Mark Twain
My dear readers, I've returned
to relive my life in the West!
In my walkin' tour, you will see historic buildings, journey down mysterious alleyways, and explore Historic Sonoma.
You will hear tales of gold and silver mining, newspaper days in San Francisco, and the story of my life out in the West. I lived in San Francisco from May of 1864 to December of 1866, and episodes of my life will be retold in splendid oratory!
Tours are available for groups of 4 to 40.
To schedule a tour call George at 707-939-5507
Here is a review from the Napa Valley Register’s columnist Ev Parker in 2011, when Mark Twain performed a series of 3 dinner shows at Downtown Joe’s in Napa.
EV PARKER
Last Thursday in the upstairs banquet hall of Downtown Joe’s on Main Street in old Napa town, lovers of the work of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) gathered to meet and greet the master, in the person of George Webber — and George didn’t let us down.
An audience of about 50 admirers from places like Sacramento, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, Oakland and, of course, Napa were not disappointed as a Twain soundalike and lookalike performer delivered right on target. Twain (Webber) had a bellicose voice with a trace of a Southern accent befitting a boy who was born in Hannibal, Mo., on the banks of the Mississippi River and would, in his 75 years on Earth, gain worldwide fame for his writing genius.
He spoke of his early days and his job as a river steamboat captain and how he turned into a man named Mark Twain, a river boat term. With a booming delivery and always a chuckle in his voice and a mischievous glint in his eyes, he spoke about his early work as a writer and his classics, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1885) and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (1889).
I never knew until Thursday night that Twain came to Napa in 1866 and did some reporting for the local ne spaper. Webber, who did a perfect Mark Twain, closed the performance with some marvelous Twain quotes, including: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” Quite a thought.
Before the evening concluded and we went on our separate ways, I had a chance to converse with Thursday night’s Mark Twain. I told him that of all his hundreds of quotations on life, one of has never left me. Twain said with a smile “Which is that, my boy?”
“Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please.” Mark Twain (George Webber) laughed his hearty laugh and we shook hands on a Napa street somehow dubbed Main Street in a quiet American town. My thanks to George Webber for a great performance! Ev Parker
