The Story Of Mark Twain's 1867 Journey To Jerusalem [54:39]

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0:00 · [Music] there ain't no sureer way to find out whether you like people or hate them
0:07 · than to travel with them Mark Twain was an American original
0:14 · whose engaging stories made him a global icon He was a satist lecturer and writer
0:22 · The New York Times once called Twain the greatest humorist this country has
0:27 · produced But before Tom Sawyer before Huckleberry
0:33 · Finn and long before he was known as the father of American literature Mark Twain
0:40 · worked as a little known roving newspaper correspondent Anyone who reads a newspaper might have caught his name
0:47 · but he's not a literary figure at this point Twain's big break came in
0:53 · 1867 when he convinced the owners of a San Francisco newspaper the Daily Alta
0:59 · California to pay his fair on the world's first cruise ship To the proprietors of the Alta
1:07 · California send me $1,200 at once I want to go
1:14 · abroad Yours truly Mark Twain
1:22 · The brash 31-year-old reporter would take passage on the Quaker City steamer
1:27 · bound for Europe the Holy Land and the ancient walled city of Jerusalem
1:35 · Twain's wander lust is very interesting He had this this need to get out to to
1:40 · move on to see something new and what better than to travel halfway across the
1:45 · globe One of his favorite phrases that he used again and again was "Move move
1:54 · move." This momentous voyage would establish Twain as the voice of America
2:00 · Funny sarcastic and powerfully opinionated His irreverent letters and
2:06 · droll articles resulted in a best-selling travel log The Innocence
2:11 · Abroad The book would skyrocket Twain to fame
2:17 · and the journey would transform everything in his life
2:31 · [Music]
2:41 · [Applause] [Music]
2:46 · Hannibal Missouri rests on the banks of the Mississippi River It is in this
2:52 · house that Samuel Clemens better known by his pen name Mark Twain grew up His
2:59 · adventurous childhood in this small river town would have a profound influence on his life writings and
3:06 · religious beliefs From an early age Twain regularly
3:14 · attended church services with his beloved mother Jane Lampton Clemens a
3:19 · deeply devout Christian Twain's own beliefs were deeprooted complex and contradictory and
3:27 · he was much more educated on Christianity and the Bible than most would suppose Sam Clemens Mark Twain had
3:34 · a constant lifelong sort of jilted love affair with the Bible He wanted to believe but he
3:41 · couldn't believe It ain't those parts of the Bible that I
3:47 · can't understand that bothers me It is the parts that I do
3:55 · understand In the late 19th century most of what ordinary people knew of the Holy
4:00 · Land came from magnificent stories taught in church Stories of majestic and epic
4:07 · proportions Little Sammy Clemens sat in those hard
4:12 · pews and heard that icy Calvinist version of Christianity and been
4:17 · terrified by it was also mesmerized by it 25 years later Mark Twain would take
4:25 · the journey of a lifetime and visit these mythical places
4:31 · came east last January for the daily out to California of San Francisco and will sail on the 8th of
4:40 · June The Quaker City a 1500 ton sidewheel steamer equipped with sails
4:47 · sits at the foot of Wall Street in New York Harbor Just a few years earlier
4:52 · she'd been a gunboat with the Union Navy during the American Civil War Her
4:58 · current mission is strictly civilian and purely pleasure
5:03 · It was the beginning of what we would call today modern commercial tourism
5:09 · People traveled before People traveled to the Holy Land before but this is the
5:14 · first of what we would recognize today as being tourists
5:21 · It was a novelty in the way of excursions It's like had not been thought of before It was to be a picnic
5:29 · on a gigantic scale [Music]
5:34 · The Daily Alta California newspaper agreed to pay Twain's hefty fair He
5:40 · wrote a telegram to the Alta California just saying "I want to go to Europe Send me the money." And they did And so he
5:47 · was aboard with credentials In return Twain will send back 50
5:53 · articles He also arranged to send dispatches to two popular New York
5:59 · newspapers as well He knew that he had to do in his life was penetrate the eastern literary
6:06 · aristocracy And the voyage to the Holy Land aboard the Quaker City was to be his calling card and he understood that
6:14 · it is within 12 hours of leaving and I have not been to bed or packed my trunk yet Now I feel good I feel damn good and
6:23 · I could write a good correspondence You'll see
6:28 · When he began the cruise he's more or less just a comic performer He's known as a western humorist He's what I would
