To Joseph T. Goodman
17 February 1869 • Titusville, Pa.
(Paraphrase: Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise, 26 Mar 69, UCCL 00256)

Mark Twain to be Married.—We have received a letter from that wise and holy pilgrim, “Mark Twain,” dated Titusville, Pennsylvania, February 17,1 in which he says: “I have pretty thoroughly lectured New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Michigan, and am now doing this Pennsylvania oil region. Half a dozen more lectures, I hope, will finish this long, wearisome winter’s siege—a dozen anyhow—and then I shall have a holiday. Whoop! you old fool!” He then goes on to say that he could get appointments at $100 per night for four or five months next season in case he should feel inclined to accept, but that he don’t know whether or not he will again enter the field, as he is going to get married and so will want to settle down. We are not at liberty to give names, but may be allowed to say that the young lady who has captivated the gushing Mark resides in the town of Elmira, New York, is an only daughter, rich, handsome, and in every respect a suitable companion for an orphan like Mark. If Mark takes his father-in-law’s advice he will probably give up lecturing and go to work in one of the old man’s coal mines—in short, become a [coal-heaver ]. In concluding his letter Mark says: “I shall lecture in San Francisco in April or May. Come down, boys. I can’t go to Virginia, having killed myself there twice already in the lecture business.” 2 We should think he might stand a little more of the same kind of “killing,” and even tackle once more the terrible footpads of the Divide, though those now infesting that vicinity are of the genuine order—not make-believes, like those who “went through” him on the occasion of his first appearance in this city as a lecturer.3

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 The original document has not been found, but it was doubtless written on the same letterhead as the previous and next letters and addressed to Goodman, proprietor and chief editor of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, who published this report of it there. He had been Clemens’s employer in the early and mid-1860s, and more recently had been among the ten indisputably friendly references Clemens volunteered to Jervis Langdon in December 1868, even before the “six prominent men” he named earlier could reply (L1, 232–325 passim, especially 242 n. 2; L2, 358).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Clemens had performed three times in Virginia City, delivering his Sandwich Islands lecture on 31 October 1866 and his lecture on “Pilgrim Life” on 27 and 28 April 1868. The 1866 performance filled Maguire’s Opera House with an audience of some eight hundred, at one dollar apiece—a clear financial success. The two 1868 performances were evidently less lucrative. On 28 April, the Virginia City Trespass reported “a very large and fashionable audience of ladies and gentlemen” ; the Gold Hill Evening News said the lecture was “well attended, and the dress circle fashionably and satisfactorily filled” ; and the Enterprise noted a “crowded an[d] delighted audience” (“Mark Twain,” 3; “‘Mark Twain’s’ Lectures,” 3; “Opera House—Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 3). Such reports were evidently professional courtesy toward a former colleague. Clemens’s friend Alfred R. Doten (1829–1903), an experienced newspaperman then working for the Gold Hill Evening News, attended both lectures, noting privately on 27 April: “Not very full house – Lecture humorous, very, as well as pleasing & instructive – Much applauded – lasted about an hour.” And on 28 April he remarked:

“Mark Twain’s” lecture . . . about same audience as last night – Same lecture – at 8½ oclock a piano was heard in behind the curtain – as it went up, Mark was discovered playing rudely on it, & singing “There was an old ’hoss & his name was Jerusalem” etc – He came forward, & apologized for so introducing things on the ground that if any of them had been waiting behind the curtain as long as he had, they would appreciate some relief of the kind – then he went on with his lecture, & I came home – (Doten, 2:996, 997)

Recalling this experience early in 1871, Clemens advised James Redpath of the Boston Lyceum Bureau to schedule temperance lecturer John Bartholomew Gough for only “1 night (or possibly 2,) in Virginia City Nevada (provided you can get a church—for they won’t go to that nasty theatre.)” (22 Jan 71 to Redpath, NN-B, in Will M. Clemens, 27).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 See L1, 366–67 n. 4.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Paraphrase, “Mark Twain to be Married,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 26 Mar 69, 3, PH in Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The article was probably written by Goodman, although it has also been attributed to William Wright (Dan De Quille) (Loomis, 341).

Previous publication: L3, 105–107; none known except the copy-text.

Provenance:see Tufts Collection, pp. 587–88.

Emendations and textual notes:

coal-heaver • coal-|heaver