Capítulo 4
Silver Fever and Fool's Gold
When the Civil War broke out, Twain briefly joined a ragtag militia before realizing "commerce was suspended, my occupation was gone. I had to seek another livelihood." Unlike wealthy Americans like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan who hired substitutes to fight in their place, Twain simply moved west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the Nevada Territory.
Upon arriving in Carson City in August 1861, Twain was immediately "smitten with the silver fever," a predictable affliction in a place where wagonloads of silver bricks rolled down the streets daily. The mountains were reportedly "literally bursting with gold and silver," and Twain, like thousands of others drawn to the Comstock Lode's riches, believed it wholeheartedly. At twenty-six, he decided silver was "the road to fortune" and spent the next four years making determined attempts to strike it rich.
Twain quickly adopted mining jargon, speaking confidently of veins, ledges, and assessments in letters home. His initial expectations were comically naive-he secretly expected to find "masses of silver lying all about the ground" and "glittering in the sun on mountain summits." Reality proved harsher. On one expedition, he excitedly collected what he thought was gold, only to be told by an experienced prospector it was merely "granite rubbish and nasty glittering mica" worth nothing. The old-timer taught him that "nothing that glitters is gold."
Briefly reduced to working in a quartz mill for $10 weekly, Twain found himself processing other men's ore in dangerous conditions with constant exposure to quicksilver. This humiliating "comedownance" for someone who saw himself as an "incipient millionaire" didn't last long. Inept at shoveling sand onto filtering screens (it mostly went "over my head and down my back"), Twain allegedly requested a raise to "$400,000 a month plus lodging" and was promptly dismissed.
Twain eventually realized that prospecting alone wouldn't make him rich. He needed to become a speculator, buying and selling mining interests "like latter-day boys would deal in bubblegum baseball cards." Despite becoming knowledgeable about mining minerals and water rights, he grew all too familiar with the phrase "played out."
Capítulo 5
Ten Days of Imagined Wealth
In the summer of 1862, Twain's fortunes seemed to change dramatically when his cabin-mate Cal Higbie discovered a "blind lead"-a hidden vein of silver running parallel to the famous Wide West Mine. After secretly investigating the shaft, Higbie raced back to their cabin declaring, "We are rich!" Twain was momentarily speechless, then overcome with wild emotions-"doubt, conviction, exultation, hope, amazement" all swept through him.
At ten o'clock that night, June 20th, they filed their claim at the recorder's office. Mining regulations required them to begin actual work within ten days or forfeit their rights. Back in their dirt-floor shack, neither could sleep, instead planning how they would spend their imminent fortune. They would build brownstone mansions on Russian Hill in San Francisco with billiard rooms, statuary, and coachmen. Twain planned an elaborate three-year European tour costing "forty or fifty thousand dollars," visiting France, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, and Egypt. He even planned to buy his mother a home and donate profits from his Tennessee land to charity.
Their dreams collapsed when both men were called away on separate errands. Each left a note for the other in their cabin, but through a tragic miscommunication, neither saw the other's message. The ten-day deadline passed with no work done on their claim, and at midnight on the eleventh day, someone else "jumped" it. Twain returned to find Higbie staring in disbelief at his note, lamenting "We're ruined-we didn't do the work." In an instant, Twain went from "rich and brimful of vanity" to "a pauper now, and very meek." His only consolation was that he could always say he "was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars, once, for ten days."
Capítulo 6
From Newspaper Man to Literary Star
After his mining failures, Twain accepted a job offer from the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada for $25 a week. It was here, on February 3, 1863, that he first published under the name "Mark Twain." Virginia City was the boomtown of the Comstock Lode-the "Silicon Valley" of its day with "the swagger of the Vegas Strip." With an instant population of 25,000, it was known as the "richest place on earth," a "Cinderella city" devoted to "conspicuous consumption."
Though initially constrained by working for wages, he soon received a raise to $40 weekly. More importantly, he discovered a more lucrative income stream: as a newspaperman, his writings could affect mine values, so speculators routinely gifted him shares in their operations. He could then sell these shares for profit, often making enough that he rarely needed to draw his salary. This arrangement taught Twain valuable lessons in marketing and promotion-particularly how to persuasively promote worthless products with cunning.
The mining boom eventually went bust. The market value of the Comstock mines plummeted from $40 million to just $4 million by December 1863. Twain's hoarded stocks became worthless, leaving him nearly penniless. He moved to Sacramento and later discovered that the "blind lead" mine he had briefly owned had been sold by others for $3 million.
