which is soon to come out. Too late—ought to have got the letters 3 months ago. They are dated early in November.”12 Now Mark Twain wrote fourteen more pieces for the Californian, published between March and December. In the first of these, “An Unbiased Criticism,” he referred to his experiences in the Big Tree region of Calaveras County, where he had “a very comfortable time.” Pretending to be a review of the paintings at the new California Art Union, this sketch is a parody of art criticism, or rather what passed for criticism, for like the targets of his satire, “An Unbiased Criticism” is full of irrelevancies. By far the most engaging is a long comment from Ben Coon, who becomes one of Mark Twain’s vernacular narrators. He tells the history of his Webster’s Unabridged, which has made the rounds of the mining camps: “But what makes me mad, is that for all they are so handy about keeping her sashaying around from shanty to shanty and from camp to camp, none of’em’s ever got a good word for her.”
Soon Mark Twain renewed his attack on the genteel in a comic, imaginary “Important Correspondence” concerning the vacancy in the pulpit of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The position was in fact open at the time, and each of Mark Twain’s “correspondents” had indeed been invited to fill it, as the San Francisco Evening Bulletin reported.13 Mark Twain’s letter to Bishop Hawks, D.D., of New York encourages him to take it, despite the terms, for the author argues that he has “a great deal of influence with the clergy here” and “can get them to strike for higher wages any time.” The reply concocted for the bishop is full of gratitude. Both writers suggest that they understand the game, with its formalities, pretenses, and hypocrisies. “Hawks” writes:
I threw up my parish in Baltimore, although it was paying me very handsomely, and came to New York to see how things were going in our line. I have prospered beyond my highest expectations. I selected a lot of my best sermons—old ones that had been forgotten by everybody—and once a week I let one of them off in the Church of the Annunciation here. The spirit of the ancient sermons bubbled forth with a bead on it and permeated the hearts of the congregation with a new life, such as the worn body feels when it is refreshed with rare old wine. It was a great hit. The timely arrival of the “call” from San Francisco insured success to me. The people appreciated my merits at once. A number of gentlemen immediately clubbed together and offered me $10,000 a year and agreed to purchase for me the Church of St. George the Martyr, up town, or to build a new house of worship for me if I preferred it.
Mark Twain manages to create just the right tone for the bishop, with biblical echoes and pious sentiments mixed skillfully with frank expressions of opportunism. Moreover, the satirist had his facts straight about the New York reaction to his “call.”
Following a long and witty commentary on the bishop’s letter, he promises to publish in the next issue the replies of the Rev. Phillips Brooks of Philadelphia and the Rev. Dr. Cummings of Chicago. But instead he published their telegrams, urging him not to do so and each offering five hundred dollars to discourage him. But now, he reports, he has become overwhelmed by other ambitious clergymen, each seeking his support, some even turning up to be his guests, with good appetites. The combination of affected charity and actual vulgarity makes this whole “correspondence” funny, fresh, and on target, one of the high points of Mark Twain’s writing career in California.
In these pieces he was expressing sentiments quite consistent with the values of his other pieces. He had developed a skeptical attitude and a vernacular style to go with it. Making fun of clerical ambition and the associated hypocrisy was part of the same attitude that dismissed romantic love and sentimental views of nature.
In June 1865, the Californian announced a new department, “Answers to Correspondents,” a parody of the columns featured in many periodicals then as now, though at that time literary advice was sometimes sought as well as more personal kinds of advice. Mark Twain wrote six columns and included parts of them in his 1867 Jumping Frog collection. One item is a poem, prefaced by a letter from the poet “Simon Wheeler” of Sonora, California. These demonstrate Mark Twain’s continuing interest in vernacular characters, especially narrators, and his increasing skill in rendering their language and their values. Soon Simon Wheeler would achieve wide and lasting fame.
Although some of the pieces written at this time indicate a lack of development, there are two important exceptions, a letter and a story. The letter is Clemens’s first real indication of a commitment to writing, to literature. On October 19, 1865, he shared with Orion what he called his life’s ambitions. He relates that in his early years he had been interested in becoming a pilot and a preacher; he had achieved the first goal but not the second because he had never had a call. “But I have had a ‘call’ to literature, of a low order—i.e., humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit.” The tone of resignation in this letter presumably comes partly because he had now reconciled himself to the fact that the stocks he owned were never going to be worth much, as he had strongly believed, and partly from the fact that humorists did not enjoy a good reputation on the West Coast or elsewhere. If he accepted the role of humorist, he would have to produce a new and distinctive kind of humor—literary burlesque was commonplace—in order to obtain much-needed self-respect. He did recognize that he had talent. As he told Orion, God “did His part by me—for the talent is a mighty engine when supplied with the steam of education—which I have not got.”
About the time that he wrote this letter, Mark Twain produced the first solid evidence that he had been called, nearly a year after he had heard the frog story. Two surviving false starts show that he was being very deliberate in composing this piece; he must have known that he had good materials to care for. One of these early versions, less than one thousand words, is entitled “Angel’s Camp Constable.” It deals with one of the vernacular narrator Simon Wheeler’s pet heroes. The other, too, is only a fragment; it never gets around to its announced topic. Like the version that was at last completed and published, it is a letter addressed to Artemus Ward, who—it will be recalled—had written to Clemens in the fall of 1864 asking for a sketch for his Nevada book. This second fragment, first published in 1981, is entitled “The Only Reliable Account of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, together with some reference to the decaying city of Boomerang, and a few general remarks concerning Mr. Simon Wheeler, a resident of the said city in the day of its Grandeur.” The fact that the story was nine months in gestation suggests that the writer was just beginning to realize what he was to emphasize often in his later years in his comments about literature, notably in “How to Tell a Story,” that the “humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of telling.”
The version of Mark Twain’s story that was published in the New York Saturday Press of November 18, 1865, is entitled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” (It had arrived too late for publication in Artemus Ward, His Travels.) Told with infinite care, the story is narrated by two tellers, Mark Twain, who introduces his account somewhat pompously, and Simon Wheeler, the garrulous vernacular storyteller, who sets forth his story for Mark Twain’s ears. Simon Wheeler, the erstwhile poet, was kin to Ben Coon of Angel’s Camp, who (according to Mark Twain’s 1897 account) had told him the story.14 The addition of a second narrator, carefully characterized, enriches the sketch greatly. There is irony in both tellings. The writer pretends that he has had to put up with a preposterous bore as the result of Artemus Ward’s request that he look up the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley; and Simon Wheeler, whom he meets on his search, pretends that there is nothing funny about the story he tells in response. Wheeler possessed “the first virtue of a comedian,” the term used in “‘Mark Twain’ in the Metropolis” (1864), “which is to do humorous things with grave decorum and without seeming to know that they are funny.” Moreover, Wheeler’s artfully told story seems endless and pointless. A double irony allows readers to feel superior to the narrator, although an alert one sees the writer is making sport of portraying himself as well.
The story focuses on the narrator as victim, since victimization is also a theme of the story. Jim Smiley, the optimistic and compulsive gambler, always looking
