American Vandal - Mark Twain Abroad by Roy Morris Jr.: book review

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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