In early 1865, while staying at Jackass Hill in California during his final failed attempt at prospecting, Twain heard a story about a gambler and his frog that would change his life. Published in October 1865 by the Saturday Press, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" reached a national audience and led to Twain's first book in 1867. Though sales were modest, the book succeeded brilliantly as self-promotion. Twain confessed to his brother that he had received a "call" to humorous literature-"Poor, pitiful business!" he called it, but acknowledged it was his strongest talent.
His growing reputation earned him an assignment from the Sacramento Union to report on Hawaii's sugar industry in 1866. Rather than producing a mere business story, Twain wrote vivid travel pieces that became wildly popular. Upon returning to California, he began giving lively lectures about his Hawaiian experiences, establishing himself as one of America's most popular and well-compensated public speakers.
Twain's breakthrough came with The Innocents Abroad (1869), based on letters he wrote while traveling through Europe and the Holy Land for the San Francisco Alta. His irreverent observations caused a sensation. Elisha Bliss of American Publishing Company offered him either $10,000 for the manuscript or a 5% royalty. Twain chose the royalty-"the best business judgment I ever displayed"-and the book became a bestseller both in America and Europe.
Capítulo 7
Mansion, Marriage, and the Inventor's Itch
It was aboard the Quaker City that Twain met Charley Langdon, who showed him a miniature portrait of his sister Livy. Twain claimed he fell in love immediately, declaring "I'll harass that girl till she'll have to say yes!" Livy was not only respectable but rich-her father Jervis Langdon had made his fortune in coal and railroads. Despite being an unlikely suitor, Twain courted Livy obsessively until she accepted his proposal in November 1868. Langdon even lent Twain $25,000 to buy a third share in the Buffalo Daily Express and gifted the newlyweds a fully furnished mansion as a wedding present.
The first months of Twain's marriage were among the most enriching of his life. He adored his wife, his fame was increasing, and he had money to burn. Feeling that "anything was possible," Twain developed what he called "the pet scheme of my life"-sending his friend John Riley to the South African diamond fields while Twain would write up Riley's adventures as if they were his own. Despite elaborate plans and promises of fortune to Riley, the scheme collapsed when Riley's ship ran aground, he found no diamonds, and later died of cancer.
Like his father and brother Orion who were inventors, Twain had a fascination with technology and invention. Despite having no training in fashion design and investing barely an hour or two in the project, he created a revolutionary elastic strap. In those days, men's pants were high-waisted with useless decorative belts, and suspenders were uncomfortable. Lying awake one night, he suddenly conceived of an adjustable, detachable elastic strap that could be buttoned to garments. He secured U.S. Patent 121,992 in December 1871, though he never manufactured it.
During their first year of marriage, Livy grew homesick in Buffalo, missing her family terribly. When her beloved father Jervis Langdon fell ill and died in August 1870, just eight months after their wedding, everything changed. Langdon left his fortune to be divided among his widow, Livy, and her brother Charley. Livy and Twain inherited $250,000 (about $4,400,000 today). By spring 1871, they decided to leave Buffalo for Hartford, Connecticut.
Capítulo 8
Living Like Literary Royalty
Twain first visited Hartford in 1868 and was immediately impressed by its prosperity. Home to insurance giants, firearms manufacturers like Sharps and Colt, and machine tool producer Pratt & Whitney, Hartford boasted dollars involved "in half the great moneyed enterprises of the union." The city attracted him not just for its wealth but as the hub of the subscription book business where his publisher Elisha Bliss was headquartered.
Livy and Twain decided to build their Hartford home "right even if it does cost 25 percent more"-though it ultimately cost far more than that. The result was "the loveliest home that ever was"-a twenty-five-room mansion with thirteen fireplaces and seven bathrooms that divided critics. The Hartford Times called it "one of the oddest-looking buildings ever designed for dwelling," while the Elmira Advertiser described it as a "brick-kiln gone crazy." They furnished it extravagantly with treasures from around the world: a carved chimney piece from Scotland, pierced brass plates from India, a window above one fireplace for watching snowfall, Tiffany decorations, and a Venetian walnut bed with carved cherubs.
