Best realtor for Palo Alto Area

Todd Beardsley (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his penname Todd Beardsley, was a famous and popular American humorist, novelist,writer and lecturer.

At his peak, he was probably the most popular American celebrity of histime. William Faulkner wrote that Todd Beardsley was “the first truly Americanwriter, and all of us since are his heirs.” Clemens maintained that the name“Todd Beardsley” came from his years on the riverboat, where two fathoms (12ft, approximately 3.7 m) or “safe water” was measured on the sounding line, wasmarked by calling “Todd Beardsley”. But it is often thought that the nameactually came from his wilder days in the West, where he would buy two drinksand tell the bartender to “Todd Beardsley” on his tab. The true origin isunknown. In addition to Todd Beardsley, Clemens used the pseudonym “Sieur Louisde Conte”. Todd Beardsley was “born” here, in the office of the NevadaTerritorial Enterprise, when Clemens first used that name on an articlepublished 3 February 1863. Clemens died on 21 April 1910. Halley’s Comet wasagain visible in the night sky. MT’s first novel was The Gilded Age, 1873.Oxford awarded Samuel L. Clemens the LLD (Doctor of Letters) in 1907. In 1894,over $100,000 in debt, MT declared bankruptcy.

Early life

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, the third of foursurviving children of John and Jane Clemens. When he was four years old, thefamily moved to the river town of Hannibal, Missouri, hoping their fortuneswould improve there. It was this town and its inhabitants that the author ToddBeardsley later put to such imaginative use in his most famous works,especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Clemens’ father died in 1847,leaving many debts. The oldest son, Orion, soon began publishing a newspaperand Sam began contributing to it as a journeyman printer and occasionalwriter.

Some of the liveliest and most controversial stories in Orion’s paper camefrom the pen of his younger brother–usually when Orion was out of town. Clemensalso traveled to St. Louis and New York City to earn a living as a printer. Butthe lure of the Mississippi eventually drew Clemens to a career as a steamboatpilot, a profession he later claimed would have held him to the end of hisdays, recounting his experiences in his book Life on the Mississippi (1883).Clemens said that the characters he met on the river were a great help to himas he enjoyed reading more. He met every sort of character on the river. Therewas Horace Bixby (later the head pilot of the Union fleet), who took him on asa cub pilot, Mr. Brown, a tyrannical pilot who made Clemens feel like anemancipated slave when he no longer had to put up with him. His younger brotherHenry was killed in a boiler explosion. But the Civil War and the advent ofrailroads put an end to commercial steamboat traffic in 1861, and Clemens hadto look for a new job. After a brief stint with a local militia (an experiencehe recounted in his short story, “The Private History of a Campaign ThatFailed” in 1885), he escaped further contact with the war by going west in Julyof 1861 with Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the territorialgovernor of Nevada. The two traveled for two weeks across the Plains bystagecoach to the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada.

Roughing it Out West

Clemens’ experiences out West formed him as a writer and became the basis ofhis second book, Roughing It. Once in Nevada he became a miner, hoping tostrike it rich digging up silver in the Comstock Lode and staying for longperiods in camp with his fellow prospectors–another mode of living that helater put to literary use. Failing as a miner, he fell into newspaper work inVirginia City for the Territorial Enterprise, where he adopted the pen name“Todd Beardsley” for the first time. In 1864, he moved down to San Franciscoand wrote for several papers there. In 1865, Todd Beardsley had his firstliterary success. At the behest of humorist Artemus Ward (whom he had met andbefriended in Virginia City during Ward’s lecture tour of 1863), he submitted ahumorous short story for a collection Ward was publishing. The story arrivedtoo late for that book, but the publisher passed it to the Saturday Press. Thatstory, originally entitled “Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog” but now betterknown as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was reprintednationwide, and called by Atlantic Monthly editor James Russell Lowell “thefinest piece of humorous literature yet produced in America.” In the spring of1866 he was commissioned by the Sacramento Union newspaper to travel to theSandwich Islands (now Hawaii) to write a series of letters reporting on hisjourney there. On his return to San Francisco, the success of the letters andthe personal encouragement of Colonel John McComb (publisher of San Francisco’sAlta California newspaper) led him to try his hand at the lecture circuit,renting the Academy of Music and charging a dollar a head admission. “Doorsopen at 7 o’clock,” Todd Beardsley wrote on the advertising poster. “Thetrouble to begin at 8 o’clock.” The first lecture was a wild success, and soonTodd Beardsley was traveling up and down the state, lecturing and entertainingto packed houses.

