Mark Twain and the Holy Land

In the 19th century, romanticism gave visual expression to fantasies of a sublime Holy Land.  The monumental landscapes of David Roberts, for example, portrayed Egypt and Palestine in epic scale. Travelers, such as the New York journalist and art historian William C. Prime, reinforced these visions with dreamy accounts of life in the Holy Land. 

Writing to an admirer who had “unearthed several of [his] buried books,” Melville noted that there was one his spade had not yet succeeded in exhuming: Clarel. He would never locate it himself, the author predicted, so he “disinterred” a copy which he sent along with this note. 

Twain kept 70 journals over the course of  his long literary career. This manuscript is believed to be the sole surviving leaf from the missing January through May, 1867 journal. Here he describes a trip to the Sandwich Islands and announces his plan to embark on a voyage to the Holy Land: “Has since been ordered by telegraph across the continent to change this route & accompany the Gen. Sherman Pleasure Excursion to Europe & the Holy Land and will sail on the 8th of June.”

The day before his departure, Twain indulged in a nine-hour party, drinking “several breeds of wine” with chums and colleagues from various newspapers. “Naturally enough” after a 3 pm dinner, he dined again from 6 to 9pm with John J. Murphy (the New York business agent for Alta California), and “dined again til 12” with the quirky Dan Slote, his future roommate on Quaker City.

As Twain notes, t​he days spent on Quaker City were mostly “lazy and satisfied”: “Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.” ​Nevertheless, due to the cholera pandemic​​ ​across Europe, ​the ship and its passengers were often quarantined: “The ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples–quarantined. She has been here several days and will remain several more….She is a prison, now.”

Although the Quaker City cruise was the first organized tourism in American history, it reflected a national surge of interest in travel and tourism.  By 1870, more than 25,000 Americans were traveling to Europe each year. While the Quaker City steamship was opulently outfitted—amenities included a library, printing press, piano, and pipe organ—the notables who were supposed to participate failed to materialize.  Instead, Twain found himself in the company of respectable, middle-class Protestants, eager to see the Biblical lands of their dreams.  The disappointment soured him from the start. Moreover, the average age of the group was fifty, and most were male.

Twain was fortunate in having as his cabin mate Dan Slote, an easy going banker who shared the author’s taste for alcohol and cigars. In addition to Slote, Twain found a good companion in Emma Beach, the daughter of Moses Beach, publisher of the New York Sun. In fact, long after the voyage, Twain remained in contact with Emma Beach, reminiscing about their “pleasure excursion.”

The Quaker City carried its pilgrims to Europe via the Azores and through the Strait of Gibraltar. Of Europe they “cared nothing much about . . . . We galloped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the Uffizi, the Vatican —all the galleries—and through the pictured and frescoed churches of Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals of Spain . . . ” Europe and its deep culture were not the object of the trip. That lay further east. In Sevastopol, Twain was tasked by the passengers to draft an invitation letter to the Tzar, and in Constantinople he proclaimed the photographers to be the best in the world.

The Mediterranean Hotel was the favorite lodging of well-to-do European and American visitors to Jerusalem. Originally located between the present Christian Quarter Street and Jaffa Gate, the hotel hosted Herman Melville during his 1857 trip. From 1866 to 1871 it operated close to the Damascus Gate. It is here that Mark Twain stayed in September, 1867. Henry Phillips’ photograph, showing women grinding wheat in the hotel’s inner courtyard, allowed Shapell Manuscript Foundation’s researchers and geographers to locate this forgotten second iteration of the Mediterranean Hotel. In 1871, the hotel moved to its third and final location, just inside the Jaffa Gate, where the  famous Civil War hero and President, General Ulysses S. Grant stayed. In 1873, due to overbooking, Theodore Roosevelt’s family had to stay at the Damascus Hotel.

Chief among sites of particular  interest was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  It was, among other things, built on the site of the Crucifixion—a claim Twain did not dispute. However awestruck the pilgrims, though, our narrator was not impressed.  The Church was overrun with relic-peddlers, miracle mongers, and other frauds. Twain saved his most withering satire for the tomb of Adam, where he delivered a biting mock soliloquy:  “The tomb of Adam! How touching it was here in a land of strangers, far away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover the grave of a blood relation.” The claim that Adam was actually buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was preposterous, like so much else in and around the church.

Following his return from the Holy Land, Twain resumed his career on the lecture circuit  packing venues in forty-one cities with patrons eager to hear about the wonders of the Holy Land and the new American traveler whom Twain dubbed a “genuine Vandal … an intolerable and incorrigible relic gatherer.”  Twain is not shy to note that “I am one of those myself.”

Down to Business: Mark Twain Promotes “Quaker City” Rommmate Dan Slote to his Publisher as Promoter of the Innocents Abroad

Twain asked the secretary of the American Publishing Company to offer his friend Dan Slote a stock of books at a 40% discount, which his fellow Quaker City traveler could readily sell “only to personal friends.”

“Our Thinning Band of Pilgrims”

In a letter to his dear friend Emma Beach, Twain breaks the news that a third member of the group, doctor George Bright Birch, who had nursed him back to health in Damascus “has gone the way of all flesh.” Despite their “thinning band of pilgrims” the Holy Land still called for their return.

While Innocents did not create a vogue for Holy Land tourism, it certainly fueled ongoing interest. The book’s huge popularity carried it through successive editions. Celebrities made pilgrimages. General William T. Sherman climbed the pyramids in 1871 accompanied by President Grant’s son, Fred. Ulysses S. Grant, who was befriended by Twain late in his life, was welcomed as a “conquering hero” in Jaffa and Jerusalem. He may have even carried a copy of Innocents Abroad.

Theodore Roosevelt stepped for the first time in Egypt as a teenager and returned in 1909 after leaving the White House. Parker Brothers turned Innocents into a board game and maritime companies touted new cruises to the Holy Land.