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July 22, 2009
Twainical Archaeology
I was looking around for some abnormal archaeological doings when I found that archaeologists were digging in Mark Twain's old stomping grounds, indeed a place where he lectured a couple of times, Thomas Maguire's Opera House in Virginia City.
“Maguire opened one of the West's most important theaters in July 1863,” said state historic preservation officer Ron James. “Mark Twain rushed back from San Francisco to Virginia City so he could attend the premier act, which featured the best actors of the day including a brother of the future presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth.”Maguire operated his theater for several years before John Piper, a local businessman and politician, purchased it in 1867. Piper turned the institution into an important cultural venue. Twain lectured twice on the stage during 1866 and 1868 visits to his former home. Many other internationally-known acts appeared at the Maguire-Piper Theater before it burned during the great fire of 1875. At that point, Piper relocated the institution to the corner of B and Union streets. The facility that still operates there dates to 1885. [Nevada Appeal]
Writing from Virginia City for the San Francisco Daily Morning Call on July 5, 1863 (published July 9, 1863), Mark Twain said this about Thomas Maguire's Opera House,
Maguire has erected a spacious and beautiful theatre on D street, exactly after the pattern of the Opera House in San Francisco, and it is nightly crowded with admirers of Mr. Mayo, Mrs. Hayne, and other "theatricides," whose names are familiar to Californians.
Archaeologists are also digging at another old Virginia City site, "the Barbary Coast, a place of vice and crime during the 1860s and 1870s.[Nevada Appeal]" How much time Mark Twain spent in this area of Virginia City is unknown.
This is the second season of work at Virginia City's Barbary Coast. Here's what Ron James said about it in August of 2008, "It was described as one of the raunchiest areas imaginable in comments from the 1870s. There was drug use and prostitution. It was where the seediest washouts of society hung out." On whether Mark Twain frequented the area James reflected, "It's the kind of a place where, if you were a young, single male, you would go just to see, it seems to me."
Take a look at the whole July 22, 2009 Nevada Appeal article and the August 4, 2008 Las Vegas Review-Journal piece.
Two Mark Twain posts in a row! Now that may be verging on unseemly hero-worship again.
Posted by Duane Smith at July 22, 2009 1:59 PM | Read more on Mark Twain |
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