A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mark Twain

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.  

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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 [e-mail]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. Let me take you back
to the eighteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
One evening, while the Civil War rages back east, a
newspaper man in San Francisco is on his way home,
far from the bloodshed tearing the nation asunder. He's peaceably
working to keep readers of the Pacific coast well informed.
But this man is not a man at peace. He
has a hair trigger and a set of brothers who've
trained him for fighting, and a sense of righteousness that

(00:42):
often boils over into quick anger. So this newspaperman, Steve Gillis,
while he's on his way home, he passes a saloon,
one of many, but this saloon, more like a bar,
stands out because he can hear a man shouting and
screaming inside. Steve Gillis stops, and then he steps inside
the saloon to see what's going down. Steve Gillis sees

(01:07):
a man he knows, Big Jim Casey, the proprietor of
the bar. Big Jim is busy beating on a much
smaller man. Now, Steve Gillis has a bad habit of
always standing up for the little guy, and so he
tells Big Jim Casey to stop beating on that fella. Surprisingly,

(01:30):
he does as Steve instructed. Big Jim turns the little
fellow loose. Then he refocuses his remaining anger at Steve Gillis.
He comes at him with big, long strides, and then
he marches right past Steve headed for the door. He
doesn't leave, though, Instead he takes the key locks the

(01:51):
saloon door. Then Big Jim tucks the key away in
one of his pockets. He tells Steve Gillis, now it's
your turn. The newspaper man, Steve Gillis, He's also on
the little side, but he has the beating heart of
a Scottish lion. Steve Gillis takes absolutely no guff. He
stays cool headed. He just calmly grabs a beer pitcher.

(02:14):
That way, when Big Jim rushes him, which he does,
Steve can smash that heavy glass beer pitcher right upside
the big man's head, which is exactly what he does.
Big Jim gets knocked out cold, but not only that,
He's circling the drain pipe of life and Steve is
there still locked inside the bar. By the time the

(02:36):
police arrive, he ends up arresting. Steve is taken to
the San Francisco Police headquarters, charged with AsSalt and battery.
Word quickly spreads. His best friend is awakened with the news.
Half awake, Sam Clemens jumps up and he springs into action.
He marches over to the layer of his enemy, the

(02:56):
chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Once there, Sam
Clemens arranges freedom for his friend. He bails out Steve Gillis.
What that means is he swears out of bond and
promises to pay five hundred dollars if Steve Gillis jumps bail.
That is about five hundred dollars more money than Sam
Clemens has to his name. That means if his buddy

(03:17):
Steve flees, which is more than likely than Sam Clemens
will subsequently be arrested, jailed, and subject to the will
of the horribly violent and vindictive SFPD of the eighteen sixties, who,
by the way, already hates Sam Clemens for what he
writes about the cops in the newspaper. Now, Steve Gillis
has two brothers, Jim and William Gillis. William records the

(03:40):
event of that night in a book that he wrote,
and he called his book Memories of Mark Twain and
Steve Gillis.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
William writes that quote.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
When the two friends left the Hall of Justice, they
walked along in silence for a short distance, with Sam
and the lead shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Sam's aloofness on this occasion was so unusual that Steve
couldn't comprehend it, so at last he hailed them. Hold on, Sam,
don't be in such a hurry. What's the matter with
you anyhow? Sam Clemens's pissed, That's what's the matter with

(04:09):
him anyhow. The truth is he's also scared, terrified actually,
because now the San Francisco Police Department possess a strong
legal reason to come after Sam.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
And that's likely why he shouts back at his friend, Steve.
Haven't you got the brains in that thickhead of yours
to know that a policeman could come here at two
o'clock in the morning since snake me off to the
station house without them knowing that you were in trouble.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Hothead or not, Steve Gillis isn't about to be yelled
at for defending a smaller man from a beating, and
Sam Clemens equally hot headed, continues to yell back at
his best friend. Mind you, this all occurred long before
Sam Clemens became the old cat in the white suit,
that guy you see on the book covers with the
churlish mustache. This was back when Mark Twain was still

(04:55):
known by most folks as Sam Clemens, and Sam Clemens, well,
he was a bit of a badass. In the autumn
of eighteen sixty four, Sam Clemens was twenty nine years
old and a drinker, a rooftop carouser, a loyal friend,
and in this story, a man on the lamb hiding
out from the law. And thanks to Aul, these early

(05:15):
misadventures they transform Sam Clemens into the man we know
as Mark Twain. It's been said that all American literature
starts with Mark Twain. I'm here to tell you all
of American literature actually started with that badass name, Sam Clemens.
Because you'll see there was that bar fight and then
a flight from the law to save his best friend,
but also a magical frog and a hideout in the

(05:38):
Gold Country that all really seal the deal, crime and camaraderie.
That's how Sam Clemens becomes Mark Twain. This is the
story of the birth of a literary legend. This is
a portrait of the artist as a young Mark Twain.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Welcome to very special episodes in iHeart Original podcast. I'm
your host, Zarn Burnett, and this is portrait of the
artist as a young Mark Twain.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
This episode is very exciting for me because I'm a
big Mark Twain fan. Oh really, I mean yeah, anyone
who was like in you know, a little English literature
nerd in like sixth grade, seventh grade, It's like, I
feel like we were reading Mark Twain and I was like, oh,
books can be funny, exactly.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
That's a lot.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
Yes, the picture of Mark Twain in my head is
always going to be the picture on the poster that
was probably in our fifth grade classroom, the old guy,
the wig, the not the wig, the crazy hair, and.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
It might have been a wig you should have been.

Speaker 5 (06:40):
We'll get into that. But getting to get the origin
story here, Sarah, I think you brought up this story
the first time we ever talked about doing the show,
that you wanted to do it in early Mark Twain history.
Have you always been always been drawn to him?

Speaker 4 (06:54):
I'm a huge Mark Twain fan.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
I love a churlish writer who's just kind of cantankerous
and doesn't really like kind of a missingthrope.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
I just love him for that.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
But also you can tell that he really does love humanity,
so it's like it's both ends of the extreme.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
So I just love him for that.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
And then I have on this board of my office
as all these images all over it, and it is
used for just random associations, and two of them happened
to be old Mark Twain, the exact cover you're talking about,
the white suit, the white hair, and next to him
is young Mark Twain. And I just always kept that
as like a how a writer ages or something, and
I don't know. And then I looked up at that
and I was like, I want to know the story
of how these two connect.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
So that's why I pitched.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
It to you.

