Mark Twain's “Spatial Play”:Venice and the Holy Land inThe Innocents Abroad

Abstract

Samuel spondent heard of Langhorne a under forthcoming the Clemens pen pleasure name began Mark excursion his Twain. literary aboard In career the spring the as steamship a traveling of 1867, Quaker Twain correspondent under the pen name Mark Twain. In the spring of 1867, Twain heard of a forthcoming pleasure excursio aboard the steamship Quaker City. Learning that Henry Ward Beecher's1 Plymouth Church congregation was planning a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, Twain went to the excursion office in February 1867 accompanied by his friend and writer for the New York Tribune , Edward House. Both men were extremely impressed by the amount of publicity the trip had received. Indeed, the leisurely excursion to the Holy Land by way of Europe was a venture in mass tourism that had never previously been undertaken. The Quaker City was built to accommodate over 100 passengers, and was equipped with a library, musical instruments, even a printing press for the production of a daily newspaper. Subsequently, Twain persuaded The Daily Alta California editors to pay his fare and retain him as their traveling correspondent. The Alta not only paid the $1,250 ticket, but also offered him $500 as traveling reimbursement2 in exchange for a series of letters describing the journey. Before departure, Twain also contracted an agreement with the New York Tribune , according to which the paper would pay him for correspondence by the letter. All in all, Twain published fifty-eight letters about the journey: fifty-one written for The Alta , six for the Tribune , and a final editorial about the journey, which was published in the New York Herald after his return to New York on November 19th. The