6:35 · characterize at that point of his life as a bohemian He's
6:40 · counterculture He was irassable endlessly curious He had an alarming
6:46 · amount of energy and nothing to lose which makes for a great recipe for
6:54 · comedy It is a very key period in his
6:59 · life The passengers on the Quaker City were a
7:05 · cross-section of the new Main Street America [Music]
7:11 · the small town businessmen and preachers and doctors and surgeons and their
7:18 · wives very pious people who hadn't been very far from
7:24 · home but people who had read diligently into the Bible and about the biblical
7:31 · holy lands This was an almost outofbody opportunity to see something that had
7:37 · been practically mystical On June 8th 1867 the Quaker City and her
7:44 · 65 passengers embark on an extraordinary 5-month voyage
7:49 · [Music] The ship wasn't even out of New York Harbor before he realized that the
7:56 · people around him were a priceless source of reportage and humor and
8:02 · American folklore He definitely likes making fun of himself and and the others around him
8:08 · And he does make fun of himself He's an equal opportunity mocker
8:15 · As the excursion went on the humor that he found in these people was sort of replaced by a kind of
8:22 · distaste for their incessant piety their nightly prayer meetings Oh grant that
8:28 · they may find it easy Among the most pious members of the
8:34 · group is Colonel William Denny an ex-Confederate officer and
8:40 · shipboard expert on biblical history He led many of the nightly prayer meetings
8:46 · which most of the faithful dutifully [Music] attended Typically absent Mark Twain He
8:56 · was the one who conspicuously did not join the prayer meetings He organized a
9:01 · little group of like-minded young men who called themselves the Quaker City
9:07 · [Music] Nighthawks Later they called themselves the
9:12 · sinners They are people who play cards smoke drink and basically have a good time
9:19 · He's kind of the James Dean of the 19th century He's a bad boy He loves being a bad boy
9:26 · Dear folks I have got a splendid immoral tobacco smoking wine drinking godless
9:33 · roommate who is as good and true and right-minded a man has ever lived Good
9:41 · When Mark Twain is in the presence of people who are maintaining they are better than he is because they are sober
9:47 · or don't smoke or because they are religious he tends to kind of want to
9:52 · tweak them a little bit Travel is fatal to prejudice bigotry and
10:00 · narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these [Music]
10:07 · accounts The travelers sail to the venerated old world the European
10:13 · mainland where they will visit Spain Italy and
10:19 · France Americans in the mid-9th century still
10:26 · had a strong inferiority complex about Europe and Europe was very happy to reinforce that inferiority complex
10:35 · Everything was to be looked at with a degree of
10:40 · reverence Twain does not possess that apparently in his genetic makeup He's
10:46 · not going to go over there and be intimidated or be impressed In effect Europe has to prove itself to
10:55 · Twain The people of those foreign countries are very very ignorant In Paris they simply opened
11:02 · their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French We never did succeed in making
11:08 · those idiots understand their own language In Paris we see a great deal of Twain as
11:15 · the comic performer um working on his uh shtick There's a wonderful scene where
11:22 · he goes into the Parisian barber to have himself beautifully [Music]
11:29 · quafted From earliest infancy it had been a cherished ambition of mine to be
11:34 · shaved someday in a palatial barber shop of Paris
11:39 · Unable to find the mythical Parisian barber of his dreams Twain finds himself
11:45 · in the shabby back room of a wig maker's shop The first rake of his razor loosen
11:51 · the very hide from my face and lifted me out of the chair He dried my features
11:56 · with a towel and was going to comb my hair but I asked to be excused It was
12:02 · sufficient to be skinned I declined to be scalped
12:08 · His encounter with a Parisian barber begins a series of disappointments They are manhandled and manipulated by
12:16 · self-indulgent tour guides As they moved on into Italy into
12:22 · Venice and Naples he began to to focus on the squalor the poverty at the
12:28 · fringes of the cathedrals And even the priests he found were uh more primitive
12:35 · and barbaric and and superstition ridden than he'd imagined from his Sunday school
12:41 · [Music] books I think there's a church every 50
12:46 · yards all over town Every now and then one comes across a frier of
12:52 · orders They're all fat and greasy The generality of them would yield oil like
12:58 · a whale the contentedness of these monks who are