Speaker 5 (07:29):
That's a pretty good pitch. I think we should get
right back into your story. We'll talk about it on
the other side, all right.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Absolutely, Sam Clemens did not want to go out west,
not at first, but sadly he had to turn his
back on his first love, being a Mississippi river boat pilot.
He gets forced from the river in eighteen sixty one.
All the traffic was shut down on account of the

(07:55):
Civil War. When the Civil War first boomed a bloody life,
Sam Clemens endured a brief two week stint as a
Confederate militiaman. However, having seen no action and deciding he
was on the side of the Union, Sam Clemens went
a wall.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
He traveled north to Keokuk, Iowa, where he met up
with his older brother, Orion and his brother. Orion was
an ardent Lincoln man. Orion had been named the new
Secretary to the Governor of the Territory of Nevada as
a Lincoln appointee. Orion Clemens he labored hard and earnestly
to get Lincoln elected.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
This was his reward, a political appointment.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Out west, far from the horrors of the Civil War,
he offered to take his brother Sam with him, especially
if Sam footed the bills for their cross country travel.
Sam indeed paid for their trip with what money he
had left from his well paid salary as a riverboat pilot.
The two brothers were off to see America via an
overland stagecoach west. It was to be quite the adventure,

(08:54):
crossing the continent all the way out to the Nevada Territory.
In August eighteen sixty one the two brothers arrived in
Carson City, Nevada, the soon to be capital of the territory.
It's an underwhelming sight when compared to the city's back east.
Yet the sagebrush boomtown is filled with life and color

(09:15):
and sensation. Sam Clemens dashes off a letter to his
mother in the rough language of the time, telling her
about the great desert land and all his hopes for
their futures in the West.

Speaker 6 (09:26):
The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, granite, chalk,
plaster of Paris, gypsum, thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, chinamen, spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes,

(09:49):
poets and preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a gentleman
say the other day that it was the damnedest country
under the sun, and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
By eighteen sixty one, when Sam Clemens first arrives, many
many folks have already traveled out West. They showed up
in the decade just prior. When the California gold rush
launched in eighteen forty eight, eighteen forty nine, they came
west to take part in that mad frenzy to pull
what was called the color from the hills. Faster than

(10:20):
you can say jumpin Jack Sprat, hundreds of thousands of people,
all looking to strike it rich quick with a gold strike,
flooded into the soon to be US state. That gold
mining mania lasted for years. Then in eighteen fifty nine,
a massive silver deposit was discovered on the other side
of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near what would later be

(10:41):
called Virginia City, Nevada. The silver deposit was known as
the Comstock Load. When Sam Clemens and his brother Oriyan
pull into the territory, they're too late for the gold rush,
but they're just in time for the silver craze gripping Nevada.
And at first Sam takes no interest in mining for silver,
But soon enough he decides he'd like to try his

(11:02):
hand at silver mining. See what all the fuss is about.
Sam Clemens finds a place himself in the Humboldt mining region.
He helps establish a tiny mining camp with a few
fellow prospectors. Men work the mountains searching for ledges that
bear the signs and stripes of color, which suggests there
might be gold or silver present within the rocky face.

(11:23):
Men buy mining claims, lease others the miners. They make
some fines, but not many. Sometimes out of boredom or
due to bad weather, Sam Clemens writes letters from the
mining camp. He sends them into Virginia City to be
published in the local papers, the Territorial Enterprise and the
esmarel To Star. He signs the letters he sends Josh

(11:46):
as in just joshing or joking around. The letters are
meant to be Little Vignette's humorous accounts of life in
the mining camps, but his letters have this quality to them.
They're more than just funny letters. Eventually those letters will
set sam Clemens on a new path away from the
dust of mining.

Speaker 7 (12:04):
He's doing that only because he's been trying to hit
it big in the mines and that didn't work out.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's Robert Hurst. He's the head of the Mark Twain papers.
You see Berkeley's archive of Twain's published works, letters, sketches stories.

Speaker 7 (12:19):
He's really out of money. He and his brother are
both been trying to kind of, you know, find a
mind that really will make them millionaires, etc. And they
come close, but they don't make it a lot. I
can like a lot of people while he's out there
in the mines, you know, just really digging. I mean
Mark Plan is not a big physical guy, but he was,
you know, he used to pick et cetera shovel.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Sam Clemens gets offered a job at the Territorial Enterprise.
The twenty five dollars per week he's promised sounds far
better than the backbreaking nothing that he's making as a miner.
So in August of eighteen sixty two, Sam Clemens gives
up on working his silver mining claim and then Devata Territory.
He then hEFS his pack up onto his shoulder and

(13:05):
hikes one hundred and thirty miles, crossing desert and mountains
until he reaches the Boomtown, Virginia City. Sam Clemens arrives
in town exhausted, dust covered, and trail sore. Thankfully for
the future of American literature. He's welcomed into Virginia City
by a group of wild eyed journalists who spend their

(13:27):
days running a Boomtown newspaper. It's a respected paper, but
it's also one that's known more for its colorful prose
than for its sober treatment of the news of the day,
sam Clemens finds he's in good company. The men all
become fast friends. The proprietor and chief editor, a man
named Joseph Goodman, offers sam Clemens steady employment. His days

(13:51):
spent as a typesetter back home in Missouri come in handy.
He takes the job, and within a year sam Clemens
emerges as the defecto leader of that rowdy bunch of
mining camp newspapermen. The next year, eighteen sixty three, amid
the the ongoing horrors of the Civil War. Safe there
in the far West, sam Clemens stays busy giving the

(14:13):
news to minors working the comstock load. He's sent to
Carson to report on the territorial capital and its legislature.
Nevada is debating statehood. Now the capital isn't the liveliest beat,
but his editor trust Sam Clemens can make his reporting
come alive. With his unique observations and his rare wit.
He's already in getting known for his voice on the page.

(14:36):
It's at his first professional writing gig there at the
Territorial Enterprise, that young Sam Clemens finds he has a
natural born gift for telling stories, funny ones, so he.

Speaker 7 (14:47):
Should hire as a reporter. And the reporter's job is
visited to go around Virginia City and find out, you know,
brief stories, brief squibs about what's going on. Okay, but
of course, because he's got a sense of humor that
it's so in parallel. All those things are amazingly funny,

(15:09):
and he is eventually given the role of an out
of town writer. Letter writer, send him to Carson where
the legislature is taking place.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Unlike with mining, Sam Clemens is an instant success as
a political reporter.

Speaker 7 (15:26):
Clemens is first of all just extremely outgoing and able
to kind of talk to all kinds of people, and
then he's able to kind of give a report that is, well,
it's not what you and I would think of as news.
It's part story, part fiction, part a joke, a hoax,

(15:48):
all kinds of things like that.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Long before Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolf would invent
gonzo journalism as a blend of fact in fiction, Sam
Clemens is out there pulling that same sort of literary
stunt with his letters from Carson.