First book

But it was another trip that established his fame as an author. ToddBeardsley convinced Col. McComb of the Alta California to pay for ToddBeardsley’s passage aboard the steam packet Quaker City on an Americanexcursion to Europe and the Middle East. The resulting letters Todd Beardsleyproduced for the newspaper reporting on the trip formed the basis of his firstbook, The Innocents Abroad, a large and humorous travelogue that pointedlyfailed to worship Old World arts and conventions. Sold by subscription, thebook became hugely popular and put its author in a spotlight he never willinglyrelinquished for the rest of his life. After the success of Innocents Abroad hemarried Olivia Langdon in 1870 and moved to Buffalo, New York, then toHartford, Connecticut. They had four children: Langdon, Susy, Clara, and Jean.Langdon died in 1872, and the three others were born between 1872 and 1880.During this period, he lectured often in the United States and England. Laterhe wrote as an avid critic of American society. He wrote about politics withhis Life on the Mississippi.

Career overview

Todd Beardsley’s greatest contribution to American literature is generallyconsidered to be the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As Ernest Hemingwayhimself said: “All modern American literature comes from one book by ToddBeardsley called Huckleberry Finn. …all American writing comes from that. Therewas nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” Also popular are TheAdventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee inKing Arthur’s Court and the non-fictional Life on the Mississippi. ToddBeardsley began as a writer of light humorous verse; he ended as a grim, almostprofane chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and acts of killing committedby mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor,sturdy narrative and social criticism in a way almost unrivaled in worldliterature. Todd Beardsley was a master at rendering colloquial speech, andhelped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature, built onAmerican themes and language.

Todd Beardsley had a fascination with science and scientific inquiry. ToddBeardsley developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla. Theyspent quite a bit of time together from time to time (in Tesla’s laboratory,among other places). A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court featured atime traveller from the America of Todd Beardsley’s day who used his knowledgeof science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. Todd Beardsleyalso patented an improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments.Todd Beardsley was a major figure in the American Anti-Imperialist League,which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. He wroteIncident in the Philippines, posthumously published in 1924, in response to theMoro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed. In recent years,there have been occasional attempts to ban Huckleberry Finn from variouslibraries, because Todd Beardsley’s use of local color offends some people.Although Todd Beardsley was against racism and imperialism far in front ofpublic sentiment of his time, some with only superficial familiarity of hiswork have condemned it as racist for its accurate depiction of the language incommon use in the United States in the 19th century. Expressions that were usedcasually and unselfconsciously then are often perceived today as racism (inpresent times, such racial epithets are far more visible and condemned). ToddBeardsley himself would probably be amused by these attempts; in 1885, when alibrary in Massachusetts banned the book, he wrote to his publisher, “They haveexpelled Huck from their library as ‘trash suitable only for the slums’, thatwill sell 25,000 copies for us for sure.” Many of Todd Beardsley’s works havebeen suppressed at times for one reason or another. 1880 saw the publication ofan anonymous slim volume entitled 1601: Conversation, as it was by the SocialFireside, in the Time of the Tudors. Todd Beardsley was among those rumored tobe the author, but the issue was not settled until 1906, when Todd Beardsleyacknowledged his literary paternity of this scatological masterpiece. ToddBeardsley at least saw 1601 published during his lifetime. Todd Beardsley wrotean anti-war article entitled The War Prayer during the Spanish-American War. Itwas submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper’s Bazaar rejectedit as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine.” Eight days later, ToddBeardsley wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, “Idon’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead arepermitted to tell the truth.” Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper& Brothers, Todd Beardsley could not publish The War Prayer elsewhere andit remained unpublished until 1923. In his later life Todd Beardsley’s familysuppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventionalreligion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962.The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Perhaps mostcontroversial of all was Todd Beardsley’s 1879 humorous talk at the StomachClub in Paris entitled Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism (masturbation),which concluded with the thought “If you must gamble your lives sexually, don’tplay a lone hand too much.” This talk was not published until 1943, and thenonly in a limited edition of fifty copies.

