by Mark Twain, 1869
Mark Twain and about 100 others set sail in a steamer from New York in early June 1867. They are bound for the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. A pleasure cruise-picnicking many days crossing the Atlantic. He writes about seasickness (everyone but him) and their routines – eating, and all their leisure pursuits: promenade the decks, look at ships at sea, whales, dolphins, sharks, play cards, dominoes, other games, sing, dance, play instruments (none of which anyone could do well) and journalling – which didn’t last too long.
1st stop – Azores – Fayal – beautiful and clean – wonderful roads – funny donkey ride.
2nd stop – Gibraltar – while still in the ocean on their ship, a beautiful sailing ship went by them and everyone looked at it and then saw the flag – the Stars and Stripes – here is what he writes: “Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country’s flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!”
3rd stop – Tangier, Morocco: “Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one…” It’s also very ancient.
July 1867, France: 1. Marseilles – He toured the Chateau d’if where Monte Cristo was imprisoned. 2. Paris – He kept talking about Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon. 3. Versailles (a palace complex Louis XIV built – absolutely gorgeous – Garden of Eden!)
“France is a bewitching garden.” Here’s how he describes the French countryside: “We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France. What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses trimmed by the barber…There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish anywhere – nothing that even hints at untidiness-nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful – everything is charming to the eye.”
“We had glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks; of cozy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery…”
Here’s how he describes Versailes:
“VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze, and stare, and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden – but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream…”
Then to Italy. 1. Genoa – streets like crevices, houses that would “laugh a siege to scorn.” 2. Milan – gorgeous cathedral. 3. Lake Como – Tahoe is clearer and deeper but “mountains beyond are veiled in a dreamy purple haze…glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.” They stayed at the Bellagio. 4. Venice – gondolas.
He got very tired of the art of Old Masters, doesn’t know what people see in them. They “have seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks, and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and 4 million of assorted monks…”
5. Florence – he’s tired of traveling. “How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices sometimes!” First, “Magnanimous Florence! Here jewelry are filled with artists in mosaic.”
He gets lost in Florence – taken into custody and searched – they find a sliver of soap, “(We carry soap with us now), and I made them a present of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity.”
6. Pisa – the leaning tower – they went up in it.
*Italy – people are poor, government is bankrupt, churches are rich! “Why don’t they rob their churches?”
“Vituperation” – verbal abuse or castigation.
“vituperate” – to find fault with; censure harshly or abusively.
He writes a whole chapter on how rich are the churches in Italy and their priests and how poor the people are and bankrupt the gov’t is. “And now–However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.”
Rome – The Coliseum – Parody on the barbarism that went on there – a review of one of the “performances.”
Naples – Vesuvius – climbs to the top – very steep – very beautiful in the crater – all the colors under the sun.
Isle of Capri – Blue Grotto – “The waters of this placid subterranean lake are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined.”
Vesuvius – “The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it. It was well worth it.” (Hawaii wasn’t called Hawaii yet in 1867 – the “Sandwich Islands!”)
Pompeii – describes in detail.
Athens – couldn’t go due to quarantine so he and 3 others snuck ashore at night and toured the Parthenon by moonlight!
Constantinople – lazy dogs, dirty streets full of little shops and shopkeepers.
Sebastopol, Russia – destroyed by 18 months of war, natives friendly to Americans.
Odessa – so like an American town, he cried.
Then they visit the Czar of Russia – and he treats them like friends and they are so like “mere mortals’ that Twain will never be able to watch the theatrical kings again without saying, “This does not answer – this isn’t the style of king that I am acquainted with.”
Here’s what he says about the Czar’s school-aged daughter: “Every time their eyes met, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that weak, diffident school-girl could wield if she chose to do it. Many and many a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law to seventy millions of human beings! She was only a girl, and she looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl provoked such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A strange, new sensation is a rare thing in this humdrum life, and I had it here.”
The Emperor and his family take them on a tour of their palace themselves! He writes: “We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cozy apartments and the rich but eminently homelike appointments of the place, and then the imperial family bade our party a kind goodbye, and proceeded to count the spoons.”
Then they proceed to the Holy Land:
Smyrna – a long explanation of Revelation-the crown of life.
Ephesus – beautiful ruins.
Syria – through the desert to Damascus. They are camping in luxury – set up and taken down by the Arabs. Then, Christians who don’t want to travel on the Sabbath force them to get to Damascus in two, 13-hour days on their old horses (day before that he tours Baalbec; beautiful temples made of huge cut stones – no one knows who built them or how they did it.) Back to the Sabbath; he writes: “We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point.”
All through this book, Twain talks about the “Saviour.” His Christianity is heartfelt and spot-on. I love him!
Damascus – beautiful from a distance on a hill but leave it at that, like the prophet Mohammed. The Arabs there hate Christians.
“…five thousand Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks…and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus!–and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again!”
“It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved for a thousand years….”
He is in the Holy Land, seeing all the spots mentioned in the Bible. He is at “Joseph’s Pit” and writes:
“It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story of Joseph.”
The Holy Land – deserts and begging Arabs, desolation. He sees all the places in the Bible. He sees Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Jordan River, Sea of Galilee, Dead Sea, on and on. His companions, the “pilgrims,” constantly chip away pieces of these places to take home. Then they go to Egypt and see the Pyramids – climb up them – and the Sphynx. He loves that! Then home from Egypt through the Mediterranean – couldn’t stop anywhere due to quarantines due to cholera.
In Spain, they (four of them) “ran the quarantine blockade and spent 7 delightful days in Seville, Cordova, Cadiz, and wandering through the pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the garden of Old Spain.”
They anchored “in the beautiful islands we call the Madeiras…But we could not land…” Quarantine again.
They couldn’t land again until the Bermudas. He writes: “A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle walls of brilliant foliage…”
What a fabulous book – to see the world in 1867 (the Mediterranean and the Holy Land) through Mark Twain’s eyes and words was truly a “pleasure excursion” for me! He is so funny although you have to savor his words to catch all the humor – it’s there in every page! He is also very, very brave and adventurous!
LOVED THIS BOOK!
(I told Wayne about many parts of this book and his favorite part is where they are sailing one direction and they are all praying for fair winds to help them along and Twain wonders about the 900 ships traveling the other direction and how they might be praying for the winds to be in their favor and how does that work out.)