Speaker 7 (16:02):
We don't have those letters. They are so early that
no one has only preserved brief descriptions zone. It's just
clear from what we've gathered over the years that Martroy
liked publishing those things that he wrote for himself without
ever really thinking of himself as a professional writer. That

(16:24):
would take a while before he got there.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Now that he has essentially found his tribe and his calling,
Sam Clemens gets to work making a name for himself.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
As a reporter.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
While he's working in Virginia City for the Territorial Enterprise,
he's also sending letters down to a bigger paper in
San Francisco.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Those readers fall.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
In love with his accounts from the rough and tumble
part of the West. Most of his writing in those
days as a Territorial reporter doesn't carry his byline, as
in there's no name given for the author. But then
on February second, eighteen sixty three, Sam Clemens sends in
a letter reporting on the political events going down in Carson,
and this time he signs the letter for publication Mark Twain.

(17:08):
That's the first time he uses that name in print,
February second, eighteen sixty three. Apparently Sam feels it fits
him well, because from that day forward, Sam Clemens uses
the new name in print, and soon enough in life
he becomes Mark Twain.

Speaker 7 (17:25):
It's not like it is today, right, I mean, if
you're a stand up comic today here at the top
of the a list, right, that's not the way it
was in Mark Twain Stein. It really wasn't that way
for the whole of the nineteenth century. It's a low form,
and so a pseudonym is used as a kind of
protection against being too much identified with this not very

(17:48):
respectable journalist and form. It is a mask. I mean,
the humors we know, if we know them at all,
we know them by their pseudonym.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Well, Sam Clemens is working as a reporter at the
Territorial Enterprise, carousing with that wild group of fellow newspapermen.
One of the most famous humorists of the comes to town.
He's there to entertain the denizens of the boomtown for
some of that silver jingling in their pockets. His name
is Artemis Ward, which, well, as you might guess.

Speaker 7 (18:19):
Artemis Ward is asuday, it's not his real name. Charles
Brown is his real name.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Artemis Ward stays in Virginia City for eleven days. In
that time, Mark Twain reviews his show for the enterprise.
He witnesses first hand the comic wit of Artemis Ward
and his stage presence, how he has mastered the effect
of his voice to share truths, not facts. This performance
will stay with Twain, and it also marks the beginning

(18:45):
of their friendship. Artemis Ward was a fellow newspaper guy.
The two men quickly bond as both friends and peers.
Those eleven days are memorable for all involved. Artemis Ward
keeps in touch with Sam Clemens, writing to him from
another mining camp in Nevada. I shall always remember Virginia
as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must,

(19:07):
or rather cannot be, as it were. But not only that,
He also urges his comrade and Ink to recognize the
unique power of his own voice. Artemis Ward writes to
Sam Clemens.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Sir, do not flatter yourself that you are the only
chastely humorist rater onto the Pacific slopes. Goodbye, oh boy,
and God bless you. The matter of which I spoke
to you so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended
to now. That matter was Artemis Ward's offer to get
editors in New York to read and publish Sam Clemens's work. However,

(19:42):
Sam remains doubtful.

Speaker 7 (19:44):
Well, I certainly didn't hurt us say to have someone
like Artemis Ward say you should make yourself known to
the Eastern journals. It was encouraging.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
But first Sam Clemens will have to leave behind those
happy days at the Territorial Enterprise. One day, while his
boss Joseph Goodman is away at the time down in
San Francisco on a holiday and Sam Clemens is acting
as editor in chief, he uses the opportunity to renew

(20:17):
a personal feud.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
James L.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Laird is the fuddy duddy editor of the rival Virginia
city paper, The Daily Union.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
For a number of.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Days, Sam Clemens amuses himself and his newspaper buddies by
sending challenges to Laird, demanding that he partake in a duel.
But then the editor Laird actually does take Sam Clemens
up on his joking offer. A time and a place
are set for the writer's deadly play with firearms. True
to that time in his life. His friend Steve Gillis

(20:48):
is integral to the story that follows. You see via
one well placed little white lie, Steve saves Sam's hide.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
The deed went down like this.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Steve is helping Sam get ready for his future duel
with some target practice. But the thing is Sam Clemens
is a hopeless gunman.

Speaker 8 (21:08):
I began on the rail, I couldn't hit the rail.
Then I tried the barn door, but I couldn't hit
the barn door. There was nobody in danger but stragglers
around on the flanks of that mark. I was thoroughly discouraged,
and I didn't cheer up anyone. I presently heard pistol
shots over the next little ravine. I knew what that was.

(21:29):
That was Laird's gang out practicing him.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Laird and his gang do, indeed hear Sam's gunshots. Naturally,
they come over the rise to see what sort of
shot Sam Clemens is, which, as you know, is the
terrible kind. This is where his buddy Steve Gillis steps
in to save him. A tiny bird catches Steve's eye.
He whips out his pistol and he fires. He dots

(21:52):
that bird with a bullet right in its eye. The
bird's head explodes in a cloud of feathers. What little
remains falls to the earth, cold and dead, barely. A
few moments later, Laird and his boys walk into the scene.

Speaker 8 (22:08):
We ran down to pick up the bird, and then
sure enough mister Lard and his people came over the
ridge and they joined us. When Laard second saw that
bird with his head shot off, he lost color, he faded,
and you could see he was interested. He said who
did that? Before I could answer, Steve spoke it. He said,
quite calmly, a matter of fact, way Clements did it.

(22:30):
The second said, why, that's a wonderful How far off
was that bird? Steve said, oh, not far, about thirty yards.
The second said, well, that's astonishing shooting. How often can
he do that? Steve said, languidly, about four out of five.
I knew that little rascal was lying. I didn't say anything.
Second said, why that's amazing shooting. I suppose he couldn't

(22:53):
hit a church.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
This well timed lie by Steve slyly saves Sam Clemens's life, since,
as he later learns.

Speaker 8 (23:03):
Lard had hit his mark four out of six right along.
If the duel had come off, he would have filled
my skin with so many bullet holes that it wouldn't
have held my principles.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
After he avoids near certain death and a duel, Sam
Clemens decides it's high time for he and Steve de
Van moose from Virginia City, especially after they hear from
the territorial governor. The governor gets word to them it
would be a good idea for us to leave the
territory by the first stage coach.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Now.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
If they missed that early bird stage coach the next day,
Sam Clemens will be the first man prosecuted under the
new state law forbidding dueling, and it carries a sentence
of two years in prison at hard labor.

