Rebel Souls

by Justin Martin

  Before embarking on her new job as a Golden Era columnist, however, a trip to Virginia City beckoned. Clare and Menken had stayed in touch through letters. Menken invited her to come to Virginia City for a visit. Clare arranged for someone in San Francisco to look after Aubrey while she was gone. After all, Virginia City was no place for a child. That, too, would become a future Golden Era column: the challenges working women face when trying to line up reliable child care. As always, Clare was way ahead of her time.

  Clare arrived in Virginia City as Menken mania was reaching full crazy bloom. A group of men stood outside the International Hotel where Menken was staying and serenaded her. The town fire company presented her with a red morocco leather belt that had a silver buckle featuring their insignia. When she visited the hot springs near the Ophir Mine to boil an egg, an entire crowd tagged along.

  The locals were agog. Throw in the fact that this fetching woman could hold her own among men—well, it was enough to make one fall off Sun Mountain. At the Sazerac saloon, Menken stood on the bar and demonstrated some of her boxing moves. At a casino, she managed to impress the hard cases at the faro tables by maintaining the same blasé expression whether she was winning or losing. “She smoked and rode astride, and gambled with a freedom that was delightful to the men on the Comstock,” an old-timer would recall.

  When they’d first met at Pfaff’s, Menken and Clare had been equals. Now, Menken was a famous actress, soaking up adulation. Clare must have felt like she was playing second fiddle. Then again, fourth husband Newell hadn’t even been granted a fiddle. For the entire trip out West, he’d skulked along the margins of his wife’s big life, ignored.

  One Sunday afternoon, Menken arranged a small social gathering at her room in the International Hotel. She invited three people: Clare, Twain, and a Territorial Enterprise reporter who wrote under the name Dan DeQuille.

  Twain had earlier trashed her in a review. Menken was anxious to correct his impression and confident that she could accomplish this in person, with her ample charms. DeQuille was also an important man to cultivate. He was the Territorial Enterprise’s star reporter, while Twain was but a promising young talent on the rise. In fact, asked at this time to bet on which of the two writers was most likely to go on to great renown, a smart westerner’s money would have been on DeQuille. Also present for this event were an indeterminate number of dogs, apparently strays that Menken had taken in during her visit.

  Menken began by announcing that she would like to write a novel. Perhaps she would take a hiatus from acting and live for a while in Virginia City. It was a picturesque setting and might inspire her writing. Clare entertained the idea enthusiastically. The two reporters didn’t say much.

  This seems to have rattled Menken. The reporters—and the approval they could lend to her desire to be taken seriously as an artist—were the very reason for this little get-together. Menken summoned a waiter and requested that more food and liquor be brought to her room.

  Meanwhile, the dogs were growing unruly. The two women began soaking sugar cubes in champagne and then feeding these spiked treats to the dogs. They hoped it would calm the creatures down.

  Menken suggested singing a song. Twain demurred, saying he knew only one. Menken pressed him to sing it. So Twain broke into a creaky rendition of a song that included the lyrics, “There was an old horse and his name was Jerusalem.” Soon, everyone joined in. It was easier than talking. “Menken was no nightingale,” recalled DeQuille. “Clare was a sort of wren, and I was a screech-owl.”

  The minutes ticked by. Menken kept calling for more food and drink. No one was eating much. But the drinks were welcome. Every time the waiter opened the door, husband Newell peered in from the hallway where he’d been banished.

  Soon, everyone was drunk, dogs included. A particularly frisky one started rolling around under the table, bothering Twain. He attempted to kick the dog. But he missed and connected squarely with one of Menken’s shapely legs.

  Menken limped over to a couch and sat there grimacing and groaning. Twain muttered a few halfhearted apologies. Then he gave up, retreating into sullen silence. The party broke up shortly afterward. The first and only meeting between Menken and Twain had not been a success.

  Meanwhile, Ward was also out West, working Maguire’s theater circuit. On only one occasion were he and Menken in the same place at the same time. They had a brief overlap in San Francisco. Menken threw a party for Ward where a number of Golden Era writers were also present.

  For Ward, the most successful part of his western swing—certainly the most exciting—was also Virginia City. He played there right before Menken’s run of Mazeppa. “He struck the Comstock just at the height of the first great boom and found a condition of things congenial in every way to his feverish and fitful state of feeling,” recalled Territorial Enterprise editor Goodman. “He was as if strung on wires, vibrating to every impulse of its tumultuous life.”

  Maguire’s Opera House was packed for opening night of The Babes in the Wood. As was his practice, Ward used his hangdog antics to win the audience’s sympathy. With this quickly accomplished, he owned them, and they were ready to follow him anywhere, even through his act’s strange twists and eddies. This debut performance, however, was slightly marred by a curious event. Throughout the opening portion of his routine, whenever the crowd’s laughter began to die down after a particular joke, a solitary laugh would rise up, a braying “haw, haw, haw.”

  It was Twain. Of course, Ward did not know the man. They had never met. Ward only knew that someone in the darkened auditorium was laughing loudly and out of phase with the rest of the audience. To the finely attuned comedian, this strange behavior read as heckling. When it continued, Ward shot an acid comment in the direction of the culprit: “Has it been watered today?”

