Lost worlds | Never the Twain to meet

Mark Twain, the man with a good claim to being the US’ first noteworthy novelist (throughout his life he refused to accept the claims of the other contender, James Fenimore Cooper), did not actually start out as a novelist. He achieved fame with a short story, then became a travel writer for the Alta California newspaper, sending travel letters from Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands).

In The Innocents Abroad, then, we get to see the early Mark Twain, and we discover that he is not a nice man. Twain repeatedly crosses the line that separates satire from mean-spiritedness. While Twain does recognize his own (and his fellow passengers’) failings and pokes self-conscious fun at them, his takedowns of the people and places he visits are much nastier.

Twain is capable of realizing that this wretchedness has been forced upon people by their political masters, and is not inherent to them—unfortunately, he does not let this come in the way of making a joke when he finds one. This book has traces of the more compassionate humanist Twain would become later in life, but only traces.

Where the book does excel is as a counterpoint to existing travel literature. Unlike other books featured in this column, which were explaining new countries for the first time to their readers, The Innocents Abroad was written at a time when tourism had become mass-produced and there were guidebooks to all the places Twain visited.

For 60 chapters, Twain mocks the romanticism of the guidebooks and the bombast of the travellers who came before him, and the willingness of his fellow travellers to adopt the same romanticism. He’s particularly biting in a bit where he finds that his co-passengers are finding women with “Madonna-like grace” on every street in Nazareth.

The Innocents Abroad was first published in 1869, and is now in the public domain. Lounge presents selected excerpts.

The 1869 first edition text may be found on Project Gutenberg at http://bit.ly/wmA4uD

Twain sets off, and discovers Schadenfreude

Twain learns to appreciate Renaissance art

We have mastered some things, possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the learned, but to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we love to display them full as well. When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is St Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St Jerome. Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious that his body is shot through and through with arrows, we know that that is St Sebastian. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to learn.

This is still a problem

Twain on relics

The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of the genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through a hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar of Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt it, for he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly as he could feel any thing.

Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of the True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of the cross was discovered in the sixteenth century. The Latin priests say it was stolen away, long ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a hard statement to make, but we know very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it ourselves in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France.

The ideal mode of transportation

When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with donkeys no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers—for donkeys are the omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our own way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They were good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the boys ran behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the fashion at Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile, though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is convenient—very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you

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