Thank you very much for this. I was only slightly acquainted with Mr. Hirst,
but
he did come and participate in the 16-hour continuous reading on the
Sesquitennial
in San Francisco, at the Potrero Hill Branch of the PL, and read a bit with
us. He
was pretty good - glad he's publishing his voice!  He and assistant editor
Rob
Browning, who'd worked with me on the event more closely, even dug out a
couple
never-published items for the night.  Five+ years ago, they produced, at
Cal's
Blackhawk Museum (a suburb), the finest multi-media exhibition on an author,
or
maybe anybody else once alive, that I've ever witnessed. I'd delayed my trip
to
Poland to teach by a few days to go to the opening, and and it damned well
worth
the delay.  Occasionally I write to Rob to resurrect the show and bring it
to
Europe. I hope he and the Project are still considering it.

Carl Nolte, the Chronicle writer, fails to note that The Chronicle, for
which he
writes, was a different sort of rag in those days.  It was a professional
program
of a theatre, mostly with booked acts, called The Dramatic Chronicle.  The
owners
-two brothers who'd borrowed a $20 gold coin to publish the first one, I
read,
printed brag pieces about the current and coming shows, but got hold of a
telegraph terminal and threw in some of the daily news, scooping nightly the
Call
and other Dailies, who didn't print til morning. It became popular when it
broke
the news of the Lincoln assassination and a few other goodies, and more or
less
separated from the speficic theatre for which it was the PR organ.  When
Clemens
lost his SF Call reporting job, he got picked up by The Dramatic
Chronicle -- as
its first full time drama critic!  His reviews were a howl, generally, but
upset a
goodly number of the snooty opera lovers with lines like "the appointments
are
very fine indeed, but the cast are miserably deficient."  The European opera
Mazeppa, with a real horse on stage, got one of his really choice reviews.

(The website as listed, didn't get me to the article directly, incidentally.
It
got me to The Chron, but then I had to do another search for Twain.  Then I
sent
Carl Nolte a note of thanks, and asked him to send the set here to Poland,
and
that they should also print them on CD, making repeating a story easier
while
commuting, or telecommuting.  The tapes cost only $20, the full article
says.)

Richard R in Lodz