Speaker 8 (23:46):
I've never had anything to do with duels since I
thoroughly disprove the duels. I consider them unwise, and I
know they are dangerous also sinful. If a man should
challenge me now, I would go to that man, taken
kindly and forgivenly by his hand, lead him to a

(24:07):
quiet retired spot, and kill him.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Sam Clemens and his buddy Steve Gillis read the shifting
winds and recognize it's time they try their hands working elsewhere,
perhaps for one of the big newspapers down in San Francisco.
On May twenty ninth, eighteen sixty four, Sam and Steve
leave Virginia City by stagecoach.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Then they take a riverboat back to the Bay.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Back east, young men like Sam Clemens and Steve Gillis
are dying by the thousands in muddy, bloody battlefields of
the Civil War. Meanwhile, these two young newspaper men, both
from the South, are lucky to be way out west
where they can chase libertine pleasures and literary futures. In
San Francisco. One hundred years before the Summer of Love

(24:57):
put the city by the Bay on the map as
the capital of the hippie counterculture, there was this prior
era of Bohemian rebellion. You see, back in the eighteen sixties,
a free space, sirited era first royaled the status quo
of the city. A perfect example the type of folks
who were drawn to San Francisco at that time was this.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Man named Emperor Norton. That's not his government name. He
was born Joshua Abraham Norton, a commodities dealer when he
first arrives, but after a disastrous loss when he tries
to corner the local rice market, he loses everything, including
his marbles. Free of his sanity, he reinvents himself as
the Emperor of the United States, because why not, and

(25:37):
as Emperor Norton, he becomes this beloved figure in this loose, free,
willing city. Now, in order to time travel back to
those days, we caught up with Emperor Norton's fantastic San
Francisco time machine, and we asked the historical reenactor who
gives guided tours of the city dressed mind you as
Emperor Norton, to take us back to the San Francisco

(25:59):
haunts that Sam Clemens would have known.

Speaker 9 (26:04):
So we are now within the wicked, wicked Barbary Coast.
When the beginning of the tour around Maiden Lane formerly
Morton shut but I said that was like take that,
multiply it by a hundred add in gambling halls, opium dens,
concert saloons, every vice imaginable, some unimagined.

Speaker 7 (26:27):
You would have.

Speaker 9 (26:28):
The Barbary Coast gold miners would come down the Sierra
loaded down with their gold dust and gold ore and
take it down appropriately named gold Street. Here you are
looking at Safrus from the eighteen fifties. Literally, the gold
miner would scoop up that cash and make a b
line to the establishments around here to get all the

(26:48):
things he couldn't get up in the Sierra. Let's just
say wine, women and song. You know, a whole lot
of it. A lot of that activity took place well
applock up there on Pacific Street, which then had the
nickname of Terrific Street because of all the things you
could get there.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
This was the vibe in San Francisco when Sam Clemens
and Steve Gillis arrive in May of eighteen sixty four.
At that time, it's a boisterous city of around one
hundred thousand people, filled with boundless optimism, enthusiasm, and plenty
of unchecked greed, as well as the interlocking labyrinths of

(27:29):
the underworld community. Sam Clemens he plans to strike it
rich now. His new idea is to buy and sell
stocks in the silver and gold mines.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Less work. That way, He finds lodgings for himself at
a swanky joint, the Occidental Hotel.

Speaker 8 (27:45):
I lived at the best hotels, exhibited my clothes in
the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to
seemen raptured with music, which oftener afflicted my agorant ear
than enchanted it.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
As he's infesting the opera, waiting on his imminent wealth
to arrive from his many mining stocks. His fortune never
does arrive, it never materializes. Instead, the value of his
mining stocks come crashing down.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
He loses it all.

Speaker 8 (28:18):
The wreckage was complete. I was an early bigger and
a thorough one.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Sam Clemens turns back to his writing. He cobbles together
an income from a few literary journals and newspapers in
San Francisco. Meanwhile, he also befriends men whose names would
later earn them fame. Back to our tour guide, Emperor Norton.

Speaker 9 (28:39):
What studier of eighteen fifty three to nineteen fifty nine
was this building? The Montgomery Block, affectionately known as the
Monkey Block, It was the first modern office block in
San Francisco. It was home to artists and writers like
Ambrose Spears, Brett Hart, Jack London, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Lola Montez,

(29:03):
and Lotta Crabtree all had offices in the Montgomery Block
at one time or another, as did a relatively obscure
writer by the name of Samuel Clemons. Well, that was
his name when he got By the time he leaves
San Francisco, he's world famous and known as Mark Twain.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Back then, the real Emperor Norton and Sam Clemens were
quite familiar with each other. Some claim the King from
the King and the Duke from Huckleberry Finn is based
on Emperor Norton.

Speaker 7 (29:36):
Our pas costs many times.

Speaker 9 (29:38):
After all, he worked here, I lived there At one point.
His office was right next door to the Eureka Logics
boarding house where I lived.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
He wrote about me on a number of occasions, but.

Speaker 10 (29:54):
Not a very flattering torture in that book says I
was a drunken, a grifter who that Stiggs. We're going
to have very stern words with Clemens the next time
we encounter him.

Speaker 7 (30:08):
I can assure you it's to be very upsetting.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
That claim, by the way, is disputed by the head
of the Mark Twain Archive, Bob Hurst. But we'll let
the Emperor have his story. Why argue?

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Now flatbusted and needing a job and qualified for few,
Sam Clemens finds work at the San Francisco Morning Call,
located there at six hundred and twelve Commercial Street. For
the newspaper, sam Clemens writes about the local events, Penn's
theater reviews. He handles crime reporting. His day starts at
the courthouse middle hours of the day. He spends patting

(30:43):
about the city, sniffing after any story of the day.
At night, he attends the theater. He sees the shows
people are talking about.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
He reviews those.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Then finally he retires to his chambers around eleven pm.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
There he writes.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Into the small hours of the morning. Typically he turns
in sometime around.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Two or three am. At nine am the next day
he's back at the courthouse.

Speaker 8 (31:10):
It was fearful drudgery, soul of drudgery, almost destitute of interest.
It was an awful slavery for a lazy man.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Also, The Morning Call is a inexpensive newspaper, one aimed
at the working class, predominantly Irish population. It's known as
a washerwoman's paper, not the ideal for a young writer
with literary aspirations, mostly though in practical terms it means
the stories he writes have to accord with the cultural
prejudices of his readers. That grates on Sam Clemens until finally,

(31:45):
in October of eighteen sixty four, Sam Clemens makes the
damnable mistake of going against the overt prejudices of his readers.

Speaker 8 (31:54):
One Sunday afternoon, I saw some muddlms chasing and stone
in a chinaman who was heavily laden with the weak
waship Christian customers. And I noticed that a policeman was
observing this performance with us interest nothing more, He did
not intervene. I wrote up the incident with considerable wimpth
and holy indignation, and so I sought for it in

(32:17):
the paper the next morning with eagerness. It wasn't there.
The foreman said mister Barnes had found in a gallery
poof and or its extinction. He said that the Call
gathered its livelihood from the poor and must respect their
prejudices or perish.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
After his editorial against anti Chinese racism gets killed, so
dies his future at the paper. Yet even after he
fires him, his editor still encourages Sam that he's quote
capable of better things in literature.

