A Nautical Name

The old pilot gazed into the distance.  As his riverboat maneuvered down the mighty Mississippi River, he watched for the riffles that announced the ever changing sandbars which could halt his boat or the snags of floating logs and other trash that could sink it. 

As he watched, his mind turned to more personal matters.  He had begun writing for publication and needed to come up with a name for himself…a name to write under.

He needed a nom de plume.

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The pilot had been hand-writing reports of the river and submitting them to the New Orleans Picayune.  Other riverboat pilots used his reports to help them stay safely aware of the constantly changing waterway.

As he watched the river, the pilot also had to be alert for calls from the leadsman.  The leadsman was the fellow whose job was to sound the river’s depth.  He carried a long line with a lead weight, called a plummet, on the end.  As the boat made its way, he would toss the line out and let it sink, pulling the cord back up until it drew taught, then he would look at the mark on the line that told him how deep the water was.  The marks were traditionally twelve feet apart.  If the depth was between two marks, he would shout, “by the depth” and the estimated measurement.  If it was on, or very close to, a mark he would yell out, “by the mark,” and the measurement.  That number he gave in the nautical measurement, fathoms.  A fathom is six feet, so the marks were 12 feet, or two fathoms apart.

As the pilot did his job conscientiously, he listened to the leadsman and was still able to think about his writing.  He had to be sure the leadsman proclaimed safe depth which, for a riverboat, was 12 feet, that’s two, or twain, fathoms.

When the leadsman called out the minimum safe depth for riverboat travel, he shouted, “by the mark…twain!”

The pilot nodded his head.  He had his nom de plume.  He would write under the pen name, Mark Twain.

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As it happens, around the same time, there was a young man who had been born in Florida, Missouri and had grown up in a town on the shores of the Mississippi.  His imagination had been captured by the life of a riverboat pilot.  It was a job that was fairly easy with a free place to sleep and well above average pay. 

When the youth got old enough, he trained for two years and acquired a job as a riverboat pilot.  During that time he became aware of the writings of Mark Twain, the older pilot.

It didn’t take the young man a long time at that job to decide he wanted to do something different.

In his youth the lad had worked as a printer’s apprentice for his local newspaper, later moving up to typesetter.  His older brother bought the local paper and, eventually, the younger brother began writing articles and humorous pieces for the paper.

The lad heard tales about gold strikes out west and followed the gold bug out west, settling in Virginia City, in the Nevada Territory.  He became disillusioned with the hard work mining required, as well as the fact that he didn’t find enough gold to make it any more tolerable.  Falling back on his early experience working for his brother’s newspaper, he took a job with the Territorial Enterprise, Virginia City’s newspaper.

The pieces he wrote for the Enterprise gained popularity and the young man wrote more and submitted to other newspapers and publishers.

Like the old riverboat pilot, the young journalist decided he needed a pen name.  He wrote many humorous pieces so he first tried using the name “Josh”.  As he gained fame, he changed his nom de plume briefly to “Sieur Louis de Conte” (translates roughly to Mr. Louis Tall Tale) before switching to “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.”

When he wrote some pieces poking gentle fun at the old riverboat pilot, Mark Twain took offense.  In fact, it hurt the old man so much that he stopped writing entirely for the rest of his life. He passed away in 1869.

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The young writer felt bad and wrote about the old man, “The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them ‘Mark Twain,’ and give them to the New Orleans Picayune.  They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable: and thus far, they contained no poison.”

The young man, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, would go on to adopt the old man’s no longer used pen name.  As you know, he has been loved by generations of young people as the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which he published under his final nom de plume, Mark Twain, a name he “inherited” from the older writer.

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So, you see, Captain Isaiah Sellers’s Mark Twain was a writer before Samuel Clemons’s Mark Twain was a writer.  The famous Mark Twain did get his name from the leadsman’s call, “by the mark…twain!” like some of you may have heard, but only indirectly.  Samuel Clemons was not the original writer to use the name Mark Twain.

Most people don’t know that fact, but I do, and now so do you.

But wait, now I want to tell you the rest of the story.

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When Sam Clemons lived in Virginia City, he, like many residents, frequented the Old Corner Saloon.  According to some contemporary patrons of that establishment, the young Clemons would stride into the bar and proclaim, “Mark Twain!” but not to announce his future pen name.  The name/words, that had originally meant a depth of two fathoms, and would become his trademark pen name in a few years were used by him then to announce to the bartender that Sam wanted two shots of whiskey and that the proprietor should chalk up two marks on his ledger, (the back wall of the saloon).  Like so many men in that area and time, Sam would pay off his tab when he got paid.

So, you see, there are at least three stories as to how Mark Twain got his nom de plume, and we may never know which one is the actual fact.  As for me, I like them all and don’t particularly care which one is most true.

OK, twist my arm just a little and I’ll tell you I like the Old Corner Saloon story best.

Just saying.

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Rather than close this post at its logical end, I want to ask if any of you know where the expression nom de plume originated. 

Some of you probably know that there was a time when ink pens were made by using a sharp knife to carve the pointy end of a goose feather (called a quill) into a shape that would hold a drop or two of ink, then deposit a line of it when scratched on paper.

Yes, a quill pen. 

The French word for feather is plume.  Nom is French for name, so nom de plume means name of the feather, or pen. Thus it is the name one uses when writing with the pen…the writer’s pen name.

So I guess the two writers who used the nom de plume Mark Twain could be called birds of a feather.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

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