To Joseph T. Goodman
24 October 1867 • Cádiz, Spain
(Paraphrase: Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 1 Dec 67, UCCL 00153)

Mark Twain.—It seems that the Holy Land excursion, about which so much has been written, has not been a perfect success in every respect. In a private letter to the editor of this paper,1 dated “Cadiz, Spain, October 24, 1867,” “Mark Twain” says: “Between you and I, (I haven’t let it out yet, but am going to,) this pleasure party of ours is composed of the d——dest, rustiest, ignorant, vulgar, slimy, psalm-singing cattle that could be scraped up in seventeen States. They wanted Holy Land, and they got it. It was a stunner. It is an awful trial to a man’s religion to waltz it through the Holy Land.”2 The most of the excursionists were probably a little too straight-laced for “Mark”—hence, the rough manner in which he sums up the general characteristics of the crowd. It is evident from his letters that he has not been especially pleased with his fellow-travelers as a body, and has found it difficult to refrain from giving them a taste of his vengeance in his correspondence. He seems to have been in a state of exasperation the most of the time, and, with the exception of the Emperor of Russia and family, has scarcely written a pleasant word of any one. He is strangely intolerant and irritable, and it is under the inspiration of some real or imaginary grievance of a trifling character that he gives vent to his most comical conceits. “Europe in a hurry” and “Europe on foot” have been contributed to our literature.3 It remains for “Mark Twain” to furnish us with a volume or two of “Europe in a rage.”4 While in Cadiz, he informs us, he visited a four-story billiard saloon and amused himself by playing for three or four hours. He says the place “was filled with gold-laced bilks with crowns on their hat bands—because, you know, five men out of every six in Spain wear gorgeous uniforms.” For some reason the display of gold lace rendered him as furious as an Andalusian bull with a streamer of red flannel flaunted in his face, and he prayed for two or three Virginia “roughs” to “clean out” the crowd. As it was, he was compelled to content himself by safely blackguarding the most ostentatious of the Spaniards in a language they could not understand. He will soon be in New York, if he has not reached there already, and has been engaged as a Washington correspondent of the Enterprise.5

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 Goodman (1838–1917) was a longtime friend as well as a shrewd literary adviser of Clemens’s. Since 1865 he had been sole proprietor as well as chief editor of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, for which Clemens had worked as a local and a political reporter (late September 1862 through May 1864) and as its San Francisco correspondent (mid-1865 to early March 1866) (ET&S1, 12–38; L1, 242 n. 2).

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2 Clemens’s relationship with most of the excursionists had been growing more fractious as the trip wore on, but this tendency received a special impetus between 18 October, the morning after the ship arrived at Gibraltar on the way home, and 25 October, when Clemens and his party returned to the ship at Cádiz. According to Captain Duncan, “at daylight” on 18 October they received “an immense mail—letters and papers from home! How eagerly they were caught up, opened and read!” (Charles C. Duncan 1867, entry for 18 Oct). Presumably among those papers was a copy of the New York Tribune for 19 September, including Mark Twain’s letter about the visit to the tsar in which he said, in part, that the Russians

are able to make themselves pleasant company, whether they speak one’s language or not, but our tribe can’t think of anything to do or say when they get hold of a subject of the Czar who knows only his own language. However, one of our ladies, from Cleveland, Ohio, is a notable exception to this rule. She escorts Russian ladies about the ship, and talks and laughs with them, and makes them feel at home.... I wish we had more like her. They all try, but none succeed so well as she. (SLC 1867 [MT00565])

This praise of Mrs. Fairbanks doubtless made Clemens’s low opinion of the rest of the ladies seem a deliberate, public insult, and Moses Beach promptly rose to their defense. Although he himself had missed the visit to the tsar, he nevertheless described it in a letter to the Sun dated 21 October from Gibraltar:

And let me add here—the Tribune correspondent to the contrary notwithstanding—that our Quaker City company acquitted themselves well. As representatives not only of every part of their country, but of almost every shade of society in every part, they so appeared as that the most fastidious need not blush for word or act. (Beach 1867)

Charles Langdon long recalled the same incident for another reason. According to his son’s version of the story, Langdon had been rebuffed earlier by Clemens for offering him advice about a card game: “Young man, there’s a prayer-meeting forward in the dining saloon and they need you there.” He was therefore gratified when the Tribune letter

found its way back to the ship just before Mr. Clemens returned from a side trip, and it was the pleasure of the youthful card coach to espy the discredited man of letters coming on board and to give him in detail just the temper of Mrs. This and Mrs. That, with the sound advice that he keep pretty closely to his cabin for a few days, and give the weather a chance to clear. (Jervis Langdon, 4)

The side trip was certainly Clemens’s excursion through Spain. While Clemens was away, the Quaker City spent nearly a week at Gibraltar, recoaling and reprovisioning for the Atlantic crossing, so that the passengers’ displeasure had time to become quite general. Clemens himself later alluded with some bitterness to “what they said about me at Gibraltar when I was absent” (17 June 68 to Fairbanks). The superheated remarks about the passengers in this letter to Goodman may indicate that Clemens had caught some inkling of their resentment even before he left Gibraltar at noon on 18 October.

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3 Europe in a Hurry, by George Wilkes (New York: H. Long and Brother, 1853) and, possibly, Views a-Foot; or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff, by J. Bayard Taylor (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847). The latter, which issued in twenty “editions” during its first ten years in print, was for many years one of the most popular among a number of books on the subject of European pedestrian travel.

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4 Clemens’s anger at some of his fellow passengers was stimulated further during the voyage home by their complaints to the captain about the “sinful” pastimes of the party of fast young men on board. In a play fragment Clemens probably wrote soon after returning to New York, he created a stodgy character named “Elder Homily,” who makes the following speech:

They drink & drink & drink, in that No. 10 till it is horrible—perfectly horrible! And they smoke there—which is against the ship’s rules—& they have bribed the cabin crew & the porter & they burn safety lanterns there all night ‸(which is against the rule, too)‸ & say they are writing to the newspapers—which is a lie, brethren & sisters—they’re playing sinful 7-up.—That’s what they’re doing. (SLC 1867 [MT00057], act 2, 8–9, transcribed in Enclosure with 25 November 1867 to Charles Henry Webb.

There must have been some truth in these grievances against Clemens and his friends, for Captain Duncan noted in his journal soon after departing Cádiz that he had “issued notices touching the better observance of the regulations touching Lights complaints having been made that open lights and lighted pipes & segars were used in State rooms” (Charles C. Duncan 1867, entry for 26 Oct).

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5 Clemens was addressing the problem of maintaining his income after the excursion returned. He eventually wrote ten letters from Washington and one from New York for the Enterprise between 4 December 1867 and 2 March 1868. He reached New York on 19 November, twelve days before Goodman published this letter in Nevada.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Paraphrase, probably written by Goodman, “Mark Twain,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 1 Dec 67, 2, microfilm in The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-BANC).

Previous publication: L2, 101–103; “Mark Twain,” San Francisco Examiner, 13 Dec 67, 1, which reprints the copy-text.

Provenance:The original letter is not known to survive.