Speaker 7 (32:48):
He says, Barnes gave him a chance to retire, to resign,
and instead of just firing him, I mean the Call
job was not well suited to him. He was doing
nothing but local items. And this piece that gets turned
down was actually more ambitious than almost anything else that
we know about that he actually published.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Hoping to stave off the dolgrums of poverty, Sam writes
ambitious pieces for Brett Hart's stylish new weekly The Californian
in the eighteen sixties. San Francisco is home to a
rare group of writers. Collectively, they're known as the Bohemians.
This informal group includes Brett Hart, Ambrose Spears, Henry George,
Joaquin Miller, and Mark Twain, although Twain more often he

(33:31):
prefers the company of a separate San Francisco literary society,
the Argonauts, and there are also others, such as the Romancers.
It was a fertile literary grounds in which to grow.
But why San Francisco in the eighteen sixties. What brought
this literary scene together?

Speaker 7 (33:48):
It was a relatively unburned free atmosphere in which you
were allowed to say things, print things which might not
be printed if you were in New York, or in
Washington or even Denver.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Since he's no longer a paid reporter for a daily paper,
money grows tight quickly. Literary aspirations often do leave hungry bellies, underemployed, broke.
Yet again, Sam Clemens falls into what we would think
of as a deep depression. He gives up his room
at the Nice Hotel. He moves into a cheap rooming
house for months. The Blues are his constant companion.

Speaker 7 (34:28):
And Mark Twain. When he comes back from the Angels camp,
he's still unemployed, and he goes from about February eighteen
sixty five until October eighteen sixty five, it's unemployed. Maybe
writing a few things for the Californian, so some income,
but not committed to being a writer. And we know

(34:49):
from a very important letter that he writes in October
eighteen sixty five that a reason for not committing himself
to this profession is that humor was well. As he said,
it's my strongest suit, but there's nothing to be proud of.
It's literature of a low order. I issuees.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
In his book Roughing It, Sam Clemens writes about this
sense of shame at his prospects, in the deep embarrassment
of his poverty, such that it prevents him from seeing
his friends.

Speaker 8 (35:21):
I slunk from backstreet to backstreet. I slunk away from
approaching faces that looks familiar. I slunk to my knees.
And at midnight, after wanderings were but slinking away from
cheerfulness and light, I slunk to my bed. I felt
meaner and lonelier and more despicable than the worms. During

(35:45):
all this time, I had but one piece of money,
a silver ten cent piece. I clung to my dime desperately,
till it was smooth with handling. I held onto it
and would not spend it on any account, lest the
consciousness coming strong upon me I was entirely penniless. Might

(36:07):
suggest suicide.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
And in a marginal note he records in his manuscript
for the book Roughing It, Sam Clemens documents his lowest
moment as he writes of how he decides perhaps he
ought to end it all.

Speaker 8 (36:21):
I put the pistol to my head, and I wasn't
man enough to pull the trigger. Many times I've been
sorry I did not succeed, but I was never ashamed
of han't tried.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Despite this brush with self annihilation, his humor and sarcasm
remain intact. Sam later jokes about thoughts of self harm
the same way he'd joke about missing out on a
failing mining stock. Luckily for the floundering writer. About this
same time, an old friend comes back into his life.

Speaker 7 (36:54):
Joe Goodman could see what Clemens was all about. He
knew this was a genius.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Joe was still at the Enterprise, so he rehires Sam
Clemens as a San Francisco correspondent. In daily Letters from
the Heart of the City, you see they flip it
around now he writes about the city for the folks
in Gold Country.

Speaker 7 (37:14):
These are two thousand words and they are a gold
mine of early Mark Twain's writing. I mean he is
able to do things in these letters which show you
where he's going to go.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Writing in the Enterprise, Sam Clemens often pens critiques of
the San Francisco Police that captured the attention of Police
Chief Martin J.

Speaker 8 (37:36):
Burke.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
You have to understand at the time, the police in
San Francisco were not normal cops. The early Gold Rush
era San Francisco Police Department had been taken over by
a group called the Committee of Vigilance, and Sam Clemens
was quick to criticize these former self appointed vigilantes turn
police and their ideas of law and order through applied

(37:58):
violence and by running the vice operations themselves. The festering
tensions between sam Clemens and the San Francisco Police Department
were bound to come to a head just as sure
as the sun will come up tomorrow. The bubble finally
bursts for Sam when Steve Gillis gets in that bar
fight with Big Jim Casey.

Speaker 7 (38:18):
Well, oh, first of all, let's realize that what would
happen if he had stayed was that he'ld be imprisoned
because he couldn't meet the bail. I mean, what he
had done was to basically bail Steve out with the
little money that he had, and if you stuck around,
he would be hit up for the rest of that
which he didn't have.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
And add to that, Sam Clemens is keenly aware of
the fact the chief of Police can now use this
opportunity to get his personal revenge against the young newspaper man,
the one who's printed all those disparaging opinions about his
police force.

Speaker 7 (38:52):
He's been sitting on their toes for a couple of
months in the Enterprise, so you ain't got a lot
of friends there.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
He knows that Sam Clemens knows for certain that if
Steve Gillis jumps bail and makes a run for it,
which is likely, he'll have to pay the full bay amount,
which he does not have.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
If he fails to pay up the San Francisco Police Department,
we'll get their bloody revenge on Sam Clements. They will
beat some respect into him.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Now. Aside from that bodily pressure, Bob Hurst believes Sam
Clemens also felt a more personal motivation to flee San Francisco.

Speaker 7 (39:26):
My own view is that other things were really motivating
him to get out of town. And part of it
is just not knowing what he's going to do with
his own life. I mean, not knowing what kind of job,
what kind of career, what kind of profession he's going
to pursue. It's clear, as he says, humor is my
strongest suit. It's just nothing to be proud of.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
And so when Steve suggests they make a run for it,
Sam Clemens listens to his friend say.

Speaker 11 (39:55):
Sam says, Steve, if I have to go back to
Virginia City, and I guess I'd better you go up
to my two brothers on Jackass Hill and you stay
with them until this thing blows over. They will be
delighted to have you with him. There will be a
splendid vacation and adding for you, and you will have
the time of your life. It won't interfere in your
engagements with the papers for which you are writing here,

(40:16):
and you will be able to pick up a lot
of things that will help you as a writer.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
On the lamb, sam Clemens can stay safe and free
from the violence of the SFPD, and it also gives
this rootless, underemployed young man with few prospects the time
he needs to decide what he should and what he
wants to do next. Should he listen to the advice
of his friend Artemis Warden, write for the big publishers
back east, or continue on as he would want to

(40:43):
as a newspaper man on the Pacific coast. All of
his answers would come to him at a place called
Jackass Hill. That's where Sam Clemens will finally strike it rich.
Only it isn't the gold he's always imagined. Rather, this
gold will arrive in the form of a magical frog.

