Twain spotting The famed author spent only a little time in Sacramento, but we still say he’s ours Origin Alison apRoberts Bee Staff Writer Publication Date 5/21/2005 Page E1 Section SCENE Mark Twain has spent a lot more time being hailed as a local celebrity in these parts than he actually ever spent here. He spent just a few soggy months near Angels Camp during the rainy winter of 1865 and heard a tall tale about an amphibian that made for a catchy story, one that helped put Twain on the literary map in perpetuity. That brief sojourn turned out to have local legs, too, and lives on at this weekend's Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee. Twain spent even less time in Sacramento, as far as we know, even though he did work here - sort of. He wrote 25 columns for the Sacramento Daily Union in 1866, but he did so at a distance as a correspondent traveling in the Hawaiian Islands for four months. "I think he was probably here quite a few times, but I don't think he stayed here very much," says James Henley, Sacramento historian. "We should enjoy the fact that he was a writer and had a column in a local newspaper. To try and extend it to him having some presence in Sacramento - that's a little bit of an overstretch." The briefness of Twain's Union connection didn't stop the newspaper from advertising it forevermore - and from installing a larger-than-life bust of the august writer that sat in its lobby for many decades, until the paper closed down in the mid-'90s. Evidence of other appearances here is sketchy at best. We know that he wrote a "Letter From Sacramento" in February 1866 that was published in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. We also know he delivered a lecture here in 1868. "We don't really have much documentation of his time in Sacramento," says Michael Frank, who ought to know, as one of the associate editors of the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California, Berkeley. The project houses the largest collection of Twain material in the world, including dozens of notebooks, thousands of letters and hundreds of manuscripts. But lack of Sacramento sightings hasn't stopped us from calling him our own. And we have lots of company in stretching our connection to the man who was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 and grew up to be a legend under the pen name of Mark Twain. "All over the country there are places where he was far less connected that claim him," says Victor Fischer, another associate editor of the Mark Twain Project. "Everybody does want to claim him." Among the places that brag of Twain as a local hero are the writer's childhood hometown of Hannibal, Mo., his longtime adult hometown of Hartford, Conn., and his first Western hometown, Virginia City in Nevada. In Virginia City, it seems countless enterprises bear his name, including the Mark Twain Saloon, Mark Twain's Books, Langhorne's Goods ("Don't miss the fired terra cotta bust of Mark Twain" reads a Web site blurb) and the Mark Twain Museum. But then Twain is and was a big deal. "He was at some point in his life one of the most famous men in the world," Frank says. As much as his time in the West was relatively brief - just six years, from 1861 to 1867 - it was then that his career path was laid. "(The West) is where he finally discovered that he was a writer," Fischer says. Sacramento historian Henley says it's all right if we take a little local pride for Twain's success. "I think Sacramento really contributed to Mark Twain," he says. "We financed him for a while, and he was grateful." Twain's work in Hawaii for the Union gave him the kind of exotic material that could draw a crowd and launched a new career for him as a lecturer. We might as well take credit. Remembering Twain as a Sacramento figure is also a way, perhaps, of tapping into a vibrant frontier past, one that is arguably a bit more entertaining to contemplate than Sacramento's destiny as a burg of state bureaucracy. Henley describes the booming community Twain encountered here: The streets were being raised to deal with periodic flooding, a state Capitol was being built, river transportation was flowing, and construction of the transcontinental railroad was chugging along. "It was a very, very exciting time in Sacramento. Sacramento had come off the boom of the Gold Rush and it was seeking an identity," Henley says. The city was known mostly as a raucous place. "Sacramento was famous for its saloons from the Gold Rush and as a sort of Sin City," Henley says. "Gambling, saloons and prostitution flourished." Maybe that wild West atmosphere was part of why Twain welcomed being associated with the city and its then-prominent newspaper. Twain's Sacramento connection was in full view in his lecture in San Francisco in 1866, when he was billed as "Honolulu correspondent of the Sacramento Union." Amy Whitlatch, director of the Old Sacramento Living History Program, could use more of Twain's presence in town today. "I have tried to get someone to do Mark Twain, and I don't have one," Whitlatch says of her program, for which people put on period costumes and go about impersonating historic figures. People are often hesitant to portray the truly famous, she says, because they risk running into tourists who know more about their characters than they do, which could make them feel sillier than they already should for being dressed up funny. For