SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 37 (of 78)
Making It in the Big Apple (1867)
Chapter 37
Making It in the Big Apple (1867)
Soon after arriving in New York, I lectured at Cooper Union, the largest hall in the city. This venture did not bring in much capital, but the large crowd and good reviews did enhance my reputation and propel my career, which led to my being picked up by Redpath and embarking on the first of many lecture tours throughout the region.
I had quit the West in a huff over that fake holdup on the bleak hilltop in Nevada, but if not for that, I may not have headed east as smartly as I did. And if I had not headed east so promptly, perhaps I would have never boarded the Quaker City, bound for Europe and the Holy Land. Who knows how differently my life may have turned out without that dastardly practical joke?
EDITOR’S NOTES: In Twain’s autobiography, he wrote about the Cooper Union lecture and its aftermath:
I certainly did get a working quantity of fame out of that lecture. The New York newspapers praised it. The country newspapers copied those praises. The lyceums of the country—it was right in the heyday of the old lyceum lecture system—began to call for me. I put myself in Redpath’s hands and I caught the tail end of the lecture season. I went West and lectured every night for six or eight weeks at a hundred dollars a night—and I now considered that the whole of the prophecy was fulfilled. I had acquired fame and also fortune. I don’t believe these details are right but I don’t care a rap. They will do just as well as the facts. What I mean to say is that I don’t know whether I made that lecturing excursion in that year or whether it was the following year. But the main things is that I made it.
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The “Redpath” mentioned here is lecture agent James Redpath, who had previously aligned himself with radical abolitionist John Brown, campaigning with him in the pre-Civil War “Bleeding Kansas” days of the 1850s, and thereafter penning a biography of Brown.
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.