(41:05):
In the first days of December eighteen sixty four, Sam
Clemens flees San Francisco like a thief. In the night,
he sneaks out of town on a steamship. He's again
back on a riverboat, this time headed east. The next day,
Sam Clemens takes the morning stagecoach into the Gold Country
to a town called Sonora. After long, dusty travel, he

(41:27):
finally arrives on December fourth. He makes his way to
the Gillis Cabin at the summit of Jackass Hill. The
nearest town is a small mining camp called Tuttletown, fifteen
hundred feet above sea level in the foothills of the Sierras. Now,
when Sam Clemens arrives, most of the gold is already gone.
The big gold strikes, the Bonanzas mother loads, they're all

(41:50):
things of the past. However, that doesn't stop Sam Clemens
from jumping into gold mining.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Since the big gold.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Deposits are all mined out, that leaves only small pockets
of gold which are picked over by what's called pocket miners.
That's what the brother of Steve Gillis does.

Speaker 7 (42:07):
It's a very tenuous kind of existence as not as
if you're going to make it big in doing this,
and that's pretty clear that the Gillises and others who
were there with him just liked the freedom from civilized
city life. They liked being out in the country often
where is a good way to think of it, I think,
And because there were skilled at this, they could in

(42:30):
fact easily support themselves.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Living in the Gillis cabin with Sam or Steve Gillis's brothers,
Jim and William Gillis, and their mining partner Dick Stoker.
The Gillis Cabin is bitterly cold in winter, has no
indoor plumbing.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Not even an outhouse.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
The men they all sleep in one big room on
wooden planks.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
They cover themselves in.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Old, damp, mildewed, flea infested blankets. Add to this mix
that Dick Stoker brought with him and a menagerie of
animals he has with him in the cabin, a pig,
a jay, a skunk, and a cat. And now also
add in the dog that Jim Gillis takes with him

(43:16):
everywhere he goes. You can practically smell this cabin. The
place was ripe with life, and not nearly enough room
to house at all. Since it's deep in the winter.
When sam Clemens arrives, the men often spend a week
or more cooped up together, snowbounds stuck inside. For sam Clemens,

(43:37):
though life on the lamb from the law, life at
the Gillis Cabin, it feels like simple, rustic heaven, he
writes about it in his autobiography.

Speaker 6 (43:46):
It was the most singular and the most touching and
melancholy exile that fancy can imagine we lived in a
small cabin on a verdant hillside, and then we're not
file of the cabins in view over the wide expanse
of hill and forest.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Sam Clemens he's up there on Jackass Hill for a
total of eighty eight days. For that nearly three months stretch,
living life on the lamb, he spends a lot of
time writing in his journals instead of doing any serious mining.
He fills out four notebooks while he's in Gold Country.
Over his time there at the Gillis Cabin. Enraptured by

(44:20):
this surrounding beauty and all the unfettered simplicity of nature,
sam Clemens just thinks, and he breathes, and he lets
life happen. At this point, he knows he wants to write,
but he hates that the writing he's best at is humor,
as Bob Hurst put it, quote that lowest form of writing.

(44:41):
And because of this, sam Clemens struggles with ideas for
his future. Meanwhile, up there in Gold Country, sam Clemens
also finds a couple of healthy distractions, namely a pair
of sisters. He relaxes with them for afternoon picnics, He
talks with them on long walks, and he spends many
hours in shady glens with them and Jim Gillis. They're

(45:05):
called the Danielle Sisters, Nellie and Molly. In her book
The Saga of Old tuolemy Edna Buckby describes the sisters
in a way that they come to life with the
broad brush that she paints them with.

Speaker 7 (45:16):
They boasted of having the slimmest wastes, the largest bustles.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
And the stiffest starched petticoats in the entire locality.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Sam Clemens will also later write about the sisters in
his book The Innocence Adrift.

Speaker 8 (45:31):
They were sisters seventeen eighteen years old, respectively, beautiful creatures,
clean minded, good hearted, well meaning, favorites with old and young.
Yet they could outswear satan. It was the common speech
of the remote, thinly celled region. They had come by
it naturally, and if there was any harm in it,

(45:53):
they were not aware of it.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Despite this time spent squiring the Danielle's sisters around Gold
Country hills, Sam quickly grows to dislike life as a
pocket miner, enduring the poor weather, bad food, and worst coffee. Eventually,
he and Jim Gillis relocate to better accommodations in a
place called Angels Camp. He and Jim Gillis get rooms
at the Angel's Hotel. There they spend considerable time together

(46:19):
at the hotel's saloon. It's the only real hotel in
the camp. Thus it's the camp's main hangout spot. It's
where everyone stays dry and swaps stories by the wood stove.
So there he is in Angels Camp, hanging around a
tavern in this hotel, swapping tall tales and short stories
passed around a wood stove, and Sam Clemens meets an
old river boat pilot. The two men get to talking.

(46:43):
The fellow riverboat pilot tells him a story about a
peculiar jumping frog. It isn't the story per se, but
rather the way the man tells it. His funny little
yarn stays with Sam Clemens. He jots down the important
details in one of his notebooks. He records in his
notes just a scant amount of words. Coleman with his

(47:04):
jumpin frog, a stranger of fifty dollars. Stranger had no frog,
and see got him one. In the meantime, the stranger
filled cs frog full of shot and he couldn't jump.
The stranger's frog won. Sam Clemens lets the story ruminate
and percolate inside him for a while. Meanwhile, something in

(47:25):
him also signals.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
It's time to leave Gold Country return to life in
San Francisco. One long and dusty stagecoach ride, later followed
by a slow riverboat trip, he's back home. When he
arrives back in the city, Sam Clemens finds the heat
was off, the cops aren't looking for him. Seems all
has been forgotten or swept away by the steady passage

(47:47):
of time and crime in the city. However, returning home,
Sam receives some bad news. He's missed important mail. It's
from his old friend Artemis Ward, as Sam later records
in his.

Speaker 6 (47:58):
Notebook, February twenty sixth Home again, Home Again. At the
Occidental Hotel, San Francisco, find letters from Artemis asking me
to write a sketch for his new book of Nevada
Territory Travels, which is soon to come out.

Speaker 7 (48:12):
Too late.

Speaker 6 (48:14):
Oh to have gotten the letters three months ago. They're
dated in early November.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Away from the city, He's missed his big chance, or
so he thinks. Regardless, Sam Clemens starts to work on
stories he believes might interest Artemis ward stories he heard
up in Angels Camp, stories told at the Gillis Cabin
on Jackass Hill. But Sam Clemens.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Can't get any of these stories to work, not the
way he wants. He struggles with writer's block, he falls
into another of his blue spells. Then one afternoon he
has a dream about the frog, the frog from the
jumping contest story he heard back in Angels Camp from
the Riverboat Pilot. The frog comes to him in his dream,

(48:55):
and this jumping frog whispers that Sam should write his story,
as Sam records it in a letter.

Speaker 6 (49:03):
One dismal afternoon, as I lay on my hotel bed,
determined to inform Ourtemis, I had nothing appropriate for his collections,
a still small voice began to make itself heard.

Speaker 7 (49:14):
Try me, Try me.