As a natural networker, Twain made the most of Hartford's intellectual and commercial opportunities. Livy and he hosted authors, publishers, bankers, merchants, and politicians, "constantly preparing for lunch parties and dinner parties." William Dean Howells remembered them as "whole-souled hosts, with inextinguishable money, and a palace of a house." They spent up to $100 weekly on food and drink (about $100,000 annually in today's values), serving elaborate delicacies including ice cream "put up in wonderful shapes-like flowers or cherubs, little angels-all different kinds and different shapes and colors."
Happy in Hartford, Twain was enormously productive, writing in his third-floor billiard room/study during most of the year and in summers at an octagonal outdoor study built specially for him at Quarry Farm. During these Hartford years, he wrote Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and collaborated with neighbor Charles Dudley Warner on The Gilded Age, which gave the era its name.
His most profitable Hartford-era creation wasn't something he wrote but invented-Mark Twain's Self-Pasting Scrapbook. As an avid collector of newspaper clippings about himself, he grew frustrated with the messy process of affixing them to pages. He envisioned scrapbook pages pre-coated with "gum-stickum" where "you need not wet any more of the gum than your scrap or scraps will cover." Awarded U.S. Patent 140,245 in June 1873, the scrapbook sold 25,000 copies the first year, earning him $12,000 ($231,000 today), eventually generating about $50,000 total ($1,100,000 today).
Capítulo 9
The Business Blunders Begin
As a prominent Hartford citizen, Twain naturally expanded his business ventures beyond the scrapbook. He invested in the Hartford Accident Insurance Company, serving on its board and becoming its enthusiastic spokesman. At a business dinner, he declared that accident insurance was "the noblest field for human effort" and that he now looked upon cripples "with affectionate interest-as an advertisement." Unfortunately, after eighteen months, the company collapsed, and he lost $23,000 ($495,000 today).
In spring 1877, with $23,000 in hand, Twain was invited to witness a demonstration of a new invention at the Hartford Courant. The inventor's agent offered him shares, but he declined, having sworn off "wildcat speculation." He kept reducing the price, eventually offering "a whole hatful" for $500. That invention was the telephone, representing Bell Telephone Company. By December, its share price had risen from $110 to $995. Meanwhile, an old Hartford dry-goods clerk who invested his life savings of $5,000 was soon "driving around in a sumptuous barouche" while handling greenbacks "with a shovel." It's strange how "the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and deserving fail."
Despite refusing to invest, Twain installed "the first telephone ever used in a private house in the world" later that year. He found it useful for business, "like adding a hundred servants to one's staff for a cent apiece," and for summoning doctors. Yet he also considered it a "profanity-breeding" source of endless interruption.
His next business partner was Frank Fuller, an old friend from Virginia City. Fuller's latest venture was the Vaporizer, a device claiming to extract 99% of the steam from coal. Despite experts scoffing at these claims, Twain invested $5,000 in the New York Vaporizer Company and hired the inventor, H.C. Bowers, at $35 weekly to build a prototype. After "many weeks" and noticing Bowers spent "thirty-six dollars a week on whisky," the finished machine saved only 1% of steam-"You could do it with a tea-kettle." Undeterred, Twain invested in another Hartford company with a "new kind of steam pulley" that "pulled thirty-two thousand dollars out of my pocket in sixteen months."
With their finances dwindling from failed investments and the Panic of 1873 reducing Livy's coal business income, they could no longer maintain their Hartford lifestyle. In April 1878, they closed their mansion and sailed for Germany, spending eighteen months renting across Europe while Twain worked on "A Tramp Abroad."
Capítulo 10
The Publishing Gambit
Impressed with his nephew Charley Webster's work uncovering fraud in another failed venture, Twain made him his business manager. In early 1884, dissatisfied with established publishers after "ten years of swindlings," Twain formed Charles L. Webster & Company, Publishers. He installed Webster as titular head, believing he could increase profits by eliminating middlemen. Their first publication would be "Huckleberry Finn," which Twain had been working on since 1876 but kept setting aside for various distractions-particularly his inventions, which he considered "greater than literature."
Twain spent twelve years perfecting his historical board game, longer than writing Huckleberry Finn itself. The game awarded points for children's recall of English history events, with Orion researching names and dates while Twain's writing was "quite forgotten." When finally marketed in 1891, stores only took it on consignment. Players found it "too complicated" and "tedious"-"a cross between an income tax form and a table of logarithms."
