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Most who knew William Wright, a colleague of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) on Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, believed that of the two, Wright was the most likely to succeed. Instead, Twain went on to achieve immediate national and international fame while Wright, nineteenth-century Nevada’s most important literary figure, slipped into obscurity until recently.
Wright was born in 1829 on a farm in Ohio, to Quaker parents. At eighteen he moved with his family to West Liberty, Iowa. There he married, fathered five children, and published his first literary productions in local newspapers and the Knickerbocker Magazine, a respected periodical published in New York. In 1857, Wright went alone to California to prospect for gold. He was not noticeably successful and, in 1860, went to Nevada, where gold and silver had been discovered on the Comstock Lode. He was not successful mining there either, but the articles and sketches he wrote and published in various regional periodicals such as the Golden Era, San Francisco’s distinguished literary magazine, came to the attention of Joseph Thompson Goodman and Denis McCarthy, co-owners of the Territorial Enterprise. They hired him as a reporter in 1861, just as that newspaper was on the verge of becoming the most important paper on the West Coast. Wright had been experimenting with various pen names, but when he hit upon Dan De Quille, it stuck, and soon all but replaced his true name. De Quille quickly became the most prestigious reporter on the paper. He emerged as an authority on mining, and fellow journalists admired his ability to cover the beat of local news. In addition to journalism, De Quille began a second career writing humorous sketches and works of short fiction. He published some of these in the Golden Era while others became features in the Enterprise. Especially popular were the subtle and entertaining hoaxes he called “quaints” and passed off as news stories in the paper. They consisted of embellishments of impossible or absurd stories with plausible detail until credulous readers fell for it. For example, he invented a story about blind fish found in the scalding water at the deep levels of Comstock mines that died of cold when brought to the surface and put in fresh water. A classic quaint describes how an inventor devised “solar armor,” a contraption like a diving suit with an air conditioning unit attached that would enable a man to walk in comfort even in the hottest and most oppressive climate. According to De Quille, the inventor tested it by attempting to cross Death Valley in the summer. When he did not reach the other side, a search party found him frozen to death with an icicle more than a foot long hanging from his nose. His machine had been too successful, and he had been unable to turn it off. Another noteworthy quaint was “The Traveling Stones of Pahranagat,” about some magnetic stones that, when scattered, arranged themselves in a circle, the last one jumping into the center. P. T. Barnum reputedly offered De Quille $10,000 if he would bring the stones to him. This story was remarkable for having been developed in three stages, in 1865 or 1866, 1872 and, finally, 1892. It was so convincing that even when De Quille admitted publicly that it was a hoax, readers ignored him and continued to believe in the account. After Mark Twain was hired on at the Enterprise in 1862, he and De Quille became close friends and roommates. As such, they wrote spoofing news stories about each other, which delighted Comstockers. In 1864, however, Twain left Virginia City for California and started his rise to fame. De Quille remained on the Comstock and was privately puzzled and hurt that Twain was being celebrated while he remained largely unknown beyond the West Coast. Part of the reason for this was that Twain actively promoted himself and published books, whereas De Quille, almost diffidently, did not. In 1875, influential financiers pressured De Quille to write a book about the Big Bonanza, a recent, spectacular mining strike. Unable to resist the pressure, De Quille dropped plans to publish a collection of his writing and began the book, but turned to alcohol for solace. He contacted Twain, who invited him to come to Hartford to do his writing. The friendship between the two men cooled somewhat in Hartford. In 1876, De Quille finished the book, The Big Bonanza. It is a classic account of the Comstock Lode, and has seldom been out of print, but its sales were disappointing. When De Quille returned to Virginia City, his alcoholism incapacitated him until even his good friend, Joe Goodman, laid him off from the Enterprise. The shock, paradoxically, was beneficial. He overcame his alcoholism, undertook a weekly column for the Salt Lake City Daily Tribune, owned by his friend C. C. Goodwin, and began writing short stories and freelancing them around the country, at last achieving a national reputation. Many of these stories are of very high quality, and especially sensitive to psychological and moral issues. From 1893 to 1897 his health declined and De Quille, as if sensing the end, turned to writing novellas, composing them so quickly that he did not even take time to place them with a publisher. Four of them have since been published: Dives and Lazarus (1988), Pahnenit, Prince of the Land of Lakes (1988), Gnomes of the Dead Rivers (1990), and The Sorceress of Attu (1994). Toward the end of 1897, crippled from arthritis, tired and “used up,” he returned to West Liberty at the home of a daughter. John Mackay, the “silver king” who was also De Quille’s good friend, gave him a pension. Several months later, he passed away. In recent years, De Quille’s work has been rediscovered and reprinted in book form, a goal he failed to accomplish in his lifetime. It is now apparent that he was one of the Old West’s most accomplished authors, ranking just behind Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and Bret Harte. Suggested Reading: Ronald M. James. The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998. William Wright (1829–1898), better known by the pen name Dan DeQuille or Dan De Quille, was an American author, journalist, and humorist. He was best known for his written accounts of the people, events, and silver mining operations on the Comstock Lode at Virginia City, Nevada, including his non-fiction book A History of the Big Bonanza (American Publishing Company, 1876). DeQuille was on the staff of the (Virginia City) Enterprise for over thirty years, and his writings were also printed in other publications throughout the country and abroad. Highly regarded for his knowledge of silver mining techniques and his ability to explain them in simple terms, he was also appreciated for his humor, similar in style to that of his associate and friend Mark Twain, and of a type very popular in the United States at that time. