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Virginia City, NV
(source of
inspiration)
"Shortly came to old
Khan & in it examined the arched pit called Joseph's Well, where
his brethren threw him. Then over a horrible rocky, barren desert (like
Nevada)." journal entry, 9.19.1867, Sea of Galilee,
as quoted in Mark
Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Vol. 1
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Quaker
City
(source of
inspiration and site of actual writing)
"We
decided that Gibraltar & San Roque were all of Spain that we wanted
to see at present & are glad we came here among the Africans,
Moors, Arabs, & Bedouins of the desert...This is the infernalist
hive of infernally costumed barbarians I have ever come across yet." letter
to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
6.21.1867-7.5.1867, SS Quaker City,
as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters,
Vol. 2
"We tired
ourselves out here [Genoa, Italy]
in this curious old city of palaces
yesterday & shall again today...The city has 120,000 inhabitants
& 2/3 of them are women & the most beautiful one can imagine.
And they are the most tastefully dressed and the most graceful. We sat
in a great gas-lit public grove or garden till 10 last night, where
they were crowded together drinking wine & eating ices, & it
seems to me that it would be good to die & go there. These people
think a good deal of Columbus now, but they didn't formerly." letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
7.15.1867, Genoa, Italy, as quoted in Mark
Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"Italy is a
beautiful land, & its daughters are as fair as the moon that holds
it silvery course above their heads & its traditions are rich with
the poetry and romance of the old crusading days,--happy days! glorious
days but destined never to return! I like Italy." letter to Frank Fuller, 8.7.1867, Naples,
Italy, as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"They said the
Emperor of Russia was at Yalta, 30 miles or 40 away, & urged us to
go there with the ship & visit him--promised us a cordial
welcome...The whole tribe turned out to receive our party...they all
talk English & they were all very neatly but very plainly dressed.
You all dress a great deal finer than they were dressed. The Emperor
& his family threw off all reserve & showed us all over the
palace themselves...I had been appointed chairman of a comittee to
draught an address to the Emperor on behalf of the passengers...'We are
a handful of private citizens of the United States, traveling simply
for recreation, & unostentatiously..." letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
8.26.1867, Yalta, Russia, as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"You cannot
conceive of anything so beautiful as Constantinople, viewed from the
Golden Horn or the Bosporous. I think it must be the
handsomest city in the world." letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
9.1-2.1867, Constantinople, Turkey, as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"We are here [the
U.S. Consul's Office in Beirut] making
a contract with a dragoman...We shall be in the saddle three weeks--we
have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman & 2 other
servants, & we pay five dollars a day apiece in gold." letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
9.10.1867, Beirut, Syria, as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"Mr. Esais--Fix
up the little Bible I selected...the one that has backs made of
Balsam-wood from the Jordan, oak from Abraham's tree at Hebron,
olive-wood from the Mount of Olives...Put 'Jerusalem' around on it
loose." letter to Mr. Esais, 9.24.1867, Jerusalem,
Syria, as quoted in Mark Twain's
Letters, Vol. 2
"Dear Folks--The Quaker City
arrived at
10 this morning...I have been bumming around the
newspaper offices all day...I sat down in one of the editorial rooms
& wrote a newspaper article that will make the Quakers get up &
howl in the morning." letter to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family,
11.20.1867, New York, New York, as quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2 |
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San Francisco, CA
(site of actual
writing)
"I
wrote The Innocents Abroad in
the months of March and April, 1868, in
San Francisco." Autobiography, 163
"O,
Geeminy! [That stands for a sigh.] I shall get the Sphynx & the
rest of Egypt off my mind to-day, & tomorrow set sail from
Alexandria, homeward bound! You cannot imagine what a broader world of
pleasant significance is in those words to me, now, voyaging drearily
over accumulating reams of paper, than they bore to my mind when the Quaker City turned her
bows westward...Cuss the cussed book, anyhow." letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 6.17.1868,
San Francisco, as quoted in Mark
Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
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Washington, DC
(site of actual
writing)
"Out of a mass of
letters not yet mailed I send you three. The letters seem to be about
alike, but I take these because one blackguards Palenstine scenery,
another mentions Nazareth which is a town widely known in America, the
third gently touches the stupid gang of scholastic asses who go
browsing through the Holy Land reducing miracles to purely natural
occurances--& all three tickle my pilgrims on the raw." letter to John Russell Young, 11.24.1867,
Washington, DC, as quoted in Mark
Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"When these
letters [to the Alta California while
aboard the Quaker City
excursion] were written my
impressions were fresh, but now they have lost their freshness; they
were warm then--they are cold, now. I could strike out certain letters,
& write new ones wherewith to supply their places. If you think
such a book would suit your purpose, please drop me a line." letter to Elisha Bliss, Jr., 2.12.1867,
Washington, DC, as quoted in Mark
Twain's Letters, Vol. 2
"I am writing a
prodigious 600-page book, now--a seductive book with pictures on every
page--for the great subscription Publishing Co., of Hartford, who
publish for Greely & I exclusively--but I shall have this book done
before autumn." letter to Anson Burlingame, 2.19.1868,
Washington, DC, as quoted in Mark
Twain's Letters, Vol. 2 |
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Langdon Home, Elmira, NY
(site of editing)
"In
the beginning of our engagement the proofs of my first book, The
Innocents Abroad, began to arrive and she [Livy-then
at her
home in Elmira] read
them with me. She also edited them." Autobiography,
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