13:03 · supposed to be serving humanity They're fat and the people outside are
13:10 · starving To a large extent Mark Twain's Innocence Abroad is a document of
13:17 · disillusionment that almost everything he sees and describes as a disappointment to one extent or another
13:28 · This was the first time that an American had dared pull back the curtain and show
13:33 · the squalor beneath the image of European splendor
13:42 · Twain's letters to the California newspaper become increasingly cynical If
13:48 · you express skepticism about all these things that everyone else holds in reverence you run the danger of seeming
13:54 · like a Philistine someone who is ignorant and who doesn't know what he's talking about Mark manages to guard
14:01 · against [Music] that over and over he experiences
14:06 · something and says "Gee that's not the way I expected it Now I'm going to give you the truth This is a newspaper I'm going to see it as you would see it if
14:13 · you were here." So he becomes an everyman for the American
14:19 · The readers of the Alta California loved what Twain was sending back to them This could have been a moon expedition for
14:25 · all the familiarity that they had with with Europe and the Holy Land [Music]
14:33 · Twain by the time he gets to Rome is exhausted with great works of art tour
14:40 · guides who want him to be amazed and stupified by how overwhelmingly beautiful these artifacts are
14:49 · In Milan in an ancient tumbled down ruin of a church is the mournful wreck of the
14:56 · most celebrated painting in the world The Last Supper by Leonardo da
15:05 · Vinci It is battered and scarred in every direction and stained and discolored by time
15:13 · To us the great uncultivated it is the last thing in the world to call a
15:22 · picture He wanted to make a virtue out of what Americans had felt was a
15:32 · shortcoming Europe was enslaved to its dead saints and martyrs and great
15:38 · painters Twain says "Europe is growing monotonous to me Europe is
15:43 · dead What a great prelude to the Holy Land which is really dead in Mark
15:49 · Twain's [Music]
15:56 · attitudes Over the next 3 weeks the steamer docks at ports in
16:01 · Greece Russia and Turkey
16:07 · In Constantinople Twain has a special photograph taken of himself known as a
16:13 · carte visit There were photographers named Abdullah
16:18 · Ferreras who are actually famous and a number of the passengers have their photographs taken there People carried
16:25 · with them cart devisits much the way you might carry a business card Dear folks they take the finest
16:33 · photographs in the world here I have ordered some
16:42 · The Quaker city makes the short journey from Turkey to Lebanon
16:47 · It is here that they will make their final preparations for the journey to the Holy Land and Jerusalem
16:56 · [Applause] [Music] They finally reach Beirut in early
17:03 · September Now they're getting into the heart of the journey The Quaker City passengers break off into smaller groups
17:11 · and to go their separate ways American travelers wishing to
17:17 · explore the Holy Land frequently began their journey in
17:22 · Beirut Here the US Council assisted travelers with documentation while also providing
17:29 · English-speaking guides known as Drago Men
17:36 · They're more than guides showing you around The dragon negotiated all of the
17:43 · arrangements provided all accommodations horses food They were
17:50 · able to come up with everything that you could possibly
17:55 · imagine Sam wants to join a group of men that is going to make the most difficult trek of all They're going to go south 55
18:04 · miles to Damascus and then another 155 miles to Jerusalem the cradle of Christian
18:15 · faith The trek will have to be made across burning desert temperatures well over 100° So
18:22 · most of the passengers are just simply not able to do this The rest of the travelers wisely choose
18:29 · to stay on board the Quaker city and sail to Palestine where all of the
18:34 · pilgrims will reunite and begin their explorations of the Holy Land [Music]
18:43 · together In a letter back home Twain describes the terms of his forthcoming
18:49 · adventure Dear folks we shall be in the saddle
18:55 · three weeks and we pay $5 a day a piece in gold Love to all Yours
19:06 · Sam The trip was grueling from the start Dragon could protect the travelers
19:13 · from attacks from better but not from the punishing conditions
19:20 · [Music] It was hot
19:26 · [Music] dry There are places where they can't get water because Islamic residents do
19:33 · not want Christians to profane their wells and there were hostilities
19:40 · The inconvenience of travel at that particular time just how primitive it
19:46 · was It's remarkable Absolutely remarkable Nobody died
19:55 · Mark Twain was a guy who had actually experienced some pretty rough living in the American West He understood that on
