Rough Compassion and Self-Restraint: Samuel Clemens and Tent Life in the Holy Land

Among the many things for which we are indebted to Louis J. Budd is his persistent reminder that a central consideration when casting a cold critical eye on Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens) has to be the fact that he was funny. Lou understood that the humor underlying the most important of Clemens’ works, speeches, and correspondence is the fuel that drives it but also understood that “Twain was much more complicated than most of us on this side of sanity.”¹ Michael Kiskis was also quick to remind us that Clemens was complex and that we keep him alive by examining the complexities he embodied. He makes the case that one valuable perspective can be had by seeing the degree to which Clemens work is grounded in “the value of compassion.”² A fresh perspective on the complexity of Clemens’ evolving humor as well as the quality of compassion which Michael recognized can be seen in Clemens’ marginal comments in Charles Langdon’s copy of William Prime’s Tent Life in the Holy Land ³ an important source for the Holy Land portion of The Innocents Abroad.

Writing to his brother Orion in 1878 with advice on writing, Clemens says “Every man must learn his trade—not pick it up. . . . But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else ‘The Innocents Abroad’ would have had no sale.”⁴ In The Innocents Abroad Clemens found the comic voice that allowed him to transcend the Southwestern humor and other influences that he’d relied upon to that point and his satire of Tent Life in the Holy Land was an important part of this apprenticeship.

Prime’s Tent Life was among the recommended reading for travelers on the Quaker City voyage and Clemens’ use of it as source material and his distaste for it and its author is clear from even a superficial reading of The Innocents Abroad. However, until the Center for Mark Twain Studies was presented with Charles Langdon’s copy of Tent Life in 2008 by Irene Langdon, widow of the third Jervis Langdon, grandson of Charles, no copy of the text with direct association to Clemens had been seen.

Charles’ copy of the book is inscribed boldly in ink “Charles J. Langdon, Elmira New York” and below, at the bottom of the page, the notation has been made in pencil “left Elmira, 4:38 p.m. June 5, 1867.” The Quaker City sailed from New York on June 8 with Langdon, Clemens, and seventy-four other passengers.

In the September 1867 report from Jerusalem to his sponsoring newspaper, the San Francisco Alta California, Clemens mentions Prime’s weeping and refers to Tent Life as a “curious” book.⁵ A notebook entry from December 1867 mentions “Prime infatuated travelers,”⁶ offering some indication of what Clemens saw as the thoroughly reproachable effect of the book on the perceptions of his fellow travelers. Given the familiarity with the text that Clemens demonstrates in the letters and his friendly shipboard relationship with Charles Langdon, it is plausible that he annotated Langdon’s copy while on the journey. It is also conceivable that Clemens also worked with this copy of the book after the voyage during the time that he was pulling together material from his notes and letters to create the manuscript for The Innocents Abroad. Twain added a more lengthy criticism of Prime than appeared in the Alta letters and he includes long quotes directly from Prime. He might have been looking at Charles Langdon’s copy both to refresh his memory of the text during his process of revision and to pull the quotes he intended to include. In two instances the passage quoted from Prime is the one marked off by Clemens in the Langdon copy. This suggests that he had this copy of the book at hand while preparing the manuscript.

Whatever the case, comparing the reactions to Prime as seen in the marginalia and the subsequent treatment of Prime in the text of The Innocents Abroad we see two different aspects of Clemens, or we...