The Innocents Abroad

From Cosa Bolle in Pentola:
Nothing new here -- It's by Mark Twain, whom you are almost certainly familiar with if you went to school in the US, thanks to Tom Sawyer and Huck Fin's being on most high school reading lists. The Innocents Abroad is one of his first books, cobbled together in 1869 from the reports he made for the Daily Alta California, which paid for his berth aboard the Steamship Quaker City, bound for Europe and the Holy Land in one of the first pleasure cruises to set sail from New York. It was a Grand Tour on a Grand Scale, on a modern steamer that first stopped at the Azores, and continued on to Gibraltar (which Twain Liked), with a detour to Morocco and from thence to Genova, where the sailors got into a fight with the crew members of a British ship while the passengers explored the city and then took the train to Paris; he returned via a meandering route that included both Venice, which impressed him greatly, especially at night, Florence, which he didn't care for, disparaging the Grand Masters, Rome, and then Naples, where he ascended Vesuvius on a donkey, and then they headed east, to Greece, where he snuck ashore to see the Acropolis, the Czar, and the Holy Land, which he explored on horseback.

It's a fascinating book, in part because much of what Twain saw and described is no longer there, or vastly different, and though some writers have accused him of simply following the guide books of his day, without exploring further, the scope of the voyage such that even without going further he covered a vast area with curiosity and a lively eye for detail. Drawbacks? Well, his comfortable smugness at being an American, which was no doubt in part due to his youth, though it was also a product of the times; he looks down at just about everyone except the Czar, and I found his superiority a bit wearying after a while. Also his distaste for art; he knew little about it but that didn't stop him from making a great many pompous judgments that someone with a better understanding of the subject would find skewed.

The writing is of course Mark Twain, and even if you disagree with what he says, the flow of words is delightful. Speaking of the trip out, he says,

"On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the awnings, and made something of a ballroom display of brilliancy by hanging a number of the ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong, a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather melancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable accordion that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked -- a more elegant term does not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally."

This does make one look at air travel from a new perspective. In short, a travelogue more than a guide, and interesting reading.

Practical things:: The Innocents Abroad; Mark Twain, 1869; About 500 pages; There are many editions; mine is a Signet Classic paperback; ISBN 0451525027

Looks Good! I'd like to see the Order Form.