20:01 · this overland expedition that they would be living in tents And what he was thinking of was something like a western
20:07 · camping trip where he would sleep on the ground and a bed roll and maybe a pup tent over him
20:16 · [Music] The first night they stopped and set up camp it was like something out of a
20:24 · Arabian Knights caravan Mark Twain was
20:30 · [Music] astounded Behold five stately circus
20:36 · tents were up high enough for a family of giraffes to live in I was speechless
20:43 · [Music] We had serving men and pack mules I
20:48 · wondered what in the very mischief we wanted with such a turnout as that for
20:53 · eight men The meals were set out on tables with fine tablecloths and
20:59 · silverware and crystal and excellent food For the first time the travel books
21:07 · got it right This image of the Arabs popping up these tents and living in luxury was true Unbelievable And much of
21:16 · the trip so far it had nothing had lived up to that expectation
21:24 · [Music] Early the next morning the group saddles
21:31 · up for the demanding trek across Syria's scorching Baha Valley
21:40 · They had what would normally be a three-day journey that they tried to compress into two days so that the pious
21:46 · members of the party would not have to travel on the Sabbath because they considered that sacriiggious
21:56 · What they decide to do is to drive their horses as fast and as hard as they
22:01 · can despite the fact that the animals are weak that they're undernourished
22:07 · that some of them have horrible soores and the Christians the pilgrims are
22:14 · unmoved
22:20 · This is the point in the innocence abroad where Sam's sort of playful
22:27 · skepticism toward the pilgrims turns dark and turns really into
22:33 · anger We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day but there are times
22:38 · when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous becomes a sin
22:48 · [Music] Twain and his weary companions have now
22:55 · navigated more than 8,000 miles of land and sea and are finally nearing the
23:00 · legendary land of the Bible
23:07 · [Music]
23:17 · After this incredible journey the intrepid travelers arrive at the ancient Roman city of Banas From these ruins
23:26 · just a few miles above the Jordan River they gaze out at the hollowed ground of
23:33 · the promised [Music] land For Twain and his travelers Banas
23:39 · was the first location in the Holy Land where they're coming in contact with the New Testament literally the place where
23:45 · Christianity was founded This was the first holy site in
23:51 · the Holy Land I think that at the moment they
23:57 · entered the Holy Land something of Sam's early excitement and wonderment returned to him because this really was the place
24:04 · where Jesus walked the place he'd read about as a boy [Music]
24:09 · This is the first place we have ever seen whose pavements were trotten by Jesus Christ
24:16 · But that moment quickly disappeared Things got back to normal which was to say hot
24:23 · dusty irreverent hypocritical
24:30 · What fascinates Mark Twain most as he enters the Holy Land is not so much the
24:36 · Holy Land itself and its various relics and temples and
24:41 · shrines but the highly artificial response of the pilgrims who he's
24:47 · traveling with He's amused at their weeping over
24:53 · various tombs and sites He's repulsed at their vandalism of
25:01 · these same sites I wish this vandalism could be
25:07 · stopped They have been hacking and chipping these old arches here that
25:12 · Jesus looked upon in the [Music] flesh What is being taken away now are
25:20 · fragments that even Sam in his religious skepticism see as a desecration
25:28 · He calls them vandals i.e the people who destroyed Rome Borish
25:34 · insensitive Now it's meant to be funny but but I think it's not I There's a
25:39 · degree to which you you sense that this is a criticism that should be taken to heart
25:48 · The troop moves on towards the legendary Sea of Galilee near the ruins of the ancient
25:55 · synagogue in Capernaum This is where Jesus based his
26:02 · ministry and where he is said to have performed many of his healing miracles
26:08 · With the Sea of Galilee you have the clash of the romantic and realism You
26:15 · have the group of pilgrims whose dream it has always been apparently uh to sail
26:20 · across the Sea of Galilee and to have a deeply spiritual moment and to affirm
26:25 · themselves with God These men have read about the Sea of Galilee all their
26:32 · [Music] lives They never expected to see it and
26:38 · here they are and they're a Gogg with wonder
26:44 · The pilgrim enthusiasts of our party who had been so wild with religious ecstasy
26:50 · ever since they touched holy ground that they did little but mutter incoherent rap cities So anxious were they to take
