Mark Twain Takes a Shave in Paris

We venerate Mark Twain as a foundational American novelist, but for much of his career he paid his bills by traveling the world, writing of his adventures and recounting them from the stage. In fact, Twain spent 12 years abroad--including nearly two years living in Paris. This is Part 1 of  the "Mark Twain and France" series, in which we explore Twain's first encounter with Paris as a reporter on a travel excursion in 1867.  

This podcast was created by Roger Mummert for www.theparisproject.net.

Transcript

Mark Twain Takes a Shave in Paris…

The Evolution of an Accidental Travel Writer

This is a podcast from theparisproject.net

I’m Roger Mummert

In 1867, a young American reporter on assignment stepped off a train and into a place he called “magnificent Paris.”

He was dazzled by the city where people were “wonderfully Frenchy,” and the surroundings “gay and enlivening.” People sat “at little tables on the sidewalk…sipping wine and coffee…there was music in the air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere!”

Over the next four days, he saw the sights of a place he long had read about. Seeing the name “rue de Rivoli” on a street corner, he gushed, “was like meeting an old friend.” 

And he recorded his adventures over these four days. 

• He took a “French shave” that “lifted the hide off his face”—and crushed a lifelong dream of being lathered and pampered in a palatial Paris barbershop. 

• He was squired around town by an opportunistic guide oddly name Billfinger—who specialized in not reaching destinations requested.  

• He peeked at the billowing underskirts of “can-can” dancers through eyes (partially) shielded out of shame. 

• And he visited the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair that premiered a spectacular array of new technology from across the globe—and there he spent “nearly two hours.” 

That reporter, of course, was Mark Twain, and his series of travel dispatches were collected into “The Innocents Abroad.” When this hilarious travelogue was published in 1869, it became a best seller—in fact, his best-selling book in his lifetime. And it started Mark Twain down the path as an accidental, sometimes reluctant, wildly successful and eventually ambivalent travel writer.  

Today, we venerate Mark Twain as a foundational American novelist—Hemingway said that “all modern literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.” But for much of his career, Twain paid his bills (and tried to pay down crushing debts) by traveling abroad, writing about his adventures and then recounting them from the stage.

From the start, Twain found that he could fill the house—and make ‘em laugh. With his slow, slow drawl and deadpan face, he was born to lecture, and for 30 years he loved it as much as he dreaded it. 

But it paid. While publishers claimed the lion’s share of book sales, lecturing was cash on the barrel, minus just an agent’s cut, travel expenses—and incidentals like whiskey and cigars. 

Twain’s realization that he could make a good living as a self-described “platform monkey” came early in his career as a journalist. In March 1866, at age 30, he was sent by the Sacramento Union to report on the Sandwich Islands (we now know them as Hawaii). He spent four months there, and on his return he put together a lecture, “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands.” 

From a stage in San Francisco, he recounted his travel anecdotes—such as being fed live fish and baked dog—and was astonished by the roar of the crowd. Following his triumphant premier, he performed at 18 venues throughout California and Nevada. His lectures became legendary—in both story and style.

Twain’s success led to an assignment from the newspaper Alta California to report from an excursion cruise leaving New York for Europe and the Holy Land. He was set to sail on the steamship Quaker City in June 1867. For Twain, it was to be the first of 27 Atlantic crossings. 

The excursion was promoted as a celebrity cruise. Featured passengers would include a Civil War hero, a famous preacher and a celebrated actress. However, the celebs bowed out, and Twain found himself the main entertainment amid “a bunch of hymn singers.” Attendance at religious services on deck were expected. He wrote: “The pleasure trip was a funeral excursion without the corpse….”  

Twain made the best of it. Even better, he made friends with a fellow traveler Charley Langdon who showed him a picture of his lovely sister Olivia. Twain was smitten at first glance. He soon would court her and make Livy his wife and best editor. 

The success of “The Innocents Abroad” led to several other best-selling travel books: “Roughing It” (1872), “A Tramp Abroad” (1880), and “Life on the Mississippi” (1883). His travel series concluded in 1897 with “Following the Equator,” an account of a lecture tour around the world. With this, Twain happily retired his sea trunk.

Even a decade before that, he had lost the wanderlust of youth, writing: “I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see…except heaven and hell & I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of those.”  

Over the three decades that closed the 19th Century, Twain was more than a writer. He was a premier American cultural ambassador to the world—known as “the American..the American Vandal, le humorist Americain. And for Americans at home, Twain was a provider of images and anecdotes of faraway cultures that collectively formed the family of man. 

And in that transformative time, America’s place in the world and its power and influence changed enormously. By 1900, America had emerged as a powerful and imperialist nation—with a lofty sense of how American values could improve the lives of people still “sitting in darkness” and in need of the “blessings of civilization.”

Early on, Twain spoke of travel as “liberating” and “fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”  

But once he was done with travelogues and lectures, Twain refocused his energies and fame as a passionate and politically engaged anti-imperialist. 

We’ll explore here the degree to which Mark Twain recognized himself, by way of his travel writing, as perhaps an unwitting agent in the spread of a rising notion called “American Exceptionalism.” 

Stay tuned for more podcasts in the series “Mark Twain and France” from theparisproject.net.