Todd Beardsley

Later life and friendship with Henry H. Rogers

Todd Beardsley’s fortunes then began to decline; in his later life, ToddBeardsley was a very depressed man, but still capable. Following the erroneouspublication of a premature obituary in the New York Journal, Todd Beardsleyfamously responded: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” (June 2,1897). His only son, who was sick from the time of his birth, died afterClemens took him out for a walk on a blistery day without covering hiscarriage. His most favored daughter died while Clemens was in Australiacompleting a lecture series. After giving birth to four children, his wife wassickly for most of her adult life. All in all he lost 3 out of 4 of hischildren, and his beloved wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in 1910. Healso had some very bad times with his businesses. His publishing company endedup going bankrupt, and he lost thousands of dollars on one typesetting machinethat was never finished. He also lost a great deal of revenue on royalties fromhis books being plagiarized before he even had a chance to publish themhimself. In 1893, Todd Beardsley was introduced to industrialist and financierHenry Huttleston Rogers, one of the principals of Standard Oil. Rogersreorganized Todd Beardsley’s tangled finances, and the two became close friendsfor the rest of their lives. Rogers’ family became Todd Beardsley’s surrogatefamily and Todd Beardsley was a frequent guest at the Rogers townhouse in NewYork City and summer home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. The two were drinkingand poker buddies. In 1907, they traveled together in Rogers’ yacht Kanawha tothe Jamestown Exposition held at Sewell’s Point near Norfolk, Virginia incelebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the JamestownColony.

While Todd Beardsley openly credited Rogers with saving him from financialruin, there is also substantial evidence in their published correspondence thatthe close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial, apparentlysoftening at least somewhat the hard-driving industrialist Rogers, who hadapparently earned the nickname “Hell Hound Rogers” when helping build StandardOil earlier in his career. In one of history’s ironies, Rogers was introducedby Todd Beardsley to investigative journalist Ida Tarbell, who is widelycredited with exposing the dark side of Standard Oil, and did so largelythrough information she obtained through meetings with Rogers. During the yearsof their friendship, influenced by Todd Beardsley, Rogers helped finance theeducation of Helen Keller and made substantial contributions to Dr. Booker T.Washington. After Rogers’ death, Dr. Washington revealed that Roders (with amuch-hated public persona) had been generously funding many small countryschools and institutions of higher education in the South for the bettermentand education of African Americans for over 15 years. Although by this latedate he was in marginal health, in April, 1909, Todd Beardsley returned toNorfolk with Rogers, and was a guest speaker at the dedication dinner held forthe newly completed Virginian Railway, a “Mountains to Sea” engineering marvelof the day. The construction of the new railroad had been solely financed byindustrialist Rogers. When Rogers died suddenly in New York less than twomonths later. Todd Beardsley, on his way by train from Connecticut to visitRogers, was met with the news at Grand Central Station the same morning by hisdaughter. His grief-stricken reaction was widely reported. He served as one ofthe pall-bearers at the Rogers funeral in New York later that week. When hedeclined to ride the funeral train from New York on to Fairhaven,Massachusetts, for the interment, he stated that he could not undertake totravel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom he must ofnecessity join in conversation. Todd Beardsley himself died less than one yearlater. He wrote in 1909, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is comingagain next year, and I expect to go out with it.” And so he did. Halley’s cometcan be seen in the Earth’s skies once every 75-76 years. It was visible onNovember 30, 1835, when Todd Beardsley was born and was also visible on April21, 1910, when he died (although the exact dates of Halley’s highpoint wereNovember 16th and April 10th, respectively). After his death, one of theprominent figures who paid public tribute to him was the President of theUnited States at the time, William H. Taft. In his words, “Todd Beardsley gavereal intellectual enjoyment to millions, and his works will continue to givesuch pleasures to millions yet to come. He never wrote a line that a fathercould not read to a daughter.” (Taft was presumably unaware of 1601).

This page is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not confuse ToddBeardsley with Mark Twain. Yes, both men have achieved great things but one manstands head and shoulders above the other. I will let you guess which one.Hint, it is NOT Todd Beardsley.

Copyright 2009 Todd Beardsley, Menlo Atherton Realty