26:57 · shipping and sail upon the waters that had upheld the sacred feat of the Savior
27:05 · [Music] When they arrive they're talking in terms of there's no price too high in
27:10 · order to ride on the waters of Galilee and an Arab boat comes along And
27:17 · they ask how much they will charge for a ride And when the Arabs quote them a
27:23 · figure the pilgrims say "That's too high." It turns out it's just $8
27:28 · Considering what they've spent on this trip $8 is a drop in the bucket
27:33 · They try to dicker the price down You don't want our price we're gone
27:41 · [Music] They've waited their lifetime for the experience and they've just blown the
27:47 · opportunity So then they turn on one another They're bickering amongst themselves
27:53 · They're very human after all They're holier than thou self-righteousness gets punctured No word was spoken by the
28:00 · sinners Even the mildest sarcasm might have been dangerous
28:06 · And the funniest line of all is one of them turns to Colonel Denny and says "Well Denny do you wonder now that
28:12 · Christ walked?" The thwarted group camps in
28:18 · Tiberius along the rocky shore of Galilee Here Twain compares Galilee to
28:26 · his beloved Lake Tahoe The celebrated Sea of Galilee is
28:32 · not so large a sea is Lake Tahoe
28:37 · Footnote I measure all lakes by Tahoe And when we come to speak of
28:43 · beauty this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a meridian of longitude is to a rainbow
28:52 · He lets nothing go Everything gets belittled and diminished When he gets to Lake Ko in
28:58 · Italy he says "Taho is better." When he gets to Galilee he says "Taho is better If you want beauty go to
29:06 · America America is better." It has been nearly 4 months since the
29:12 · travelers left New York City Now they are just days away from their grand
29:19 · destination the holiest place on earth
29:26 · Jerusalem The route the Twain and the pilgrims took was the most traveled route from ancient times to modern
29:33 · history No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which
29:39 · bounds the approaches to Jerusalem Rocks rocks rocks Roads infernal Thought
29:47 · we never would get there The approach to Jerusalem was very harsh was very rocky
29:52 · was very bleak was with no vegetation
29:59 · And this is what Twain
30:04 · [Music] saw At last away in the middle of the
30:09 · day ancient bits of wall and crumbling arches began to line the
30:16 · way We toiled up one more hill and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat
30:22 · on high [Music]
30:36 · Jerusalem Just after noon the invigorated party entered the narrow crooked streets of the old city by the
30:44 · famous Damascus Gate [Music]
30:54 · Twain and his companions take lodging in the Mediterranean hotel This was a refreshing change for
31:02 · Twain and the pilgrims coming from 3 weeks of tent life and horseback riding
31:08 · into a modern hotel of the time with good wine good meals good accommodation
31:13 · with each one having his little bed his room his basin and toilet obviously was
31:19 · a change and a relaxing change So refreshing that Mark Twain does not
31:25 · leave the hotel the entire first day He records in his journal loafed all
31:32 · the afternoon in the Mediterranean
31:38 · Hotel For over a century Twain's lodgings were thought to be lost to
31:44 · history until recently when historians through meticulous research discovered
31:49 · the building to still exist The telltale evidence that this is
31:57 · the courtyard of the Mediterranean Hotel back in 1867 was by a photo of a woman
32:03 · grinding wheat But it's not only the grinding of the wheat It was also the stairs the door the window and the crack
32:12 · on the floor in the flagstone which is still here till today
32:18 · It is from this historic setting that Mark Twain began his exploration of
32:24 · Jerusalem I think the Holy Land attracted Mark Twain immediately for journalistic reasons He knew it would be
32:31 · good copy and it was But in a deeper sense he had been marinated in the
32:37 · mythology of the Holy Land since boyhood When he enters Jerusalem he is
32:47 · deeply excited He really is is thrilled to be there This actually strips away a
32:52 · lot of his cynicism He does recognize that there is
32:58 · something deeply profound and meaningful about this [Music]
33:04 · place This is a place if if nothing else has an enormous history to it He's
33:12 · trying to figure out how to reconcile that with how small it is
33:23 · A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around
33:28 · the city in an hour I do not know how else to make one understand how small it
33:34 · is It was dirty and crowded and noisy and
33:40 · smelly and it was not a pleasant place to come to when you expected Jerusalem to be like the scriptures