Speaker 6 (49:16):
It was the poor little jumping frog. Because of the
insistence of its pleading, and for want of a better subject,
I immediately got up and wrote out the tale. If
it hadn't been for that little fellow's apparition in this
strange fashion, I would have never written about him.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Sam Clemens doesn't question the dream's logic, nor the dictates
of the frog. Instead, he writes, and he writes some more,
and he writes some more after that, until he has
the story down on paper. What results is dubbed Jim
Smiley and His Jumping Frog, but the story will soon

(49:52):
be retitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. In
October of eighteen sixty five, with the Civil War now
over and the nation tending to its wounds as the
people stitched the country together, Sam Clemens sends his jumping
frog story back east. He sends it to George W. Carlton,

(50:14):
publisher for Artemis Ward. He sends it for a possible
inclusion in the upcoming book Artemis Ward His Travels, but
it's too late to include his jumping frog story. Instead,
the publisher Carlton forwards the story to the editor of
the Saturday Press. There the story is published, and it
is an instant's success, a comic delight for a nation

(50:36):
that's in the mood for a good old fashioned laugh.
As Bob Hurst reads it, you can hear that voice
of the narrator indeed come alive.

Speaker 7 (50:46):
Well. This year Smiley had rat Terrius and Chickencox and
Tom Kats and all them kind of things till you
couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to
bid on, but he'd match you. He catched a frog
one day and took him home and said he calculated
to educated. And so we never done nothing for three months.
Was set in his backyard and learn that frog to jump.

(51:07):
And you bet you he did learn him. He'd give
him a little hunch behind. The next minute, you see
that frog whirling in the air like a donut. See
him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he
got a good start and come down flat footed and
all right like a cat. He got him up so
in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in
practice so constant that he'd dale a fly every time

(51:30):
as far as he could see him. Smiley said all
a frog wanted was education, and he could do most anything.
And I believe him.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
The jumping frog story gets reprinted all around the country
in newspaper after newspaper. Then it's reprinted all around the world.
It's a global phenomenon. One of the first. The jumping
frog story is also the beginning of Mark Twain's literary fame.

Speaker 7 (51:57):
I think the basic plot, if you will is minimal.
It is, in fact, not really why we enjoy the
Jumping Frog story.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Bob Hurst also speaks to how how this narrator captivates readers.

Speaker 7 (52:09):
Still, the substance of what he's saying isn't what's important.
It's how he's saying it, and that he's loquacious. He's
talking and he's not hesitating about how to describe this,
and you have an absolutely vivid picture of what these
animals were like. Now he's invested in them all kinds

(52:29):
of I guess projection, right, but I think that is
really what he's after here. It's the ingenuousness of the speech.
And now whatether that means he wants to elevate uneducated
characters above the rest of us. I wouldn't take it
that way. It's more that in their unlearnedness is a

(52:51):
kind of freshness.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
And that's what sets Mark Twain's early writing apart. It's
what gives people of America a sense of this country's
own unique voice. With that noted freshness of perspective.

Speaker 7 (53:04):
We enjoy the Jumping fris story because Mark Twain is
able to describe this guy's speech, the way he speaks
and what he says when he's trying to tell his story.
But the point is, the pleasure of this story isn't
in what happens. It isn't in the plot. It's in
the way Jim speaks. He is speaking in a way

(53:27):
which is deliberately not sophisticated, but is wonderfully evocative and
makes you see what's going on and understand what this
guy is all about in a way that no other
kind of formal dialect w a while. It's really an
amazing discovery.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
In the Jumping Frog story, Sam Clemens finally discovers gold
his comic voice. There's an immediacy to it, even though
it's loquacious and talks around the situation.

Speaker 7 (53:58):
That's, of course, the great innovation that he's going to
make is to tell an entire novel, entire story in
someone's voice. I mean, that's what Hemingway and all the
others are coming out. They see that as a liberation.
You don't have to be Henry James, you don't have
to have this very proper Bostonian or whatever English voice

(54:22):
telling the story. You can tell the story through a character.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
The simple but consequential innovation is not an easy thing.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
That he's accomplished and.

Speaker 7 (54:31):
Not a simple thing at all. And I think really
that's what strikes Hemingway and everyone else. You'd be hard
to find a twentieth century writer, American writer who wouldn't
say Mark Twain started. And it's such a radical idea that,
I mean, you don't find it in short stories before this,
you don't find it in the literature before Mark Twin

(54:53):
did it. I think you could doubt that if it
were just English professors saying it. But it isn't just
English professor. It's basically writers saying it, and they should know.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Thanks to that magical frog, Sam Clemens breaks free from
all convention, all fear. He's able to hear and authentically
speak in the voice of the West. What results, although
wholly constructed, feels uniquely American. For the first time, America
can hear itself speak in the voice of Sam Clemens

(55:23):
and the people they laugh in response. The huge reception
to the Jumping Frog Story comes as a terrible shock
to one man, Sam Clemens. He feels his frog story
isn't literature. If anything, it was a lark, something he's
sent off to his friend for a book he cannot understand.
Why the whole world loves his dumb little frog story

(55:45):
so much. In a letter to his mother and sister
dated January twentieth, eighteen sixty six, Sam writes.

Speaker 6 (55:53):
To think that after writing many an article, a man
might be excused for thinking we're tolerably good. Those New
York people should single out of Villain's backwoods sketch to
compliment me on Jim Smiley and is jumping from a
squip which never would have been written but to please
Artemis Ward, and then it reached New York too late
to appear in his book.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
All things being equal, Sam Clemens would have rather been
a pilot on the Mississippi River. But he gets over
his nostalgia and his writer's block, and he will go
on to write the novels and books that will launch
American literature.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
The author H. L.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Mankin once wrote that quote Twain was the first American
author of world rank to write a genuinely colloquial and
native American. More famously, Ernest Hemingway said, more to the point,
all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There

(56:49):
was nothing before and there's been nothing as good since now.
Even though Sam Clemens doesn't necessarily like the jumping frog Storry,
his resulting fame sends him to Hawaii, which results in
his book Innocents Abroad. This is the book that launches
his career as a public speaker and as a personality.
All of it begins with those eighty eight days on

(57:10):
Jackass Hill. On January twenty sixth, eighteen seventy, Sam Clemens
writes this letter to his old friend, the pocket miner
Jim Gillis, brother of Steve. He reminisces about their time
spent on Jackass Hill and how those days forever changed
the course of his life and his literary path.