such people, playing a gunfighter might be a safer course (and Whitlatch can use more of those, too). What would Mark Twain have thought of our vanity in claiming him as our own? Looking at his career and pleasure in taking the stage, one can imagine he would have approved. As a master of fiction, he was not one to object to a little departure from the truth, after all. And when it came to his own reputation, he might well have preferred a little fabrication. "I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me," he reportedly said in a speech in 1879. "But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage." Sounds like homespun wisdom from a hometown hero. TWAIN TRACKS In the footsteps of the man otherwise known as Samuel Langhorne Clemens: * Check out the Daily Union Building in Old Sacramento, 117 J St. This is where Twain struck his deal to write from Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands) for the Sacramento Union. A tip of the hat to his ghost: the building's Mark Twain Lounge downstairs within the Cafe New Orleans. * Saunter along Second Street, where there is a vacant lot between J and K streets. Here is where the Orleans Hotel stood when Twain stayed in it - in Room 121- in February 1866. * Imagine the crowd heading toward the Metropolitan Theater to hear Mark Twain lecture in April 1868. An account in the Sacramento Union of his appearance suggested he was never at a loss for words: "His use of adjectives is something marvelous, especially in piling up invective." The theater is long gone, its spot in the shadow of I-5 alongside Old Sacramento. * Meet Twain's likeness face to face. A bust of the writer that used to sit in the lobby of the Sacramento Union is on display in a gallery on the second floor of the Shields Library of the University of California, Davis. For information: www.lib.ucdavis.edu. If you're in the mood for a drive, head out of town to some of these spots where Twain is known to have stopped: * Lake Tahoe: It was called Lake Bigler back when Twain camped here in 1861, and wrote of his "sleep out of doors so refreshing that it would have restored an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor." * The Nevada Theatre in Nevada City. Mark Twain gave a lecture here. The theater opened in 1865. Other entertainers here included Lotta Crabtree. 401 Broad St., Nevada City. (530) 265-6161. * The Holbrooke Hotel opened in 1851 in Grass Valley. Twain was one of its illustrious guests, including Lola Montez and several U.S. presidents. The writer would approve of the establishment's lively bar. 212 West Main St., Grass Valley. (800) 933-7077. * Jackass Hill Cabin: In the spot where Twain stayed for a few months in the winter of 1865. It was here that Twain first heard the tale that became the basis of the famous story of the jumping frog, published in 1865. About 80 miles from Sacramento. Look for a marker on Highway 49 south of Angels Camp and north of Sonora to direct you up Jackass Hill Road on the eastern side of the highway to a small county park. In the park stands a replica of a 1920s cabin that was itself built as a replica of the cabin in which Twain stayed. The latest building was a project of the Sonora Sunrise Rotary, completed earlier this year. SACRAMENTO'S SALOONS AND STREETS Excerpts from Mark Twain's "Letter From Sacramento" published in February 1866 in the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, Nev. "I know I am departing from usage in calling Sacramento the City of Saloons instead of the City of the Plains, but I have my justification - I have not found any plains, here, yet, but I have been in most of the saloons, and there are a good many of them. You can shut your eyes and march in to the first door you come to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it." Twain also describes the peculiar effects of raising the level of the city to avoid flooding. "The houses in the principal thoroughfares here are set down about eight feet below the street level. This system has its advantages. First - It is unique. Secondly - It secures to the citizen a firm, dry street in high water, whereon to run his errands and do her shopping and thus does away with the expensive and perilous canoe. Thirdly - It makes the first floors shady, very shady, and this is a great thing in a warm climate. Fourthly - It enables the inquiring stranger to rest his elbows on the second story window sill and look in and criticize the bedroom arrangements of the citizens. Fifthly - It benefits the plebeian second floor boarders at the expense of the bloated aristocracy of the first - that is to say, it brings the plebeians down to the first floor and degrades the aristocrats to the cellar. Lastly - Some persons call it a priceless blessing because children who fall out of second story windows now cannot break their necks as they formerly did - but that this can strictly be regarded in the light of a blessing is, of course, open to grave argument." HISTORICAL HOPPING The Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee continues today and Sunday at the fairgrounds two miles south of Angels Camp, about 75 miles from Sacramento. Jumping contests go on daily; the international finals are at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. (Last year's winner jumped 20 feet, 2.5 inches.) ADMISSION: $8 general; $6 for 62 and up, $4 for 6-12 years old; 5 and under