33:48 · The appearance of the city is peculiar It is as knobbyby with
33:54 · countless little domes as a prison door is with bolt heads The streets are roughly and badly
34:02 · paved with stone and are intolerably [Music]
34:08 · crooked For Twain it underscores the disappointment
34:14 · The Holy Land is not the place that I imagined when I read the
34:20 · Bible It's not as big It's not as beautiful It's not as
34:26 · impressive Even some of the pilgrims like Denny can't help but be a little
34:33 · [Music] disappointed He kept hearing the word
34:38 · boxish Bakshms Let's make a deal I think another
34:45 · devastating blow to Sam's um expectations of the Holy Land uh went beyond the squalor and the barrenness of
34:52 · the land The people themselves living in the Holy Land were hardly
34:58 · enobled Here was human misery on a scale unimaginable to American
35:08 · eyes I have a religion You may call it
35:13 · blasphemy It is that there is a god for the rich man and none for the
35:19 · [Music] poor In 1867 the population of Jerusalem
35:28 · is composed of Muslims Jews Greeks Armenians Syrians Cops Catholics and
35:36 · Protestants Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem outnumber the roughly 4,000 Jews in the
35:44 · [Music] city Three short years later the Jewish
35:50 · population will be the majority Mark Twain talks about the Jews
35:55 · remarkably little in terms of looking at real live ones in the Holy Lands
36:04 · He's got these usual garden variety prejudices about Jews but he doesn't feel superior to
36:12 · them He doesn't feel that uh that he wants to make fun of them and he doesn't You do not find anti-semitic humor
36:19 · anywhere in Mark Twain [Music]
36:26 · Twain and his fellow travelers visit Jerusalem's historic sites including the
36:31 · Dome of the Rock This Muslim holy site sits on the ancient ruins of King
36:37 · Solomon's temple Twain becomes peeved when the self-righteous Colonel Denny refuses to
36:44 · remove his shoes as required by Muslim custom To step rudely upon the sacred
36:52 · praying mats with booted feet a thing not done by any Arab was to inflict pain
36:57 · upon men who had not offended us in any way He became disgusted by their their
37:05 · borishness their hypocrisy their their kind of lack of imagination
37:10 · If it happens to have a deep spiritual significance to someone else well it
37:15 · doesn't matter because you're not my religion anyway And that appalls him that just
37:22 · infuriates
37:28 · him If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be A Christian
37:40 · Twain's tour culminates at Jerusalem's most sacred Christian site the church of
37:45 · the holy supplr It was the goal of every pilgrim
37:50 · to come to Jerusalem to this place to the church of the holy supplr This was
37:55 · the core The life death crucifixion and
38:01 · resurrection of Christ This is where those major events
38:07 · took place that founded Christianity The church of the holy supplr is set up to be a pilgrimage site
38:15 · but in our eyes today we could see it very much in the way that certain tourist sites are set up
38:23 · All these biblical shrines were placed here in the 4th century by St Helena the
38:29 · mother of the great Roman Emperor Constantine She built this great
38:34 · monument to enclose the holy places under one roof He sees it as a kind of theme
38:42 · park All of these venues very conveniently arranged so as to be within
38:48 · easy access of one another
38:54 · Twain approaches the tomb of Jesus located in the ratunda at the center of
38:59 · the church What he saw was astonishing Over it hang some 50 gold
39:06 · and silver lamps which are kept always burning and the place is otherwise
39:12 · scandalized by trumpery hugs and toddry ornamentation
39:19 · I think this is where you can see that both his enlightenment rationalism and his deep Protestantism converge very
39:31 · powerfully I mean these are lowurch Protestants They don't want smells and bells They want a simple church plain
39:39 · pine benches a pulpit no cross no bleeding no thorns none of those
39:45 · ornaments that are supposed to whoop up your enthusiasm What is all this stuff doing
39:54 · here when he gets to the puditive tomb of Adam and he just goes into baos Tomb
39:59 · of Adam where would there be a tomb of Adam how would anybody know where Adam was buried why would it be here
40:07 · [Music] the grave of Adam How touching it was here in a land
40:13 · of strangers far away from home and friends and all who cared for me Thus to
40:20 · discover the grave of a blood relation True a distant one but still a
40:30 · relation He pulls out all the stops He's just not going to have any of this malarkey This is what we were coming for
40:38 · This is the climax This petty bickering over these fraudulent artifacts I mean
