per Telegraph Operator
23 April 1868 • Coburn Station, Calif. (Paraphrase: Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 24 Apr 68, UCCL 00203)
We received the following telegram from him last night dated at Coburn’s: “I am doing well. Have crossed one divide without getting robbed anyway. Mark Twain.”Ⓐemendation 1explanatory note
Coburn Station (now Truckee, California) “came into existence when the Central Pacific surveyed the route across the pass in 1863–64” it was named for the owner of a local saloon (Gudde, 328). Clemens had just crossed the Sierra Nevada by way of Donner Pass, which ostensibly reminded him of the bogus holdup perpetrated on him by Denis McCarthy and Steve Gillis (disguised as highwaymen) while he was crossing a lesser “divide” on his way from Gold Hill to Virginia City in November 1866, toward the end of his first lecture tour (Roughing It, chapter 79; L1 , 366–67 n. 4). Clemens was not amused by this practical joke and had departed Virginia City without forgiving his tormentors. Goodman printed this telegram on 24 April, and the next day also published the following item: “Mark Twain arrived here at 5 o’clock yesterday morning in good health and without meeting a single footpad on the way. He will lecture at the Opera House on next Monday and Tuesday nights—sure” (“Arrived,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 25 Apr 68, 3).
References
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- University of California, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
- Gudde, Erwin G. California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names. Rev. and enl. ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1960
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853–1866. Edited by Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1988
Paraphrase, probably written by Goodman, “Mark Twain,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 24 Apr 68, 3, microfilm in The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-BANC).
L2 , 211; none known except the source text.
The original telegram is not known to survive.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.