free. Parking is $5. MORE INFORMATION: (209) 736-2561; www.frogtown.org. MORE MARK TWAIN The Mark Twain Papers and Project has amassed the largest collection of Twain material, including photos, unpublished manuscripts, notebooks and letters. Based at the University of California, Berkeley, it has published more than 40 volumes of Twain's works. The project's Web site, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu (click on research programs) includes useful links. The Bee's Alison apRoberts can be reached at (916) 321-1113 or aaproberts@sacbee.com. Test your Mark Twain knowledge with this true-false quiz Origin Alison apRoberts Publication Date 5/21/2005 Page E1 Section SCENE Edition METRO FINAL 1) Mark Twain came west in 1849 with the Gold Rush. 2) Mark Twain lived in a home on the corner of Third and J Streets for two years when he worked for the Sacramento Union. 3) Mark Twain coined the following observation: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." 4) Mark Twain's first newspaper writing job in the West was at the Daily Union (later commonly known as the Sacramento Union). 5) Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the nickname of Mark Twain after coming West. 6) After prospecting in Calaveras County, Twain married Olivia Langdon and settled down in San Francisco. 7) Mark Twain said, "The report of my death was an exaggeration." 8) Mark Twain was 30 when he showed up in Sacramento at 3 a.m. in February 1866, having taken the steamer Antelope from San Francisco. 9) The Sacramento Union newspaper was located at 117 J St. when Mark Twain wrote for it. 10) The bust of Mark Twain that graced the lobby of the Sacramento Union building on Capitol Mall downtown is now located in the private corporate offices of the Herald Printing Co., the owner of the newspaper during its final months as a daily newspaper. (It closed down in January 1994). 11) Mark Twain was the first to write: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics." 12) Twain was not much of a risk taker, even though he was attracted to the wild West. 13) Twain Harte in Tuolumne County was a gold-mining camp named after Mark Twain and another writer, Bret Harte, in the 1860s. Answers to the Clemens quiz, unexaggerated 1) False. He came west later - moving to Nevada with his brother Orion in 1861. Although he did do some prospecting during his years in California and Nevada, he mostly wrote for a living. 2) False. He wasn't around enough to be a resident, as he wrote all his columns for the Union from Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands). But he did stay in Room 121 of the Orleans Hotel on Second Street between J and K streets in Old Sacramento. In its day, the Orleans was popular with politicians who liked to address the crowds on the street from an upper balcony. It's a vacant lot now. 3) False. Or at least there's no documentation to back up this claim. 4) False. Mark Twain's first reporting job out West was for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, in 1862. Before that, he had written for various newspapers managed by his brother Orion. His first taste of newsprint came as an adolescent, when he apprenticed as a typesetter for local newspapers in Missouri after the death of his father. 5) True. It was in the West as a newspaper writer that Clemens started regularly using the name "Mark Twain," a riverboat term meaning " two fathoms," inspired by the writer's experience working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi in his younger days. 6) False. Clemens didn't meet Olivia Langdon until after he left the West in 1867. 7) True. In 1897, when reports of the grave illness of Twain's cousin were misunderstood to mean that Twain himself was dying, the writer told a reporter with the New York Journal, "The report of my death was an exaggeration." 8) True. He wrote one of his more detailed published descriptions of Sacramento based on that visit, and published in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. 9) True. During Twain's day, the newspaper was located in the Daily Union Building, a three-story brick building that stands at the same spot in Old Sacramento in faithfully reconstructed form. 10) False. The bust, created in the 20th century by sculptor Walter Russell, was in the possession of Ralph Danel Jr., general manager of the printing company after the newspaper closed. But it has since been donated to the University of California, Davis, along with the archives of the paper. It is on public display in a gallery on the second floor of Shields Library on the campus. 11) False. He wrote it in his autobiography, but he attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli. 12) False. He was wild enough to have to leave Nevada in 1864 because of breaking the state's dueling laws. He also had a little legal entanglement - on behalf of a friend who was in a scuffle in San Francisco - that led to his hiding out for a few months in the winter of 1865 in a cabin on Jackass Hill, near Copperopolis and Angels Camp. It was there that he heard about a jumping frog that inspired his famous story. 13) False. Although it was named after the two writers, it wasn't established until 1924, as a resort town (not a mining camp). There's a little irony in the cozy juxtaposition of names: The two writers collaborated early in their careers, but Twain grew to write very negatively of Harte later on.