40:44 · there's no way we can know if they're true
40:50 · He goes into this long riff He pretends to break down and sobs because finally
40:55 · he's discovered the tomb of an ancestor
41:01 · I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor dead
41:06 · relative Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume
41:12 · here for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy
41:17 · Land It's another way to make fun And he's a humorist It's meant to be funny
41:24 · The impact of Twain's immensely popular writings would resonate for
41:30 · years A decade later former President Ulissiz Srant would take a world tour He
41:37 · went to Jerusalem specifically and interestingly enough he carried as many
41:42 · of the travelers did a Bible in one hand a tour book in the other and a copy of
41:48 · The Innocence Abroad Like many tourists Grant would visit the
41:54 · significant historical sites of Jerusalem When Grant went to the Church of Holy
42:01 · Supplr he went to Adam's tomb Now what had been a shrine a
42:08 · religious shrine whether a pious fraud or not had become a tourist site because
42:14 · travelers went to see where Mark Twain wept
42:20 · The final stop inside the holy sepre is the sight of the crucifixion as
42:26 · identified by St Helena Twain allows himself to soften
42:35 · here I could not believe that the three holes in the top of the rock were the
42:41 · actual ones the crosses stood in But I felt satisfied that those
42:47 · crosses had stood so near the place now occupied by them that the few feet of
42:52 · possible difference were a matter of no consequence He says that event would
43:00 · have had some staying power People would have remembered where that happened and it would have been talked about for
43:06 · hundreds of years That moment Twain actually gives some credence to He's
43:13 · moved The experience that Twain has when he finds himself at the sight of the
43:20 · crucifixion is is really profound for him and
43:27 · meaningful He recognizes that this may have happened and gains some
43:34 · understanding into why religion is so powerful
43:42 · The next morning after just one full day of exploring Jerusalem Twain departs for a journey
43:49 · outside the holy city Before leaving he handwrites
43:55 · instructions to a local merchant ordering a special handmade Bible This
44:01 · document is the only known private letter written by Mark Twain while in
44:06 · the Holy Land Fix up the little Bible I selected The one that has backs made of balsom wood
44:13 · from the Jordan Oak from Abraham's tree at Hebrron Olive wood from the Mount of
44:19 · Olives Put on it this inscription Mrs Jane Clemens from her
44:26 · son Mount Calvary September 24
44:33 · 1867 It's an attempt to kind of please his mother Markman may be skeptical in
44:39 · the way he describes everything but he's quite tolerant of other people's beliefs so long as there's not hypocrisy about
44:46 · it He was deeply appreciative and
44:52 · respectful of people who did possess the faith those he thought were
44:59 · genuine Over the next several days Twain and his
45:04 · companions will visit sites to the east and south of Jerusalem They stop in Jericho and swim
45:11 · in both the Dead Sea and the Jordan [Music]
45:18 · River When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the River Jordan was
45:24 · 4,000 mi long and 35 mi wide It's only 90 mi long and so crooked that
45:32 · a man does not know which side of it he's on half the time It is not any wider than Broadway
45:39 · in New York Very early Friday morning September
45:45 · 27th they begin the almost 3-hour ride to the holy city of Bethlehem the sight
45:52 · of the nativity I touch with reverent finger
45:58 · the actual spot where the infant Jesus lay but I
46:04 · think nothing He was sort of shredding his
46:09 · Christian faith bit by bit or his his wish to be a Christian This was almost a
46:16 · confirmation that the faith and all its iconography and all of its beautiful images were an illusion
46:24 · They expect to see the beautiful holy city revealed to them and they get nothing You have a very similar scenario
46:32 · in the Wizard of Oz where you have this group set out and in the end it's just
46:37 · an old man working the controls He's been taught to believe
46:43 · that in the Holy Land you'll find an encounter with God that there is the one spot on the
46:51 · planet where the divine has been made
46:58 · human Ultimately though it's a tourist attraction It's a kind of
47:05 · Disneyland Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes Palestine is no more of this
47:12 · workday world It is sacred to poetry and
47:18 · tradition It is
47:24 · dreamland On September 29th despite it being the Sabbath the pilgrims leave
