American Vandal (2015) is the biography of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(1835-1910), known by his pen-name Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) – ‘the great American
novel.’ This biography focuses solely on Twain as a traveller and travel
writer, concentrating on three of his travel memoirs: The Innocents Abroad
(1869), A Tramp Abroad (1880), and Following the Equator (1897).
Twain began his travels abroad when America commercialized sea journeys
with the advancement of steam-powered ships. It was 1867 on the ship, Quaker City, ‘the first prepacked luxury
cruise in American history.’ He was 32 years old, and the destination was for
five months to Europe and the Holy Land, with intermittent land journeys.
His cabin companion was 39-year-old New York banker, Dan Slote, whom Twain
described happily as ‘splendid, immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking [and]
godless’ – much like Twain himself. The friendships Twain made on the journey
remained for the rest of his life.
His side-trip to a Paris dance-hall is recalled with humour: ‘I placed my
hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were
dancing the renowned Can-can.’ And in
three days in Genoa ‘I fell in love with a hundred and eighty women myself, on
Sunday evening, and yet I am not of a susceptible nature.’ The biography
continues in the same manner throughout, with Twain describing in brutal
honesty the countries and cities he loved, loathed, or endured.
It was not so much the destination that inspired Twain, but the journey. He
wrote to his mother, ‘I am wild with impatience to move-move-Move! … My mind
gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving from place to place. I
wish I never had to stop anywhere.’
The biography ends with his last major year-long journey to Fiji,
Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Mauritius, South Africa, and
England – which became his book Following the Equator. Three years before his
death he made his last voyage – it was to England to receive an honorary degree
from Oxford University.
For 40 years, alone or with his family, Twain travelled the world: Europe,
Africa, India, China, Japan, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East … Wherever
he went, he felt at home. ‘I can stand any society,’ he said, ‘All that I care
to know is that a man is a human being – that is enough for me; he can’t
be any worse.’ He is also often quoted for his saying, ‘The world is a book and
those who do not travel read only a chapter.’
This biography is told in Twain’s humourist approach with ascerbic wit and
with comical quotations and anecdotes. Both interesting and informative, this
is a enjoyable and fascinating account of a global traveller and incidental,
but addictive, travel writer.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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