[Dan De Quille, Comstock Reminiscences, Daily Alta California, 29 March 1885:1]

 

COMSTOCK REMINISCENCES.

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A Thrilling Romance That Never Was Written.

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A LITERARY CURIOSITY.

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Mark Twain's First Lesson in the Art of Self-Defense and Its Baneful Results—A Remarkable Nose—Etc.

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[WRITTEN FOR THE ALTA BY DAN DE QUILLE.]

            Many newspapers, daily and weekly, have at various times been published in Virginia City, Nevada. The life of one of these was so short, however, that only a few persons are now aware that it ever had an existence. It only opened its eyes to the light to close them forever. This was the Occidental, an eight-page weekly literary paper started by Hon. Thomas Fitch, the "Silver-tongued Orator of Nevada.'' But one number of the paper was issued. "The good die young." The Occidental was good. Why the paper died so suddenly I never exactly knew, but think it would be safe to say that all the "powder " in the magazine was used in firing that one shot. When that first number of the Occidental came out one would not have been far wrong in applying to Tom the German saying, "Erhat s'ein Pulver verschossen" -- he has fired away all his powder.

            In the number of the paper that was issued was commenced a romance that was to have been continued almost indefinitely. At least, in talking over the plan of it, nothing was ever said about how it was to be ended. Had the story been carried forward in accordance with the original plan it would have been one of the curiosities of literature. Hon. R. M. Daggett, now Minister to the Sandwich Islands, wrote the opening chapters of the story. After the hero and heroine, a principal character in the story, as begun by Mr. Daggett, was an old hermit, reported a Rosycrucian of the old school, except perhaps that he had less faith in the virtues of "dew" and "light" than had the ancients. Mr. Daggett' s member of the sect of Brothers of the Rosy Cross made much use of fire and chemicals. He lived in a partially subterranean castle located in a dark and secret mountain gorge, where in the "dead vast and middle of the night " smoke and flames were to be seen issuing from his chimneys, while lights—red, blue and green —flashed up in his heavily-barred windows. The building had no visible door—all was solid masonry —and the person viewing it from the outside could only imagine a subterranean entrance which no man could discover "for the dews that dripped all over."

THE HERO AND HEROINE.

            The old white-bearded Rosycrucian, of course, had a pupil, and this pupil was the hero of the romance as it was begun by Mr. Daggett. In the great outside world dwelt the heroine, who started out as a very beautiful and very lovable young lady. The opening was full of mystery and was very interesting. Mr. Daggett left the hero in a position of such peril that it seemed impossible that he could be rescued, except through means and wisdom more than human.

            Mrs. Tom Fitch was to have written the chapters for the next number of the paper, and she would have been followed by Mark Twain, who was then a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise, and he, in due course, by J. T. Goodman (at that time editor of the Enterprise), Tom Fitch and myself, when Mr. Daggett would again come in and take up the story.

            As each person would have been obliged to extricate the hero, heroine, or any other useful character from whatever terrible predicament the writer preceding him might have devised, and would aim to puzzle the one who was to follow him, there would not only have been a story, but also quite a lively and exciting literary battle—a sort of literary game of chess. Both the story and the game would have been very interesting to outsiders, when they came to understand the conditions under which each writer was working, as the name of each was to head his work.

            As it was, however, in the case of this unique romance, the public know nothing about the arrangement that had been mode by the several writers who were to participate in the work. Had particulars been given in advance, as in the first number, in regard to the manner in which the story would be written, it is not unlikely that the Occidental might have had a longer lease of life. It was expected that Mrs. Fitch would respect Daggett's lovely heroine and carry her along in unsullied beauty of both person and soul, but Mark Twain was sharpening his scalping-knife for her. Mark was "just itching" for the time to come when Mrs. Fitch would turn the "pretty wild flower '' over to his tender mercies. Under the rules Mrs. Fitch might kill off Daggett's heroine and bring out one of her own, but it was not thought she would be so cruel. Even though she did, Mark had determined to get the new heroine into sad trouble.

LITERARY LATITUDE.

