at hands are in a position
suggesting he's thumbing his nose at the world, and one
eye appears to be winking. Newspapers throughout the country get
the story by way of the telegraph and reprinted as
straight news. In reality, none of its true, but it's

(23:01):
Sam's way of poking fun at the politician and his
gullible constituents. More such tall tales come from Sam's pen,
but most of his work consists of solid factual reporting,
especially on the territorial legislature in Carson City. He has
a nose for sniffing out corruption and incompetence and delights

(23:25):
in exposing it in victriolic prose. He makes friends and
he makes enemies. After several challenges to duels, he decides
to take a permanent vacation. He arrives in San Francisco
in May eighteen sixty four and spends money freely, certain
that his mining stock will allow him many months for volity. However,

(23:49):
his stock plunges and he is forced to take a
job with the San Francisco daily newspaper, The Morning Call.
The work is art and mostly routine, and he's not
allowed his flights of fancy. After too many months of
what Sam considers drudgery with The Call, the editor tells

(24:10):
him he has literary talents beyond a simple reporting job
and fires him. Sam now convinces the Territorial Enterprise that
he should be the San Francisco correspondent for the newspaper.
Sam's paint handsomely and again has allowed great latitude. This
also allows him to remain in San Francisco and continue

(24:33):
to be part of a literary circle of talented and
aspiring young writers who include Joaquin Miller and Brett Hart.
Sam also makes trips to California's Motherload Country, staying in
old mining camps with such colorful names as Jackass Hill,
Angels Camp Rough and Ready, Red Dog Gold Hill. In Fiddletown.

(24:59):
He meets many in sourdos from the gold rush of
eighteen forty nine and is regaled with stories from the
first days of the Great Strike. One of these tales
is about a jumping frog. Sam sees the makings of
a great story and takes notes. A few weeks later,
Sam has a story written and sends it to a

(25:21):
publisher in New York. What would become commonly known as
the celebrated Jumping Frog at Calabari's County appears in November
eighteen sixty five in the Saturday Press. It's an instant
sensation and is reprinted in various publications across the United States. Suddenly,

(25:46):
Mark Twain is a household name. With his elevated status,
Sam convinces the Sacramento Union newspaper to send him to
Wayi as a correspondent. He arrives in March eighteen sixty six,
and for the next four months sends stories about the
islands to California. One of his stories captures the attention

(26:09):
of the entire nation. Sam happens to be on the
spot when survivors of a forty three day ordeal at
sea in a lifeboat are brought ashore. They are sailors
from the ship Hornet, which caught fire in the Pacific
and sank. When Sam returns home, he finds himself in

(26:31):
great demand, managed by Dennis McCarthy, his editor from the
Territorial Enterprise. Days Sam begins a lecture tour that takes
him to not only sold out venues in San Francisco
and Sacramento, but to packed venues in one mining camp
after another in the Motherload Country and over the Sierras

(26:53):
to Carson City, Gold Hill, and Virginia City. He travels
hundreds of miles in stage coaches and as greeted as
a celebrity at every stop. In the final days of
his lecture tour, Sam has a practical joke played on
him that he would have enjoyed immensely were he not

(27:13):
the victim of it. After lecturing into a standing room
only crowd in Gold Hill, he and Dennis McCarthy began
the two mile walk back to their lodgings in Virginia City.
About midnight, they reached the desolate hilltop divide between the
two towns. Whine and wait for them are a group

(27:34):
of old friends, masked and disguised. The order stand and
deliver rings out, and a half dozen men with guns
drawn to send on Clemens and McCarthy. There would be
robbers wave their revolvers in Sam's face, says Sam, don't

(27:54):
flourish those pistols so promistuously they might go off by accident.
Sam begins to reach in his pockets for his money,
but it's told to reach for the sky. As soon
as he puts his hands up, he's told to pull
out his money. This goes on for another round. Sam

(28:15):
doesn't realize it's a joke, and, exasperated, asks how he's
supposed to get his money if he's reaching for this guy.
By now, the robbers they're all about to burst out laughing,
so they dig through Sam's pockets while he holds his
hands high, pick up a satchel of silver coins the
proceeds from the night's lecture that McCarthy had been carrying

(28:39):
and hastily departed, telling Clemens and McCarthy to remain in
position for fifteen minutes were their hands high. None the
wiser Sam gets a story in the next day's Territorial
Enterprise about the dastardly robbery by six highwaymen on the divide. Later,

(29:00):
he has all the money returned to him and learns
it was all a practical joke. Sam is steamed and
remains in high dudgeon until he leaves for San Francisco.
A couple of days later, late in eighteen sixty seven,
sam Clemens decides it's time to return to the East.

(29:22):
He soon marries and settles in Connecticut. His days in
the Old West drover, but his time on the frontier
created his writing style and gave him enough material for
a lifetime of stories most Americans today. No, Mark Twain
was once a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, but most

(29:46):
Americans know nothing of his many years of rough in
it on the wild and wooly Frontier. And great job
as always to Greg for producing that piece into Roger
McGrath and again Rogers, the author of Gunfighters, Haluman and Vigilantes,
Violence on the Frontier, a former US Marine, and of

(30:06):
course a history professor at UCLA, one of the best there.
The story of Samuel Clemens in the Old West. Here
on our American Stories