What story did Mark Twain tell about his experience with stage fright?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the term stage fright was by Mark Twain in his 1876 novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain was first, but he actually used it four years earlier, in 1872 in Chapter 78 of his book Roughing It, which you can read at Project Gutenberg.

He said he had a severe case of stage fright only once, before lecturing for the first time in San Francisco on October 2, 1866. But it went away in less than five minutes after he began to speak, and never returned. Mark said that:

“….I went down back streets at six o’clock and entered the theatre by the back door. I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery, and stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent, and its emptiness depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hour and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of everything else. Then I heard a murmur; it rose higher and higher, and ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise, it was so close to me and so loud.

There was a pause, and then another; presently came a third, and before I well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at a sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The house was full, aisles and all!

The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before I could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and the friendliness in the faces before me, and I began to talk. Within three or four minutes I was comfortable, and even content.” 

Another version appeared much later in his Remarks at the American concert debut of his daughter Clara Clemens, at the Eldridge Gymnasium in Norfolk, Connecticut on September 22, 1906. It appears in Mark Twain’s Speeches titled as Mark Twain’s First Appearance and can be found at the Internet Archive.

“My heart goes out in sympathy to anyone who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings. By a direct process of memory I go back forty years, less one month – for I’m older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a lecturer. I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the theater. So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could not escape. I got to the theater forty-five minutes before the hour set for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I didn’t know whether I could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage fright – and seasickness. They are a pair. I had stage fright then for the first and last time. I was only seasick once, too. It was on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers. I – was -sick/ I was so sick there wasn’t any left for those other two hundred passengers.

It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theater, and I peeked through the little peek holes they have in theater curtains and looked into the big auditorium. That was dark and empty, too. By and by it lighted up, and the audience began to arrive.

I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. Every time I said anything they could possibly guess I intended to be funny they were to pound those clubs on the floor. Then there was a kind lady in a box up there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the governor. She was to watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward her she was going to deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into applause. 

At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked under a United States flag in front of me where I could get at it in case of need. But I managed to get started without it. I walked up and down – I was young in those days and needed the exercise – and talked and talked.

Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a gem. I had put in a moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers. When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and expected. They sat silent and awed. I had touched them. Then I happened to glance up at the box where the governor’s wife was – you know what happened.

Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage fright left me, never to return. I know that if I was going to be hanged I could get up and make a good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never forget my feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first appearance. And I want to thank you for your appreciation of her singing, which is, by the way, hereditary.”

Many, including me, had another impression of his opinion based on quotations like:

“There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.”

But, as I discussed in my May 12, 2020 blog post titled Did Mark Twain really say there were just nervous speakers or liars? that quotation didn’t actually come from Mark Twain. It showed up in a 2015 press release from Toastmasters International ironically titled Five public speaking myths debunked.

Is this stage fright story completely or even partially true? Given his penchant for telling tall tales, it’s not clear.