            The old Rosycrucian was Mr. Daggett's pet. He wanted to carry the old fellow all through the story, but was much afraid that Mrs. Fitch would find him unmanageable and would roast him in one of his own furnaces. "If she does anything of the kind with my old Rosycrucian," said Daggett, "woe betide the first pretty little maiden she puts into the story." In case Mrs. Fitch did abuse his old hermit, Daggett begged us all to let her pet character pass along until it became his turn to write, when he would take a terrible revenge ; he would do "a deed that the ibis and the crocodile would tremble at."

            However, Mr. Daggett was somewhat pacified when he was reminded that as his old favorite belonged to the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, almost anything might be done with him and he could be resuscitated and brought out as good as new. Said not old Butler in his Hudibras :

            As for the Rosycrusian philosophers,

            Whom you will have to be but sorcerers,

            What they pretend to is no more

            Than Trismegistus did before,

            Pythagoras, old Zoroaster,

            And Apollonius, their master.

            Therefore, supposing there to be but an ounce of the old fellow's ashes left behind, he might be rejuvenated, like the famous bird of the alchemists. Although Mark and I had promised to let Daggett's old hermit live, we had secretly conjured up a demon fiddler who should make his appearance at critical moments within the mysterious barred castle, and with "rosined bow" torment both the "quivering string ''and the old alchemist. In case of Daggett providing the old fellow with some spell sufficiently potent to "lay" the fiddler we intended to introduce into the secret laboratory a spectral owl that should watch every movement of the occupant, and following the owl the whole progeny of devils—aerial, aquatic and terrestial—said to have been borne by Adam's first wife, Lilis.

            Mrs. Fitch and her lady friends doubtless had their plans for warning Mark and all the rest of us; but with the death of the Occidental all these passed away into the realms of nothingness, wie ein schatten vergehen —as a shadow goes.

MARK TWAIN'S FIRST LESSON IN THE "MANLY ART."

            Not only were the reporters and other newspaper men residing on the Comstock at this time interested in literary tournaments, but also those of a character more gross and material. Monsieur Chauvel, a French restaurant keeper and an expert swordsman, opened in a large ball in the rear of his eating-house, on C street, a gymnasium in which the arts of fencing and boxing were taught. Monsieur Chauvel's school was liberally patronized by the reporters and editors of the several newspapers then published in Virginia City, and by all others classed among the dead-heads. For an hour or two nearly every afternoon this class of customers took possession of the gymnasium and several pairs of them were to be seen at the same moment engaged with foils, broadswords and boxing-gloves. When all were fully at work the passing pedestrian would have thought there was on trial within the building some newly invented quartz-crusher, such was the clashing of foils, clatter of broadswords and tramping and stamping of the boxers.

            Mark Twain, J. T. Goodman and some of the rest of us cared but little for anything but fencing, and upon entering the gymnasium went at once for the foils, while D. E. McCarthy, Steve Gillis, and several others immediately appropriated the boxing-gloves, and taking their end of the hall went at one another rough-shod, banging away right and left most venomously. It was rough sport compared with the see-sawing and thrusting of the knights of the foil—" your stoccato, your imbroccato, your passada and your montanto," as set forth by Captain Bobadill. Among the boxers was George Dawson, a young Englishman, assistant editor of the Enterprise, now a resident of Washington City. Dawson had probably taken his first lessons in boxing in his native land. He was not only muscular and quick, but was also quite on expert in the head-punching business.

            One day, some imp of the Tartarean lower levels induced Mark Twain to put on a pair of boxing gloves, and with them all the airs of a knight of the "P. R." In his heart he had no thought of boxing with any one. However, he had no sooner got on the gloves than he began capering about the hall, striking out straight from the shoulder, first with his right, then with his left, "biffing" the sand-bag and ducking his bead this way and that, a la Heenan, Sullivan and the old Bowery boys, with marvelous facility. He also lowered his head and with it made threatening bovine movements, probably the result of observations made among the butting negroes along the Mississippi river, at Natchez-under-the-Hill or in New Orleans.

            Dawson observed these remarkable demonstrations with astonishment not unmixed with awe. He evidently considered that they were made for his special benefit and instruction. He also seemed to be impressed with the notion that Mark was an expert in the art of self-defence and was showing off some of the latest American dodges in fistic combat. Perhaps, too, he may have thought that he detected Mark regarding him interrogatively from beneath his bushy brows at the end of each series of cabezal rotations. At all events, in view of Mark's movements of supposed warlike import, Dawson kept an eye on him; never once suspecting that the former was merely making a bid for his admiration.