  That shut Twain up. What Ward didn’t realize was that the delayed laughter had not been meant as heckling—far from it. According to a fellow Territorial Enterprise reporter who sat beside Twain at the show, the young writer was studying Ward’s act with incredible focus and intensity. First, he was processing Ward’s peerless technique. Humor is serious business. Then, a few beats later, he was letting himself enjoy the jokes. Twain would say, “The man who is capable of listening to ‘Babes in the Wood’ from beginning to end without laughing either inwardly or outwardly must have done murder, or at least meditated it at some time during his life.”

  Soon enough, Ward and Twain had occasion to put the incident behind them. Ward always made a practice of dropping by a town’s newspaper after his show. In Virginia City, it didn’t take long for Ward to find his way to the Territorial Enterprise’s C Street offices, where he met the crew. Twain took the opportunity to explain away the lone-laugher episode.

  The two had much in common. Twain was twenty-eight, a year younger than Ward. Both lost their fathers the same year, 1847, whereupon each had become wildly peripatetic. Of course, Ward was in Boston working for the Carpet-Bag when it published “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter.” It’s almost certain that he typeset the piece.

  Now, the pair had finally met. What they shared most was a kind of glorious detachment, an ability to view their fellow humans from enough distance so as to see the folly and absurdity of their ways. Much later, Twain would say that he admired Ward’s “inimitable way of pausing and hesitating, of gliding in a moment from seriousness to humor without appearing to be conscious of so doing. . . . There was more in his pauses than his words.”

  Ward and Twain became fast friends. During the day, Ward had nothing else to do, so he accompanied Twain on his reportorial rounds. He even joined him for a trip down into a silver mine. Every night, following his show, Ward would drop by the newspaper offices. He’d help put the paper to bed. Then Ward, Twain, and the other journalists would hit the town.

  One night, Ward played a prank on Twain. The Territorial Enterprise crowd had gathered at the Internationa
l Hotel’s restaurant, and as usual everyone was getting well lubricated. Earlier, Ward had conferred with Twain’s colleagues, enlisting their participation in the joke.

  Ward waited for an opportune moment. He cleared his throat, made sure Twain was listening, and then offered up a splendidly incoherent bit of rigmarole. It went something like this in DeQuille’s recollection: “Ah,—speaking of genius appears to me to be a sort of luminous quality of the mind, allied to a warm and inflammable constitution, which is inherent in the man, and supersedes in him whatever constitutional tendency he may possess, to permit himself to be influenced by such things as do not coincide with his preconceived notions and established convictions to the contrary.” Ward paused. “Does not my definition hit the nail squarely on the head?”

  All around the table, there were nods of assent. Well, save for Twain. Ward looked down the table and fixed his gaze on Twain, arching his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know that I exactly understand you,” admitted Twain. “Somehow I—I didn’t fully grasp your meaning.”

  “No?” said Artemus. “Why that is very singular. However, I will try and express my idea more clearly.”

  The others at the table all harrumphed, as if they could not believe how thick Twain was being.

  Then, Ward offered a new rendition of his “definition,” even more convoluted and inscrutable than the last. The others all nodded sagely. When Ward had finished, however, Twain was forced to admit to being even more confused.

  So Ward tried yet another formulation. He was a model of patience this time, delivering each nonsense phrase in a clear and careful voice. “For Gods sake!” cried Twain. “If you go at that again you’ll drive me mad!”

  The table exploded in laughter. Twain realized he’d been had. Ward’s entire spiel was gibberish, he now saw, with the others only pretending it made sense.

  Ward was a prankster who could outprank Twain; Twain had nothing but admiration. He recognized there was so much he could learn from Ward. Even though Twain was only a year younger, the difference between the two was stark. Twain was a promising humorist, just starting to build a regional reputation. Ward—pioneering comic, best-selling author, favorite of Lincoln—was an established celebrity. Ward was extremely encouraging to Twain. He urged him to continue writing humor pieces and assuaged the young writer’s fears that he was destined, as Twain put it, for a “sage-brush obscurity.” Importantly, Ward promised to help Twain in any way he could. If Twain would send him some fresh items, Ward promised, he would bring them to the attention of editors that he knew back East.

  Ward packed a lot of living into his stay in Virginia City. Near the end of his visit, the Territorial Enterprise crew had another of its late-night revels, this one at Chaurmond’s, the town’s fancy French restaurant. Ward began the proceedings by raising his glass and proposing a toast. “I give you Upper Canada,” he announced.

  Puzzled silence, as everyone tried to figure out what Ward was getting at.

  “Why?” someone finally asked.

  “Because I don’t want it myself.”

  The table cracked up. Soon the others joined in, and the jokes began to fly. Ward, Twain, DeQuille, and the rest were in fine form. They indulged themselves mightily, gulping down exotic French wines and spirits and enjoying all the delicacies they could eat. When the waiter brought the bill, it came to $237, a then astronomical sum.

  Ward snatched the bill and made a few joking comments about how low the total was. He proceeded to pick up the entire tab. That really brightened the mood.

