Twain's Portrait - Chapter 1 - Arrival
The steamer from the Sandwich Islands to San Francisco carried only four passengers and so I was pressed into service as a poker player, despite my aversion to games of chance. In that game I met Mark Twain for the first time. My initial impression was one of disappointment. He didn't’t look, sound, or act as I thought a famous writer should. Twain was a tall, thin, but vigorous older man of 44 years, with a drooping mustache and a corona of flaming red hair. A long crooked cigar was clamped in his teeth as he dealt cards, wobbled in his lips as talked, or waved about in his hand as he used it like a conductor’s baton to punctuate his rapid-fire speech.
“Pull up a pew,” he said, gesturing at a chair that was screwed to the deck. “We need a fourth to dilute the odds and swell the congregation. Are you familiar with a little game called Nevada Scratch?”
He had just published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1878, a year before, when I was studying painting with Carolus in Paris. Even though we expatriate art orphans were buried to our eyebrows in chiaroscuro and perspective, we knew his name. Mark Twain was the great American rustic, casting his irreverent eye over our decadent age and deflating pomposity wherever he found it. I was 23 at the time and stood in awe of his accomplishments at the same time I was aghast at his failure to live up to them.
He performed perfunctory introductions and asked me again if I knew Nevada Scratch.
“Sorry, I’m not familiar with that game. Is it anything like Whist?”
“Very much like, except you deal only three cards at a time, black sevens and nines are wild for face cards, and there are no rubbers, no dummy, and no trump suit. Here, I’ll deal a hand for practice and you can be the Itch first. After you master Itching we’ll make you an expert Scratcher.”
I never learned all the rules, but it soon became obvious that Nevada Scratch was like Whist in that a team of two players could communicate in code and distort the odds in their favor. Twain and a Colonel Sutherland across from him were engaged in a lively exchange of blinks, coughs, sneezes, throat-clearings, and knuckle-crackings that soon depleted my financial reserves.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Sam said at one point, raking in my last centavo, “In the third round black sevens are only wild for black queens.”
I excused myself and retired to a chair where I could sketch the card players surreptitiously. I made Mark Twain the focal point of the composition, placing his companions in silhouette and casting them in shadow. He had large hands with long tapering fingers that dipped and hovered over the cards and coins like gliding birds. He was wearing a burnt sienna brown suit of clothes over a cadmium scarlet plaid vest, but I would paint him in banker’s broadcloth to show his prosperity as a popular author, with a slouch hat and bent cheroot to show his frontier roots. I calculated that he was or would soon be part of the nouveau riche class who can afford to have their portraits painted, at least by a cut-rate nouveau artiste such as myself. The gift of a pencil or charcoal study would be a good investment in future patronage.
Mary Sargent, c/o Sanderson
Apartments Genessee
10 Clarastrasse
Berne, Switzerland
Dear Mother:
I trust this finds you and father both well and well settled into the Sanderson’s apartments. I am sorry to hear that the Swiss winter has lingered beyond its welcome, and hope that spring comes soon to Berne.
We dock tomorrow in San Francisco after a long and eventful voyage. I have become acquainted with my fellow passenger Mark Twain—yes, that Twain, the author of the Innocents Abroad, that blue book that you found so inaccurate but amusing.
If ever a parvenue required a portrait to announce his fresh-minted status to the world, Twain is that gentleman. His lean features and rustic deshabille would be delightful in paint, perhaps in contrast to an otherwise bland and derivative pose.
I have presented Mr. Twain with a sketch I made of him playing bridge. He was quite taken with it, and I hope the seed has been planted that will ultimately flower as a commission for a full-length portrait in oils. He is just the sort of outré subject that might stand out among the usual coterie of coal merchants and minor nobles that one found so enervating in the portrait room of last year’s Salon de Paris. A Twain portrait coupled with an exotic tropical scene from the islands might be a winning combination for my entry in next year’s show.
The purser wants all mail in the bag by midnight for delivery upon docking tomorrow, so I must make this a very brief note. Promising to write later at length, I remain…
Your loving son,
John
* * *
Twain and I conversed genially at the rail as the boat entered the Bahia de San Francisco, a vast expanse of choppy gray water with scarcely a reflection or horizon line. In between lengthy stories about his steamboat days, Mr. Twain told me about the lecture and writing tour he was beginning. He invited me to accompany him to Petalumo, the northern regional capital, where he will address the local intelligentsia on his travels among the Sandwich Islands. He suggested I put up at his hotel, the Casa Arguello.
