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Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), 1912 or 1913, Oil on canvas by John White Alexander

Excerpts from Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volumes 2 and 3, edited by Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith, forthcoming from the University of California Press.

    From the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 June 1906.

    There have been some large vacancies in this work of mine. Early in April came the great irruption of Vesuvius and electrified the world. After the lapse of perhaps a week, we began to get the elaborate particulars, along with photographs that made them understandable. My first thought was, "Here is a chance to show that old news is quite as interesting as fresh news, provided it shall come in the form of a narrative furnished by an eye-witness." I thought I would get the account by the Younger Pliny of the overwhelming of Herculaneum and Pompeii in A.D. 79 and put it in this book, where it would be, and remain, interesting, as long as the book might last. But straightway the thing happened which I might have known would happen--the newspapers came out with the Younger Pliny's narrative. It not only happened now, but it will happen again and again every time there is a great irruption of Vesuvius, so long as newspapers and magazines continue to exist, until Vesuvius shall go permanently dry--even though it be a hundred thousand years.

    So there was no occasion to put the Younger Pliny into this book. He will always be heard from when the occasion comes, without need of help from me. I was dictating about other matters at the time, and trying hard to catch up to the current date. Therefore I allowed that irruption to wait until I could get a proper chance at it. But meantime I went on collecting and preserving, day after day, the daily accounts of the progress of the irruption, and, therewith, the pictures forwarded by eye-witnesses.

    But before in my dictating I was able to catch up and begin on the irruption, came the mighty news of the obliteration of San Francisco by earthquake and fire, and Vesuvius vanished instantly and completely from my interest and from the interest of the world. San Francisco filled the whole world, from horizon to horizon, and there was no more Vesuvius. Never in all history, I suppose, was a world-interest so suddenly and so completely extinguished.

    The first hint of the disaster which had befallen San Francisco reached me in such an extravagant form that I took it for an impudent invention, and it did not hold my attention ten minutes. It came to me by telephonic message from a friend down in the city. He simply said: "San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake at five o'clock this morning. Two thousand lives lost." But by nightfall "extra" after "extra" began to appear and the news to take on the semblance of reality. Certain definite details were furnished. The next morning's papers contained news of a convincing character--although there was not much of it, for the reason that the earthquake and the fire together had almost totally abolished railway and telegraphic communication with San Francisco from the outside.

    I began to accumulate pictures and narratives again. I threw away all my Vesuvian accumulations to make room for the San Franciscan collections. But in a few days these had become a mountain, and the thing was hopeless. I destroyed my San Franciscan accumulations and stopped harvesting that kind of material. It occurred to me that there were certain good reasons why I could properly and wisely excuse myself from becoming a historian of that disaster. It happened to occur to me that inasmuch as this was the only instance in history of the destruction of a very great city by fire and earthquake, it would stand alone among disasters, conspicuous, awful, sublime, forever visible to men, forever unforgetable--and would so remain even if the aid of the book and the newspaper were denied it. However, this aid would not be wanting. No, it will have that help for all time to come. A thousand years from now there will still be whole libraries about the destruction of San Francisco. There will still be acres of pictures--photographic and authentic--illustrating the disaster. I recognize that I can quite safely leave San Francisco out of this book, and that is what I shall do.