  As the night drew on, the party worked its way down the mountainside, hitting progressively more tawdry establishments. Emerging from one, they were stunned to encounter blinding light. The sun was rising. It was hard to believe that they’d been at this for so many hours. They rubbed their eyes and staggered along D Street.

  Suddenly, Ward broke away from the group and clambered up onto the roof of a miner’s shack. “I can’t walk on the earth,” he shouted. “I feel like walking on the skies.”

  Twain climbed up and joined him. Then Ward leaped across to a new roof. Twain followed. As dawn broke over the Sierra Nevada, the pair just kept leaping, Ward and Twain, roof to roof.

  15: “O heart! heart! heart!”

  ON JUNE 22, 1864, Whitman left Washington and returned home to Brooklyn. Doctors’ orders: he’d been told to rest. He was instructed to stay away from the military hospitals until he regained his health.

  Whitman planned to remain in Brooklyn for only a couple of weeks. Little could he have imagined that, as the Civil War raged on, while his fellow Bohemians were off on assorted adventures, he’d spend the next six months living on Portland Avenue, crammed into the basement with his mother and brothers—plus one of their wives and two children. Whitman had known periods when he retreated from the world. He’d had his share of sloughs. But this would be among the quietest times in Whitman’s life.

  After everything he’d experienced in the hospitals, Whitman was more broken in body and spirit than he even realized. It’s fitting, too, that he came home during the summer of 1864, right in the middle of the Civil War’s bloodiest year. It featured the most major battles, one per week on average. Both sides suffered grievously. In 1864, the conflict spread into the Deep South, heaping misery onto the citizens of the Confederacy. Also during that single year, half of the total Union war casualties occurred. On June 3, at Cold Harbor, Virginia, seven thousand Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured in a stretch of eight horrifying minutes.

  By now, the giddy optimism of April 1861 was like a distant dream, replaced by the stuff of nightmares. Thurlow Weed, one of the era’s most accomplished political power brokers, summed it up: “The People are wild for Peace.”

  Upon returning to Brooklyn, Whitman didn’t leave the apartment for three weeks. The bewildering set of symptoms—headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness, sensitivity to light—first experienced in Washington, left him incapacitated. According to the doctors, he had inhaled too much hospital effluvia, absorbing a dangerous level of toxins into his system. It seems likely that he was suffering from high blood pressure, a condition that would have grave consequences for his health in the future. Because certain symptoms—­photosensitivity, for ­instance—aren’t consistent with hypertension, probably he was contending with other maladies as well. One candidate is post-traumatic stress syndrome, a condition that wasn’t understood in this era.

  Gradually, Whitman began to improve. Over a period of weeks, then months, he regained a semblance of his former health. But he would never again be the lean, fit man who first showed up at Pfaff’s. Over time, he’d grown stocky, overweight even, the result of too much beefsteak and butter. Everything was taking its toll—though he was only forty-five years old. The poet, renowned for celebrating the body, would never again achieve easy harmony with his own. “It is my first appearance in the character of a man not entirely well,” he lamented.

  Whitman got in the habit of going to bed early, before ten o’clock. He passed a great deal of time at Coney Island beach, alone, wading in the water, something he found soothing. For the most part, Whitman avoided Manhattan, and he appears to have entirely steered clear of certain old haunts such as Pfaff’s. He knew the saloon wasn’t exactly conducive to improved health. Something else was going on, too. While in Washington, he’d waxed nostalgic about Pfaff’s saloon. Now, it was tantalizingly close, only a ferry ride away. But the carnage Whitman had witnessed had changed him. Parts of his former life struck him now as “tame & indeed unreal.”

  As his health grew gradually better, Whitman longed to return to hospital duty in Washington. Unfortunately, spending so much time away from the city had resulted in the loss of his clerkship, and he had been forced to give up his attic rental. Whitman wrote to friends such as William O’Connor, trying to enlist their aid in obtaining a new government post.

  During thi
s hushed stretch, there’s one other matter he focused on, intensely. He polished up his collection of wartime poems. It was to be called Drum-Taps, and Whitman was determined to find a publisher. “I intend to move heaven & earth,” he announced. The poet described the work as “unprecedentedly sad, (as these days are, are they not?)—but it also has the blast of the trumpet, & the drum pounds & whirrs in it, & then an undertone of sweetest comradeship & human love, threading its steady thread inside the chaos, & heard at every lull & interstice thereof—truly also it has clear notes of faith & triumph.”

  He evidently had great hopes for this new volume.

  While Whitman fought through a lull, Edwin Booth was making preparations for an extraordinary theatrical performance. The actor had been asked to do a benefit, with all the proceeds going toward a statue of Shakespeare for New York’s Central Park. Both the play and the resulting statute—the Bard, in marble, permanent—were intended as reminders of the timelessness of art and grace, even in this, the war’s bleakest year.

  Edwin came up with a novel idea for the benefit: what if he, John, and Junius Jr., the Booth brothers who were professional actors, were to appear onstage together for a single night? It would be the first time the three had ever performed together. It was sure to cause a stir. The Shakespeare play Edwin selected was Julius Caesar, a work that features three substantial male roles.