A GENUINE KNOCKOUT.

            Presently Mark squared off directly in front of Dawson and began working his "right "like the piston of a steam engine, at the same time swinging to and fro and gyrating his head in a remarkable manner. Dawson took this to be a direct act of defiance and a challenge to a trial of skill that could neither be overlooked nor ignored. Desperately therefore— and probably not without a secret chill of fear at his heart — Dawson drew off and with full force planted a "sockdologer " squarely upon Mark's offered nose, the latter not making the least movement toward a guard. Mark fell backward across a bench that stood near the wall, when Dawson, flushed with victory, ran up, and against all rules, repeated his blow.

            There was a plentiful flow of claret and "cuss words" as Mark staggered to his feet and began looking about for a club. He assured Mr. Dawson that the next time he undertook to entertain him it would not be with boxing-gloves, but with a dray-pin.

            With a hand sheltering his wounded nose, Mark, "musing full sadly in his sullein mind," took his departure for his room, leaving a trail of blood across the hall and out through the restaurant in front. All day he sat in a chair, planted in front of a looking-glass, and ministered to the wants of his "puffed up" yet humble and ailing nose. Nothing was too good for that nose. It was indulged in cloths saturated with sugar of lead and all manner of cooling and soothing lotions, procured from a drug store near at hand. Notwithstanding the interposition of numerous preventive applications, Mark had a black eye and a prodigious nose—that nose would be controlled by no restraining influences. It was a nose that need not have quailed in the presence of the nose of old Antiochus VIII, that of Mohammed, the great Frederick or Napoleon I; yet Mark was not proud of it. He would not venture forth to take his place at his desk that evening until the shades of night had fallen. When he did arrive he was quite unamiable. A printer who ventured into the sanctum in search of copy seemed much struck by the bulbous and angry appearance of Mark's nose —though he had doubtless heard all about what had befallen it.

            "Why, Mr. Clemens,'' said he, "what is the matter with your nose ?''

            "Get out of here, blast you!" cried Mark, reaching for a paper weight, "no printer has a d—d bit of business in this room."

            The printer took up one foot after the other and immediately became an absent man.

SILVER MOUNTAIN MINE.

            Just at that time the mines about Silver Mountain, Alpine county, California, were attracting a good deal of attention. J. T. Goodman, editor-in-chief of the Enterprise, thought it would be a good idea to send a reporter up to Silver Mountain to write an article on the new mines, and that night spoke of some one going the next morning. Mark at once volunteered to go. He wanted to get his nose out of town. Once he was up in the mountains among strangers, no one would know but that his nose was in its normal state.

            No sooner was Mark off to the mountains than an item appeared in the Enterprise (about which Mark suspected that I knew something), descriptive of his landing at Silver Mountain. As the stage coach was entering the town, it was said that Mark placed himself at the window of the vehicle to survey his surroundings. Some of the inhabitants caught sight of his nose and raised the cry that a show was coming to town. The man with the big nose was in the coach. At once the people of the town dropped everything and flocked about the coach, trying to peer within. They asked the driver if the nose was natural and where the show was to be. Many ran ahead to the hotel at which the stage was to stop and took up positions in the front parlor. By the time the stage arrived there were collected in front of the hotel a large crowd of men, women and children, and three cheers were given as the nose was seen coming out of the vehicle. One old lady was quite fascinated. She asked permission to touch the nose. Being gratified in this desire, she took off her spectacles, turned to the crowd and said it was the happiest moment of her life.

            A day or two after Mark's return from the mountains — with nose ameliorated but temper acerbated — the supposed writer of the pleasantry about his nasal protuberance was thrown from a horse and slightly injured. Mark went at him in an item ; concussed him, jammed his hat down into his liver, rent his lungs asunder, and finally brought the remains home on two drays.

            After this, peace reigned supreme. Mark Twain's encounter with Dawson was probably his first and last lesson in the manly art. It is said that in these degenerate days he has taken to the chopping down of trees for the improvement of his muscle ; so, at least, says an Elmira, N. Y., newspaper.