We cleared Customs on Angel Island. The official was curious as usual that I carry an American passport but have never been to the United States of America. I had to explain that I was born in England to American parents, reared in Switzerland, and educated in France and Spain. For most of my childhood America was wracked by civil war and unrest. They say it is pretty peaceful now, but still economically depressed—not the sort of place an aspiring portrait artist longs to visit.
The customs man was very swarthy, burnt Sienna with a touch of crimson, perhaps a mixed blood with Spanish and Indio combined. His high cheekbones were almost Moroccan. On the crowded docks I saw complexions from peaches and cream to pure Negro.
We transferred to a flat-bottomed launch and steamed vaguely north up the Rio Petalumo. Trumpeter swans and egrets dotted the reedy wetlands like little flecks of titanium white flake. The river twisted and turned like a lazy snake, pewter, silver and white under leaden skies backlit with a barely golden light—just one shade short of silver.
The sun came out in true gold as we glided into the grand canal of Petalumo, which Twain immediately dubbed the “Venice of the West.” With good reason. I began to ache for my paints. Like the real Venice, this is a paradise for the watercolorist: Where most cities have streets of dead dark cobbles, Petalumo and Venice have streets of water. Alternating wide and narrow canals reflect and multiply the light. Arching bridges cast velvety shadows enlivened with gleams of dark, pure cobalt blue and cadmium orange.
Petalumo differs from the original in several ways. Where Venice is all marble and plaster, Petalumo is timber frames of curly-cued redwood and oak, or thick adobe atop native sandstone foundations. The Steam Age is more prominent here, with steam dredges dragging channels for steam launches to thread, and the gondoliers cursing them both. Both cities share tile roofs, but in Venice church spires dominate, whereas Petalumo boasts overtopping grain elevators.
* * *
Mary Sargent, c/o Sanderson
Apartments Genessee
10 Clarastrasse
Berne, Switzerland
Dear Mother:
I spent this afternoon sketching and painting a view of the grand turning basin of the Rio Petalumo. Here two major canals intersect the natural course of the river, and the summer palacios of the Mexican dons from San Francisco abut grain elevators and feed mills built to an Egyptian scale. 
Towards sunset a fine, oblique gold light gave a jewel-like quality to the scene, like a wash of dilute raw sienna suspended in walnut oil. The rough and ready nature of the frontier architecture gives a more vigorous aspect to the waterscape than one finds in the original Venice. The scene combines elegant Venetian luxury with the odiferous necessities of the Valencia stockyards. What this land lacks in history it makes up in energy and aromas.
My sketches and paintings on this trip have been largely narrative, full of detail, faithfully rendered, with little Artistic interpretation. For that I may have to wait until I am comfortable in my Paris studio again. Carolus would laugh to see some of my “literal daubs.”
Mr. Twain spent the balance of the day and all the evening loafing in a waterfront bistro, swilling the harsh local wine, swapping stories with drovers and stevedores, and smoking his stinking cigar. One would think that his elegance of literary style might carry over into his demeanor and choice of companions, but that is not the case. Still, I remain resolved to secure his commission for a major portrait. I long to portray him in his formal lecture outfit, with perhaps a cheroot and gleaming brass spittoon for the frontier accent.
Your loving son,
John
* * *
I first met John Singer Sargent on the steamer from the Sandwich Islands to San Francisco, where I was bound for another round of South Seas lectures. My recent success with Tom Sawyer had made my peculiar blend of tragedy and frivolity a more compelling draw and I was enjoying my newfound infamy.
Sargent was a polished, charming young man of about 25 years of age, earnest, poised, and confident, but I am always prepared to forgive that in a tenderfoot. He was a raw nerve, an empty vessel, a swelling bud, and my old pal Colonel Sutherland and I took pity on him. We resolved to soothe his nerves, fill his emptiness, and tap the swelling bud of his purse with a friendly game of Nevada Scratch.
At our invitation he demurred with the usual tenderfoot protestations, as easily overcome as the average Sunday school teacher’s claims of ignorance of drink, dice, or damsels of uneasy virtue.
“You would do us great honor if you would agree to complete our circle,” I insisted.
“The honor is mine, Mr. Twain.” He took his seat in surrender, running up the white flag and spiking all his guns.
Scratch is the preferred game of Nevada’s card sharks because it is Episcopal in its complexity, Presbyterian in its flexibility, and Quakerish in the silent, covert cooperation that is possible between two experienced devotees. Scratch is the bastard son of Euchre out of Stud Poker while Whist wasn't watching. Compared to Scratch, all other card games are like dancing with your mother. Colonel Sutherland and I were confirmed Scratchers and young Sargent was the perfect Itch.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Twain,” John asked, “But did you say that fives and sevens are wild?”