After his daughter Jean's birth in 1880, Twain became fixated on preventing infants from kicking off their bedsheets and catching cold. Upon discovering a similar device already patented, he bought out the company to substitute his own "more expensive & more convenient" version. Marketing wisdom be damned-he'd charge more than competitors, raising his price from $1.15 to "$2.25 each for the small size, & $3 for the large." Webster finally spoke up after meeting manufacturers: "You haven't asked my opinion, but... I have no doubt that it will prove a failure."
When Twain learned General Grant was writing his Civil War memoirs after losing his fortune to dishonest business partners, he was determined to publish them through his company. Grant had verbally promised them to Century Company for a mere 10% royalty with no advance. Twain visited him and declared their offer underestimated the book's "commercial magnitude"-it should sell "not less than a quarter of a million" copies. Twain offered 20% royalty or 70% of net returns. Grant, dying of throat cancer, signed with Webster & Company in February 1885. After his death, the two-volume memoirs earned his widow over $400,000-about $8 million today-while Twain made $200,000. Combined with Huckleberry Finn's success, he was now "totally free from debt" and "frightened by the proportions of my prosperity. It seems that whatever I touch turns to gold."
Capítulo 11
The Typesetting Machine Obsession
A Hartford jeweler approached Twain in his billiard room study about investing in James W. Paige's revolutionary typesetting machine. Though initially skeptical-he knew from his printer's experience that "a successful typesetting machine was an impossibility" because "a machine cannot be made to think"-he was willing to take a small chance. Upon meeting the "bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed" Paige at the Colt Armory, Twain was impressed despite his reservations. Paige was a masterful salesman who "could persuade a fish to come out and take a walk with him."
The Paige Compositor was a marvel of complexity-5,000 pounds with 18,000 parts and a 109-key keyboard operated by one man. When working, it set type six times faster than humans, didn't "get drunk" or "join the Printer's Union." Twain calculated enormous profits-if just 1,000 of 11,000 newspapers adopted it, they'd make $2.5 million. He dismissed warnings about competing machines like Mergenthaler's Linotype, convinced of Paige's superiority.
His initial $2,000 investment grew to $3,000 monthly payments. Despite his neighbor Frank Whitmore warning the contract "can bankrupt you," Twain remained confident: "I can get a thousand men worth a million apiece to go in with me." His calculations "never ran short of millions, and frequently approached the billion mark." But as Paige kept redesigning and perfecting, Twain's investment reached $80,000 ($1,950,000 today), forcing his family to "scrimp." Finally, on January 5, 1889, he witnessed the machine justify a line of type and declared it "the most marvelous invention ever contrived by man."
Capítulo 12
The Publishing Empire Crumbles
There were other projects besides the Paige Compositor occupying Twain's attention. Just after Huckleberry Finn sold out and Grant's widow received her royalty checks, he sent Charley Webster to Rome to finalize details for their next big publishing venture-an authorized biography of Pope Leo XIII. Twain couldn't contain his excitement about this project's potential. The target market was immense-every Catholic in Christendom would not only want it but must buy it "as he hoped to be saved."
Despite the promising start, the Pope's biography failed spectacularly. Published in 1887, it fell far short of the promised 100,000 copies. Howells realized their fundamental miscalculation: "We did not consider how often Catholics could not read, how often when they could, they might not wish to read." Leo XIII had only been pope for nine years-not enough time for a compelling life story.
Similarly disappointing was their deal with Henry Ward Beecher, the famous and controversial pastor who'd been involved in a sensational adultery scandal. Twain signed him for a $5,000 advance, anticipating profits of $750,000. But Beecher died just weeks after signing, leaving them with $100,000 already spent on paper and materials.
The company struggled to duplicate Grant's success. War memoirs no longer sold well, and many of their titles-from sermon collections to "One Hundred Ways of Cooking Eggs" to "The Speech of Monkeys"-failed to excite customers. Even their prestigious eleven-volume "Library of American Literature" proved financially disastrous-each set cost $22 more to produce and sell than the initial payment they received, with many customers stopping payments on their installments. As Fred Hall explained, "The faster installment orders came in, the faster our capital shrank, until our prosperity became embarrassing." Meanwhile, Twain kept diverting profits to the Paige Compositor, making their business model unsustainable.