Speaker 8 (57:30):
It makes my heart ache yet to call to mind
some of those days. Yet it shouldn't, for the right depths,
of their poverty and their pocket minding bag of bondage
lay the germ of my coming good fortune. You remember
that one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal
sojourn in the rain and mud of angels Camp. I

(57:52):
mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and
heard that chap tell about the frog and how they
filled them with shot and you remember how we quoted
from that yarn and laughed over it. I jotted down
the story in my notebook that day and would have
been glad to get down our fifteen dollars for it.
I was just that blind. But then we were so
hard up. I published that story, and I became widely

(58:15):
known in America, India, China, England, and the reputation for
me has paid me thousands and thousands of dollars since.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
And that was another very special episode. Great jobs, Aaron.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
I always liked the idea that sometimes crime can save culture.
I mean, I just think that that tickles me. I
don't know why, but I love crime as we all know.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
You love crime as we all know.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Yeah, exactly what did you guys think about the San
Francisco history of it all? Finding out that San Francisco
has always been this libertine, free wheeling kind of culture,
I mean, gave me hope that San Francisco will return
the one that we knew then.

Speaker 5 (58:59):
Yeah, A lot of the stuff you get into makes
me feel like a kind of sketch comedy troops like
competing coming up up at the same time.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Totally.

Speaker 5 (59:08):
When we get into the casting later, I think that
that informed all my thoughts on who should play all
these people.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Oh that's very exciting in terms of casting, Zarn, where
are you at? Because I feel like you've probably given
this a lot of thought.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
I have, and I had only a hard time with
one role to cast, and that was, of course, Mark Twain.
I was like, who can play Mark Twain? How Holbrook
killed the part when he played Mark Twain, so it's
like who and he's gone now, so who? And then
I realized Tom Hanks doing his best hel Hoolebrook, Right,
you can see it for young Sam Clemens. I was
thinking Casey Affleck, he just seems to have the right

(59:43):
vibe for the Gillis brothers Jim Gillis, William Gillis and
Steve Gillis. I'm like, okay, where we get three brothers.
Came to me the Jonas brothers. Give him an acting part.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
I mean, that's that's interesting because you had Casey Affleck
right there. You're not doing that for the brothers, You're
saving him.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Yeah, right, it's right there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
I was like, I don't think Ben Affleck can play
older Mark Twain. I don't think he can be one
of the gillises he'll be we You're like, why is
he fighting his brother or should they be together? You know,
I don't know, so I thought, you know, go Jonas brothers.
Give them their first chance on screen, you know, really
see what they can do.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
I'm going to be dating myself. They used to have
a Disney Channel television show, so they haven't been on screen.
It was called Jonas.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Yeah, the big screen though, have we? They then on
the big screen?

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Well, if you think of camp Rock as a cinematic experience, which.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Yes, yeah I did look past that. Oh my god,
I'm so embarrassed. So see the Danielle sisters. I was
thinking the Sydney Sweeney and Anna Taylor Joy For some reason,
I thought they had, like, you know, pre iPhone faces
enough to really nail that role.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
For Also for the Sheriff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Of San Francisco, same thing, pre iPhone face requirement.

Speaker 4 (01:00:51):
Jesse Plemmons, love.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Jesse Plemmons for this. Put him in a period piece
and I'm thrilled, Right, I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
Just got period piece face. And then Big Jim Casey.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
The proprietor of the bar, I wanted to bring back
a WWE wrestler. You could pick your favorite I'm going
with the big show. A seven foot tall, fifty year
old man is perfect for this role.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
And then last up, Emperor Norton. I think I've cast
him before. Bet.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
I love the guy Sam Rockwell. He just has the
chaotic energy he can pull this off.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
So there you go. There's my casting. What do y'all think.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Sam Rockwell as Ember Norton is kind of inspired.

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
I always think of him as Zafad Biebelbrockx and the
Hitchhiger's Guide of the Galaxy, and that let me see
how far that guy's willing to go.

Speaker 5 (01:01:34):
So tell us about your interview with the Emperor. Is
he someone that you interact with usually? And when you're
in San Francisco?

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
I do look for him. Anytime I'm in that area
of town, I look to see because he does. At
eleven o'clock he'll be out there in the Union Square
getting ready to start his tourist Then I know now
and know which way he goes, So if I'm over
there around noon, I'm looking for him. The guy is
super fun. I recommend it to anybody who goes to
San Francisco. It's one of the coolest guided tours. I've
ever done. I've only done like three in my life,

(01:02:02):
so that's kind of a low bar, but still very good.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
All right, next time I'm in San Francisco.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
The list, Oh nicee, I'll let him know.

Speaker 5 (01:02:09):
Do you think historical characters should be almost like AI
just in if you want to interact with them, they
should be there and willing to tell that story. He
was great, great, great decision to go talk to him
and get him to fill in some of the details.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah, he was just a really fun guy and he
seemed to have the spirit. He embodied the spirit of
the story and also reminding me never let money get
in the way of a good time, so if you
have it, you don't have it, never letting get in
the way.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
So there you go.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):
Well, he was my very special character, so he wins
this segment for me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
I'm a big fan of the Emperor myself. I have
to agree with Jason there. He's a character I've talked
about on my podcast Noble Blood. He also I don't
know if any of you have read Neil Gaman Sandman,
but he's a character in that. Oh no, yeah, it's
just he's great. So if anyone also hasn't read Sandman.
Just go read all of it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:59):
Okay, that's on my list. Now I'm gonna go do it.

Speaker 9 (01:03:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Did you guys notice how Mark Twain's friends in this
story were constantly giving them him the perspective, like we
had Artemis Ward who pulls him off his path? Right,
So I was thinking, that's a lesson I think people
should take away from this is be thankful when your
friends see something about you that you don't.

Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
A lot of good lessons in this one. I love
your line about he finally discovers gold and it's not gold.
I mean, he's getting into the gold rush. It would
be like getting into NFTs today. This is where I'm
gonna make my mark here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
That is a great lesson.

Speaker 7 (01:03:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:36):
I love seeing him at that period where oh there's
something that people like that I do and I'm a
little bit ashamed of what that is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
That tension I relate.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
I get it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
We're all better for it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Oh totally.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Also, if anytime you have a magical animal appear to
you in a dream, you've got to listen to the
magic animal. I mean that's just the rule and my
other good lesson.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Yeah, these are the lessons listen to your friends and
listen to Magic Animals. This is a very very special
episode with all the wisdom we're dolling out.

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
Very special episodes is made by some very special people.
This show was hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Zaren Burnett.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Josh Fisher and Jonathan Washington. Mixing and mastering by Beheth Frasier.
Original music by Elise McCoy. Our story editor is Barisa Brown.

(01:04:29):
Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson. Show logo by
Lucy Quintinia. We have some special guests and voice actors
to thank today. Mark Twain was portrayed by Frank Nemick,
Sam Clemens by Zack Nemeck, Edna Buckbee by Elizabeth Dutton,
William Gillis by Jonathan Washington. As I want to thank
Bob Hirsch from the Mark Twain Archive at UC Berkeley

(01:04:51):
and Joseph Amster, Emperor Norton himself from the Emperor Norton's
Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine. I am your executive producer.
If you'd like to email the show. You can reach
us at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. Very
Special Episodes is a production. Buy her Podcasts M