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1994. William Wright was born in Knox County, Ohio, in 1829, the oldest of nine children. In 1849 he moved west with his family to West Liberty, Iowa, where in 1853 he married Caroline Coleman. Their union produced five children, two of which died in infancy. In 1857, leaving his family behind, he traveled to California in search of gold. While living as a nomadic prospector in the Sierra foothills and Mono Lake region, he heard of the discovery of silver on the other side of the Sierras and ventured to Virginia City, Nevada in 1859. With no success at prospecting there and in need of funds to send his wife and children in Iowa, Wright applied for regular employment in Virginia City at the (Territorial) Enterprise, a newspaper that had recently relocated there from Carson City, Nevada. He was hired in 1862 and soon adopted the pen name Dan DeQuille. Writing career William Wright was interested as a young adult in a career as a writer. After his move to Iowa he wrote and submitted manuscripts to popular magazines in the East Coast. While prospecting for gold in California he wrote articles on prospector mining that were published in California newspapers. Long letters to his family helped to develop his skills at humorous exaggeration and detailed description. Following his move to Virginia City, he wrote articles that were printed in San Francisco’s The Golden Era. Soon after he became known as Dan DeQuille at the Enterprise, another unsuccessful miner named Sam Clemens was hired to work under him in August 1863. Clemens adopted the pen name Mark Twain. The two of them reported on local events and wrote columns for the newspaper. Under DeQuille’s editorial supervision, Twain established his reputation as a humorous writer. Twain would later describe this period in his book Roughing It. Twain left Virginia City in May 1864 and after brief stays in San Francisco and Hawaii he toured as a lecturer, which brought him back for visits to Virginia City and DeQuille in 1866 and 1868. In 1874 mine operators John W. Mackay, James G. Fair, Sen. John P. Jones, and William Ralston decided that a book should be written about the history of the Comstock. They approached DeQuille as the preferred author and he accepted the task. His original intent was to write a small book which could be sold to overland train passengers and to continue expanding it with new information and additional sketches until it eventually became a volume which could be published for a broader audience. DeQuille set to work on the book, collecting data, illustrations, and sketches to be included. In March 1875 he sent a letter to Mark Twain, then residing in Hartford, Connecticut, to seek his advise on having the book published. Concurrently Twain had himself seen a need for such a book and, seeing DeQuille as the one to write it, wrote him a letter to that effect. In response to DeQuille’s letter, Twain responded with a 19-page letter enthusiastically providing advice and an invitation for DeQuille to gather up all the material he might need and join him in Hartford where they could each work on their respective projects in close proximity and mutual support. Under Twain’s mentorship during the summer of 1875, DeQuille pieced together a sizable volume which contained a mixture of technical chapters on silver mining interspersed with lighter accounts of Nevada events and individuals, including the Northern Paiute group of Native Americans living in the vicinity. DeQuille and Twain believed the book would have wide appeal and sell well. Twain helped DeQuille negotiate a favorable contract with his own publisher and DeQuille returned to Virginia City late that summer. In October a fire destroyed much of the city and his account of this tragedy would become the last chapter of his book. A History of the Big Bonanza was published by the American Publishing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1876. They also published A History of the Comstock Silver Lode Mines, a smaller version as a paper-bound guide-book to be sold on overland trains. The main book was eagerly anticipated in Virginia City and sold well on the Pacific Coast, but sales in the East were disappointing. DeQuille did not achieve the financial independence he had anticipated and would continue in his position at the Enterprise for another seventeen years. At the beginning of the 1880s the major silver mining operations at the Comstock Lode were coming to an end and the population of Virginia City was rapidly declining. DeQuille remained a prolific writer, however, providing articles for publication on both coasts, contributing a portion to Myron Angel’s History of Nevada (Thompson & West, 1881), and writing the article on Nevada for the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1884. Legacy As a journalist and author Dan DeQuille contributed significantly to Americans’ understanding of the events in Nevada and the procurement of vast fortunes from the Comstock Lode in the late 19th century. As a humorist he also made a significant contribution the lore of the Wild West. During Virginia City’s heyday, DeQuille was one of the most widely-read journalists on the Pacific Coast because of his wit coupled with his ability to explain in non-technical terms the significance of events on the Comstock Lode. The style of humor that flourished in the in United States during the latter half of the 19th century was shared by DeQuille, Artemus Ward, Orpheus C. Ker, Petroleum V. Nasby, Major Jack Downing, and most notably Mark Twain. It has since been theorized that America’s hunger for this type of humor sprang from a sort of national psychic need from the aftermath of the American Civil War, the grief over the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the hardships of industrial pioneering in the West. Historical interest in Virginia City’s past has continued throughout the 20th century. The town has become a popular tourist attraction with one of its features being the building which housed the Enterprise and on display therein the desk once used by DeQuille, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and other frontier journalists. In 1950 DeQuille was represented in an anthology of Western Americana entitled Comstock Bonanza, collected and edited by Duncan Emrich and published by Vanguard. More recently Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter published Dan De Quille, The Washoe Giant. A Biography and Anthology, featuring the fullest collection of his journalism and a checklist of all his writings (University of Nevada Press, 1990). English professor Lawrence I. Berkove collected the best of DeQuille’s works and published them in 1990 as The Fighting Horse of the Stanislaus: Stories and Essays (University of Iowa Press). In 2005, DeQuille’s The Big Bonanza was used as the basis for a new American opera entitled The Big Bonanza, with music by Monica Houghton and libretto by Jon Christensen. |