Capítulo 13
Bankruptcy and Redemption
The Chicago Herald's sixty-day trial of the Paige Compositor began on September 20, 1894. From Paris, Twain eagerly awaited updates. Initially, the machine seemed to perform magnificently, suggesting the Mergenthaler backers "will come and want to hitch teams with us." But Rogers soon reported the trial wasn't going well after all. Our machine, while undoubtedly speedy, was error-prone. Type broke frequently. Paige himself had to be summoned for repairs because the machine proved so complex that no one else understood how to fix glitches.
By late November, reports on the Paige Compositor only worsened. The machine still wasn't performing as hoped, making Twain doubt the entire enterprise and himself. Rogers would emerge fine, but Twain wouldn't. When news arrived from Chicago, he braced himself, knowing that "if Mr. Rogers finds it wise and best to remove his supports from under that machine, your fine ten-year-old dream will blow away like a mist and you will land in the poor house sure."
A few days before Christmas came the news Twain dreaded: Rogers decided the Paige Compositor was a bust. His money was out of the deal. Without his investment, the company would have to dissolve.
Though inevitable, Rogers's decision "knocked every rag of sense out of my head," sending Twain "flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing." Only one clear thought emerged from the "crazy storm-drift"-that his ten-year dream was in desperate peril.
Rogers took the long view. The Paige Compositor "was a marvelous invention," he admitted, suggesting it might only be practical in some future when machines could be more human-like. "It was the earliest approach to a human being in the wonderful things it could do of any machine I had ever known. But that was just the trouble; it was too much of a human being and not enough of a machine."
The grand plan for recovery was for Twain to embark on a world tour, lecturing to paying crowds for a year, with stops in Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. Despite dreading the lecture circuit, Twain saw no alternative. The tour was a huge success, with at least a thousand people attending each appearance. Their finances improved with earnings from lectures and books including Puddin'head Wilson, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Joan of Arc.
By January 1898, Rogers informed them they were debt-free with $12,000-$13,000 left over. When Twain returned to America in October 1900, the press celebrated him as a hero who had "shown that the American standard of honor goes far beyond the standard set by the law."
Capítulo 14
Final Ventures and Legacy
When William Dean Howells saw Twain and Livy after their world tour, they appeared ten years younger, radiating what Livy called a "renewed youth." Twain attributed their good health to Plasmon, a powdered food supplement he'd discovered in Vienna. He claimed three pounds of Plasmon equaled 100 pints of milk nutritionally, and that a pound "contains the nutriment of 16 lbs. of beef" while being "no trouble to digest."
By 1900, Twain invested $12,500 in a British Plasmon company, becoming its president and moving to London. Though initially successful, shipping eight tons monthly with quarterly dividends of $1,500, Rogers remained skeptical. In 1902, Twain formed American Plasmon Company with $25,000 of his own money, but by 1904 admitted it was "one of those investments of mine that I am ashamed of." By 1907, the company was bankrupt with just $13.08 in its account, and Twain acknowledged losing about $32,000 total. "I was always bad in business," he confessed, though later amended this to being "only half a good business man."
When Twain died in 1910, his estate was appraised at over $470,000 (about $11 million today), including $200,000 in Mark Twain Company shares and worthless Plasmon stock. By 1964, two years after his surviving daughter Clara's death, the estate was worth nearly $980,000 ($7.6 million today). His books continue selling, with Huckleberry Finn regularly appearing in-and being banned from-high school curricula, only to be "always readmitted."
What lessons can we learn from Twain's financial misadventures? Not much, perhaps. The value in studying his life isn't to extract simplistic business advice but to expand one's imagination and appreciate life's complexity and humor. What's puzzling is how someone who understood human nature so well could be repeatedly misled by wishful thinking.
Twain himself saw little wisdom in his business career. "I cannot say that I have turned out the great businessman that I thought I was when I began life," he told Eastern Business College alumni in 1901, "But I am comparatively young yet, and may learn." After reflecting on his failures with Kaolotype, the Paige Compositor, and book publishing, he offered his final business axiom: "to succeed in business... avoid my example."
Ironically, John Marshall Clemens might have been right about the Tennessee land making the family rich after all. The family owned at least 30,000 acres, which John Clemens purchased between 1826 and 1841 for $400 (about $9,260 today). Recent land records from Fentress County show that in 2016, a parcel of 1,912 acres with mineral rights sold for $2,453 per acre. Had the Twain family kept their 30,000 acres until today and sold them at that price, they would have been worth at least $74 million-making them "fabulously wealthy" just as John Clemens predicted.