“Only black fives and sevens, and only for face cards.”
“Then I believe I have four Kings,” he said, laying down his hand.
“Normally that would be true, but this is the third round, in which wild cards apply only to black queens. In this instance you have two fives and two kings, and the Colonel takes the pot with three queens.”
“I see. Thank you for the clarification.”
He was wonderfully polite. Someone, probably his maternal relative, had trained him well, but with application he would soon learn to overcome his limited upbringing. When we had cleaned him out he retired with good grace to his sketchbook. The next morning he presented me with a wonderfully detailed drawing of myself dealing three-handed Whist. I accepted it with thanks and admiration, and thus I first introduced the camel’s nose of trust into my tent of native caution.
* * *
William Dean Howells
Atlantic Monthly
New York
Dear William:
Thank you for your warning, however belatedly received. Your letter arrived just as I was embarking on my cruise to Alta California—soon enough to take heed and have ample fodder for worry; too late to do anything about it. Actually, I never worry. I cannot fret myself over the future because I have so much in my past to regret that it occupies my mind entirely.
Yours was not the only rumor of war I have heard, but I discount them. I am a humorist, not a politician. I doubt strongly that the powerful and greedy of Rossland and California will even notice my sojourn there. And at the first sign of trouble, I plan to cut and run. However, if any political morsels fall my way, I will duly report them to you and you may pass them on to your friends in Washington.
I am doomed to lecture yet again on the Sandwich Islands, earning my temperate supper with tropical tales. As dreary as this prospect is, I welcome it because it also affords me the opportunity to pen some travel letters for you. Last night I met a young artist named John Sargent, an expatriate American painter, educated in Europe, to whom I gave a lesson in Nevada Snap.
I aim to invite him along on the lecture tour, so I can observe his untutored reactions to California and Rossland—I’m thinking he could function as a Candide, a naïve observer that will underline the humor and irony—like the Brown character in some of the Innocents Abroad pieces. I plan to court him like a wallflower and drag him along if at all possible.
We dock tomorrow in San Francisco Bay, where I will post this.
Your obedient etc.
Mark Twain
* * *
Reprinted from the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, June, 1879Mark Twain
Petalumo
Republic of Alta California
May 14, 1879
Dear Reader:
This curious town is situated athwart and within the Rio Petalumo. By that I mean that she has never been content to emulate drier and less fanciful sisters such as St. Louis or New Orleans, who merely huddle around their rivers in a companionable conspiracy of trade. No indeed—through profligate dredging and canal building, Petalumo has invited the river into her very streets, transforming what would otherwise be a commonplace river hamlet into the Venice of the West.
Please do not dismiss this as a fancy. I refer you to the watercolor sketch of my young companion, Mr. John Singer Sargent. So taken was he with the aqueous potentialities of the scene that he perched several hours atop a reeking tailings barge to record his view of the Grand Turning Basin. Gondolas imported from the original Venice ply the waters, and the young Mexican vaquerros de agua sing and shout in a perfect imitation of the gondoliers of Venice, complete with maniacally insouciant airs and the obtuse arrogance of deposed dukes.
The egg is King here. From Petalumo to the coast stretch vast egg ranches. I have made a splendid photograph of one of these huevos rancheros, which supply all the omelets and pickled bar eggs for San Francisco, Sacramento, and points East.
Eggs are packed in straw and cooled with wet sacking, floated down the Rio Petalumo to San Francisco Bay, then up the Sacramento River, where they are off-loaded and packed into the Sierra Nevada gold fields by mule train.
These famous egg mules have backs as steady as a gyroscope. Their “skinners” equip them with pack frames in gimbals, and claim they could bring their fragile cargo safely through Armageddon. A sober and honest mule-skinner I met in a canal-side tavern told me a story about one such fabulous mule, a jug-headed specimen named “Gibraltar,” for its solidity.
Gibraltar once carried fifty dozen eggs over the spine of the Sierras into Nevada territory. At the height of the pass, an earthquake opened a chasm into which the hapless beast pitched headlong. Two days later the mule was spit out of a mineshaft in Virginia City, one hundred and forty-nine miles away. Nary an egg was broken, although Gibraltar was skinned of more than half his hide and in fact became known as “Baldy” ever afterwards.
I believe this preposterous yarn to be no more than the unvarnished truth, since its teller swore to me on the weeping eyes of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, an infallible guarantor of veracity in these parts.
Your Servant in Truth,
Mark Twain