A Review: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

3/5 stars.
I don't remember how I learned Mark Twain covered a visit to Pompeii in this travelogue. I generally enjoy reading old travelogues because they describe a world which doesn't quite exist anymore. To me, it is akin reading about a fantasy world. There is also an historical interest because the author inevitably talks much about his or her own sentiments and ideas. Thus the modern reader learns something not only about the place the writer visited, but also something about where the author is from. All that being said; “Mark Twain goes to Pompeii” seemed like something I should read in my series of books about Pompeii.

First off, there is very little about Pompeii in this book. The book covers a five month cruise all around the Mediterranean, so the buried city only forms part of one chapter (XXXI). About the only thing of note he mentions (revealing something of what was commonly known at the time) is when he thought about visiting a buried city, he imagined it as still buried and exploring it by torchlight after climbing down into the mine-like excavation. He was surprised to see it was all uncovered and open to they sky. I find this odd. Twain makes frequent mention of the guidebooks to European and Near Eastern travel the “Innocents” he traveled with had to hand for their journey. How had he missed the fact the city had been completely uncovered even though he knows of the upright soldier mentioned by Gell? Twain writes:

We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves.

Apparently, we still cannot.

Beyond the single chapter for which I read it, the book was just alright. The pleasure cruise Twain went on took place in 1867 and many of the chapters were sent home as newspaper reports. The book is a reworked version of these newspaper pieces together with many illustrations and Twain's fuller reflection upon the events of the trip. There are many incidents which strain credulity, but this is hardly surprising from a man who is remembered as a satirist. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of Venice (XXII), his night time visit to the Acropolis of Athens (XXXII), his luncheon with Tsar Alexander II in Yalta (XXXVII) and I liked the perspective he brought to his horseback ride through Syria and the Holy Land (XLII - LVI). There were also moments, most strikingly in Chapter XVIII, where Twain wonders off into memories of his childhood and youth. I want to know more about the person he describes in those fleeting moments. I have added Twain's autobiography to my reading list.

These enjoyable moments are scattered throughout a large book full of a lot of bad-mouthing of everything. He lampoons his American shipmates and himself, but he gives his worst to just about every else. He goes on about how the Old Masters weren't so great. He points out how nation after nation is run down and reliving old glories. He describes the French and insufferable, the Italians as beggars, the Turks as barely human, the Syrians as dirty and on and on. The American newspaper audience of the late 1860s seems to have had quite the taste for this sort of ruthless dismissal of the Old World, but I do not.

I am at a loss to guess how much of what is in this book is the real Mark Twain and how much was what he felt he needed to say for the papers. (I am aware there is some irony in asking what is real when talking about a man who created a fictional persona for himself.) This book was written early in his career when he showed promise as a writer, but before he became famous. Hints of the biting social criticism he later became known for are evident in this book, but he doesn't yet seem to know how he wants to wield his voice. Again, I want to read more of Twain to see how that development occurred.
In his conclusion, Twain says this:

It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up every year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

I couldn't agree more.