Kevin--

Regarding your assessment of Doten as "perhaps the most reliable source," I have to wonder if you're stretching his credibility a little out of shape.

In Robert Stewart's quoted excerpt, Doten asserts that "'Mark Twain' ... did succeed, however, in visiting the Whitman mine, which lies in the opposite direction from the brewery."  Would this Whitman mine be the same as the elusive Whiteman cement mine referenced in _Roughing It_?  If so, Mark Twain says that he never found it, nor did anyone else, including Whiteman who wandered the territory with a questionable map acquired from the last surviving claimant of that mine.  Indeed, Twain magnifies the joke of the "blind lead" by having Higbie neglecting the work required to secure their claim while Mark Twain was nursing Captain Nye, stricken by spasmodic rheumatism.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we take Twain's version as gospel, but Doten's suggestion that Twain visited the "Whitman mine"(if it's the same one that Twain calls the "Whiteman mine") seems a deliberate effect of absurdity that folks in the region who knew the history of this mythical lode would have recognized.

--LH

Larry Howe
Professor of English & Film Studies
Department of Literature and Languages
Roosevelt University
Editor, Studies in American Humor
President, Mark Twain Circle of America




________________________________________
From: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Mac Donnell Rare Books <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2019 10:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Twain and Como Beer

[Sent by an External User]

It was, of course, Alf Doten who later admitted to Joe Goodman (Twain's
editor at the Enterprise) that he (and Twain) were behind the hilarious
bar-tab hoax. I provide a quote and citation in my essay. Joe Goodman
has proven a reliable source, and Bob, who knows waaaaay more about Alf
Doten and Nevada history than I will ever know, I think would agree that
Doten is one of the most reliable sources of information on that period
in Nevada's history--perhaps the most reliable. Anybody who has not read
Doten's published diaries should treat themselves to a few hours in the
hammock reading those stout tomes.

Kevin
@
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------ Original Message ------
From: "Robert STEWART" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 8/29/2019 10:19:54 AM
Subject: Twain and Como Beer

>In a recent Twain Journal, Kevin MacDonnell mentioned Alf Doten in connection with discussion of Clemens' 1863 decision to write under the name Mark Twain.The two journalists first met in 1864, when Twain of the Enterprise visited the mining camp of Como, where Doten was the Como correspondent for the Virginia Daily Union.
>Now a ghost town, in the 1860s Como was a well established mining camp in the Palmyra Mining District of Territorial Nevada. It was located in the low mountains southeast of Virginia City. As pointed out by MacDonnell, Doten mentions Mark Twain's visit in his heavily edited Diaries, published in the 1970s by the University of Nevada Press. Now UNR Special Collections, the agency that holds the extensive Doten papers, is transcribing all of them to put the entire file online. One part of that collection will Doten's 1863-64 columns from the Union, chief competitor of the Enterprise. In his Union column of April 13, 1864, Doten mentions Twain's visit, writing as follows:
>[T]he Como Brewery still continues to produce that immortal nectar in the way of lager, of which the iniquitous "Mark Twain" was so evidently enamored during his visit here, a short time ago. Poor fellow ! he attempted many times to go out and inspect the mines, that he might report upon them, but humbly acknowledges that he could never "get past the brewery," where he sat and drank "gallons and gallons." He did succeed, however, in visiting the Whitman mine, which lies in the opposite direction from the brewery.
>