47:30 · Jerusalem for good and head west to the port city of Jaffa where the Quaker city
47:36 · awaits them left Jerusalem at 3 and a half in the afternoon and got away
47:44 · They are all relieved to be going back to the ship Everyone wants to get home
47:49 · and out of this desert I recorded here as a notable that not
47:56 · even our pilgrims wept They are the very boys to go into sentimental convulsions at the meest
48:03 · shadow of a provocation Yet they wept not over
48:13 · Jerusalem By Monday all the passengers are safely back on board the
48:18 · ship The pilgrimage is complete It was on the voyage back when
48:25 · he really was able to sit down and apply himself to finishing the dispatches that he owed the California paper
48:33 · Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most
48:38 · cherished traditions of our boyhood Well let them
48:45 · go On November 19th 1867 the Quaker City completes her
48:51 · extraordinary voyage and docks at the foot of Wall Street in New York Harbor
49:03 · The steamer Quaker City arrived yesterday morning and turned her managerie of pilgrims loose on
49:10 · America Their pilgrims progress is ended and they know more now than it is lawful
49:16 · for the gods themselves to know Upon his return Twain was approached by
49:22 · a book publisher with a proposition that would alter the course of his life and
49:28 · of American literature A publisher by the name of Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Company contacted him and
49:36 · said "Would you consider revising and arranging these letters into book
49:42 · form?" Boy would he ever Twain begins compiling the letters
49:49 · reworking adding and refining his pros in order to reach a broader audience He
49:56 · calls his book The Innocence Abroad or The New Pilgrim's
50:01 · Progress It is published in July 1869 Twain dedicates the book to my most
50:09 · patient reader and most charitable critic my aged mother
50:16 · The Innocence Abroad was Mark Twain's best-selling book during his whole
50:21 · lifetime It remains irreverent and slangy but not nearly as much as the
50:27 · dispatches were He cut out references to nudity to
50:34 · bodily functions generally speaking elevated the language
50:39 · It was so damned funny It really was Serious book reviewers had a serious
50:46 · book in their hands now and they were reading it and finding themselves doubled up with laughter and they had to
50:52 · admit it One major reviewer noted "The book
50:58 · must be taken in interrupted doses There is more fun in it than it is safe to
51:03 · swallow at once." The reviews of the book wet the public's appetite
51:12 · In 1867 Americans need to laugh after the Civil War And that may be one reason
51:17 · why um Innocence Abroad sells so phenomenally Um they're promised a laugh
51:23 · on every page Over and over you had people who
51:28 · were saying "My god this is fresh This is original This is wonderful." And Americans embraced the
51:34 · innocence abroad For many it would be the first book they would ever own
51:42 · My books are like water Those of the great geniuses are wine
51:49 · Fortunately everybody drinks
51:54 · water The Quaker City's grand pleasure excursion may not have been what Mark
52:00 · Twain had anticipated but the end results were beyond his wildest dreams
52:08 · The Innocence Abroad transformed everything in Mark Twain's life In his personal life in his professional life
52:14 · in his in his creative life He doesn't have to have a newspaper slot and write for the newspapers in order to make a
52:20 · living He can actually write books Mark Twain will be an ardent traveler
52:25 · for the rest of his life returning many times to Europe but never again to the
52:31 · Holy Land I think Twain was enormously changed by
52:37 · his trip He saw a world where cultures and peoples were really
52:45 · distinct It filled him with enormous passion and it really fed his curiosity
52:52 · to try and figure out this thing called mankind which was a question that he wrestled with until his death
53:01 · As for the bitter feelings he harbors about the excursion they are gradually mellowed with the passage of time and
53:09 · the triumph of success We have full comfort in one
53:15 · reflection However our experiences in Europe have taught us that in time the fatigue will
53:22 · be forgotten The heat will be forgotten The thirst the persecutions of the
53:29 · beggars and then all that will be left will be
53:35 · pleasant memories of Jerusalem
53:40 · [Music]
53:46 · The gentle reader will never never know what a consumate ass he can become until
53:52 · he goes [Music] abroad I speak now of course in the
53:58 · supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad and therefore is not already a
54:05 · consumate ass
54:12 · [Music]

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