1226
Bob Howland, Friend of Mark Twain, Signed Nevada Territory Prison Letter [197039]
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Category:Collectibles / Paper
Start Price:250.00 USD
Estimated At:500.00 - 1,000.00 USD
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Fantastic three page document from Mark Twain’s friend Robert M. Howland. Letter was written in 1864 when he was the warden of the territorial prison at Warm Springs in Carson City.
"Bob Howland” is mentioned by name in Roughing It. In that narrative, in the fall of 1861 Bob awoke when the wind slammed a shed roof into the O'Flannigan boarding house where he and the protagonist were living. When Bob sat up in bed he knocked down a collection of Tarantulas! In those pre-electric days, the room was pitch black and pandemonium reigned. Twain recounts:
"The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?—proud? Indeed, they would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. There was as usual a furious "zephyr" blowing the first night of the brigade's return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew off, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H-- sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly he shouted:
"Turn out, boys—the tarantulas is loose!"
No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence—a silence of grisly suspense it was, too—waiting, expectancy, fear. It was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or changes of position. The occasional voices were not given to much speaking—you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of "Ow!" followed by a solid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:
"Su—su—something's crawling up the back of my neck!"
Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a sorrowful "O Lord!" and then you knew that somebody was getting away from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear:
"I've got him! I've got him!" [Pause, and probable change of circumstances.] "No, he's got me! Oh, ain't they never going to fetch a lantern!"
The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O'Flannigan, whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a larger contract.
The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us. Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the semblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every time I touched anything that was furry I fancied I felt the fangs. I had rather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had "got him" was mistaken—only a crack in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go back to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy." (Chapter XXI of Roughing It).
That was the version in Roughing It which Twain wrote in 1870. A few years earlier Twain had written a quick note in his journal remembering the night Bob Howland came in drunk and knocked down Will Wagner’ shelf of Tarantulas and Scorpions.
Howland and Twain shared a cabin in Aurora during Twain's (then just Sam Clemens) brief try at mining when he arrived in Nevada territory.
Bob Howland was one of those men who was a friend of anyone he met. One of these was Nevada Territorial Governor James W. Nye. Nye appointed Bob as warden for the state prison at the hot springs east of Carson City. Howland is described in Thompson & West's History of Nevada (1881) on pg. 546. They recount a story of his time as warden:
"Bob had then the same reputation for levity that he now enjoys, and when he became Warden the prisoners thought they would have an easy time of it, but were disappointed, as Bob looked well after the discipline of the prison, and not a prisoner escaped during his term of office. George Kirk, a notorious character, was sentenced in 1864 to imprisonment for highway robbery. The first morning of his stay in the penitentiary he refused to come out of his cell and ''fall in line" with the other prisoners. This is how Howland subdued Kirk: The Warden quietly ordered his cell door closed, and the other prisoners were marched '' left hand on next man's shoulder " to breakfast. Kirk, in the meantime, was raving, and loudly cursing, and defying the Warden or any other to even try to make him come out, until he felt disposed to. The Warden quietly went to the blacksmith shop, procured a bar of steel about twelve feet long, and had it heated for about four feet on one end to a red heat, and as quietly came back with it to cell No. 5. He again ordered Kirk to come out and 'fall in," and was met with the former refusal and violent abuse. The Warden closed the grated door of the cell, and shoved the bar of steel, hot end foremost (which ho had now cooled to a dull color), through the bars. Kirk sprang for and grasped it with both hands with a close grip to wrench it from the Warden. With a howl of pain, as it soared the flesh, he dropped it and retreated, cursing with fierce rage. The Warden, without speaking, swayed the hot bar back and forth in the narrow cell, at times wedging Kirk in a corner, searing his limbs with every touch. Kirk howled with mingled rage and torture, now bounding over it, and again under it. striking his head against the top of the cell and falling back upon the bar, yelling and screeching like a pandemonium turned loose. At last he realized the helplessness of his position and begged for mercy."
In this June 1864 document, Howland reported on purchases made for the inmates. A great piece from a colorful Nevada historical figure with ties to Mark Twain.
^
Date: 1864
Country (if not USA):
State: Nevada
City: Carson City
Provenance:
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