Mark Twain was a near constant smoker, an enthusiast of both pipes and cigars to a level that brought admiring and bewildered comments from his acquaintances. His niece called him "the smokiest man alive," and his friend William Dean Howells said, "he smoked as much as a man could, for he smoked incessantly."

Tobacco was of supreme importance to Twain from the time he was a boy, and his fiction is liberally sprinkled with mention of pipes, from the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn early in his career to The Mysterious Stranger late in life. Because pipes and cigars were so integral to his daily living, they were likewise an important aspect of his art. He repeatedly declared that tobacco was an essential element of his writing process.

Twain often returned to three early phases of his life in his fiction: his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri; his time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi; and his adventures as a miner, laborer, and newspaperman in the wild west, particularly in Nevada and California. It was when he was in Virginia City, Nevada, that his friends played a complex joke on him, a joke that revolved around a pipe. He didn't take the prank well at first, but later in life decided that it was among his fondest memories.

Before he became Mark Twain, Sam Clemens went West with his brother Orion, who had been made secretary to the Governor of Nevada after campaigning for Lincoln in the 1860 election. Orion's new job did not include a stipend for relocation, so he and Sam arrived at a deal whereby Sam would pay for travel expenses and in return would be made Orion's secretary. It was not an opulent position, but the adventure of it all was attractive. Clemens had a streak of Tom Sawyer in his personality long before he invented the character.

It was a time in his life when he needed a fresh start. The Civil War had disrupted traffic on the Mississippi, so his livelihood as a riverboat pilot was gone. Then he spent two weeks with friends as an "irregular" for the Confederacy before deserting. Soldiering wasn't as much fun as he'd thought, and his opinions regarding the confederacy were shifting as he matured, though his eventual hatred of slavery would take a couple of more years to establish itself.

Clemens had a streak of Tom Sawyer in his personality long before he invented the character

That abhorrence for slavery would become especially apparent in novels like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but in his early writing career he would often cheaply satirize minorities like Native Americans and the Chinese population, and that tendency would never entirely disappear, sometimes motivating him to use stereotypes in pursuit of a joke. He had some growing to do, and his experiences in the western territories would help him along until, by 1862, he was pro-Union.

It took little time for him to realize that he didn't like working for his brother, who he referred to in letters as "His Majesty the Secretary." It was dull and underpaid work, so he tried other ways to secure a livelihood. Especially attractive were the silver mines that had provided fortunes for those who arrived before him. He started visiting various mines in the territory to get an idea of what was needed, and the thought of chasing after immediate wealth became a theme in his life from that point onward. It would cause his bankruptcy years later when he over invested in the Paige Typesetting Machine and lost almost everything. Twain had flaws, and among them was a longing for exorbitant wealth and the freedom that came with it.

That ambition now motivated him to become a miner, but he was a couple of years late and failed miserably, the silver ore pretty well mined out except by larger companies that cold afford extensive excavations. Simple surface prospecting was difficult, though he and a partner did discover a rich vein of ore. However, they failed to file the correct claim paperwork in time and lost it. Clemens eventually became a laborer, shoveling tailings at a quartz mill.

That ambition now motivated him to become a miner

Never one to find satisfaction in physical labor, he was unhappy with the mining experience, as he relates in Roughing It:

In late 1862, Clemens became a newspaperman. He was 27 years old and specialized in satirical pieces aimed at local politicians and persons of interest, including a hoax regarding the discovery of a petrified man that, upon close reading of his description, is thumbing its nose at observers, the subtext being that the public too easily believes the multiple stories about petrified remains that circulated in newspapers. Other satirical pieces would on occasion be misinterpreted as real, with other newspapers reprinting them as actual news and subsequently demanding in embarrassment that he be fired, and before his tenure with the newspaper was over, Clemens would receive four different challenges to duels from aggrieved targets. He started carrying a pistol, and he himself issued at least one challenge for a duel. Satire was a dangerous pursuit in that environment. No duels seem to have taken place and were more posturing than serious.

Clemens would receive four different challenges to duels

It was while working at the Territorial Enterprise that he first used his famous pen name, Mark Twain, in a letter dated February 3, 1863. That pseudonym came from his riverboat experience, where the leadsman's call of "mark twain" indicated two fathoms of safe water, but additionally, he had a habit of ordering two drinks at a time when entering a saloon and telling the barkeep to "mark twain" on his tab. The double meaning probably amused him.

He made some great friends over his two years at the Enterprise, among them the writers Steve Gillis and Dan DeQuille, and they seem to have taken well to his pen name, calling him Mark. DeQuilles's real name was William Wright, and he was called "Dan," so it was perhaps not unusual. Clemens' heavy smoking was immediately recognized; it was part of his personality and character, as described by George Williams III in his book, Mark Twain: His Life in Virginia City, Nevada (1985):

"Clemens literally lived in a cloud of tobacco smoke"

The staff were all pranksters, and they soon found an opportunity to turn that particular variety of creativity toward Twain. It was a custom of the office to collect money and present meerschaum pipes to colleagues who had achieved admiration in the performance of projects. These pipes were coveted awards, especially considering their cost. Real meerschaum was a rarity in the west, and meerschaum pipes were expensive, but these were especially nice. Williams reports that their prices were from $40-$75 each, which was about three weeks' wages. After another presentation had taken place, and Twain was not a recipient, he complained to Steve Gillis, and Gillis took advantage, as George Williams reports:

As part of the trap, the news of the upcoming presentation was leaked to Twain by Dan DeQuille, another talented writer who journeyed west seeking silver and who wrote about the escapade 30 years later, in 1893:

The prank worked exactly as they thought it would. Twain expressed his surprise at receiving the award and spoke for 20 minutes while everyone applauded and enjoyed the joke.

Afterward, Twain celebrated. Steve Gillis wrote about that, quoted from George Williams III:

"It wouldn't color any more than a piece of chalk, which was about all it was ..."

Suspicious, Twain confronted DeQuille and asked him directly if the pipe was a fake. "It's just as bogus as they make them," he replied. Twain asked if DeQuille knew that fact beforehand, when he'd warned Twain to prepare for the presentation. "Certainly. That was where the fun came in."

Twain was furious. He'd spent every dime he had in ordering expensive drinks for his friends that night while they went along with it and took advantage. Williams writes:

"Years later," wrote DeQuille, "he told me that he thought more of the bogus pipe than he did of the genuine one."

Evidently, part of the plan had been to acquire a genuine meerschaum for Twain all along, though it may have been better to have had it ready. Long afterward, when Twain had become a famous author, Joe Goodman, the editor of the Enterprise at the time of the prank, visited Twain to reminisce about the old days:

We pipe smokers can easily relate to Twain's final assessment of the prank and the pipe. Often, our most precious pipes are not our most expensive or finely crafted or best smoking, but those that have personal stories and are weighted with the remembrances of friends. When we think about Mark Twain the pipe smoker, we might do so with the knowledge that pipes were more than smoking instruments to him, but essential elements of his personality. That's why, in the frat-party joshing of friends in the difficult environment of the Old West, pipes could become ammunition for playing a prank on one of the most accomplished literary pranksters in American literature.

References:

• Mark Twain: His Life in Virginia City, Nevada (1985), by George Williams III
• "Reporting With Mark Twain," (1893), by Dan DeQuille, Bloom's Classic Critical Views: Mark Twain (2009) ed. Harold Bloom