Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“The Cruise of the Quaker City” (1892)

[69] === “The Cruise of the Quaker City” (1892) Mary Mason Fairbanks Among Twain’s fellow passengers aboard the Quaker City was Mary Mason (aka “Mother”) Fairbanks (1828–98), wife of the co-owner of the Cleveland Herald, who remained his devoted friend and confidant to the end of her life. As her initial comment below suggests, Twain immediately became a thorn in the side of Charles C. Duncan (1821–98), the organizer of the Quaker City excursion and captain of the ship. A parody of genteel travel narratives, The Innocents Abroad (1868) was not only Twain’s first important book, it was his best-selling book during his life. Some 70,000 copies were sold during its first year alone. “captain duncan desires me to say that passengers for the Quaker City must be on board tomorrow before the tide goes out. What the tide has to do with us or we with the tide is more than I know, but that is what the captain says.” This was the introductory speech with which Mark Twain made his first bow, more than twenty years ago, to the party of “Innocents Abroad” who had gathered in New York awaiting the sailing of the Quaker City. . . . “I am like an old, burned-out crater; the fires of my life are all dead within me,” he said to a fellow traveler as they walked the deck together. But this was only a youthful cynicism, for he was then little past thirty. He did not know then that he had begun a voyage of discovery by whose circuitous route he was to find his inspiration and his opportunity. He had acquired some local prestige in California and Nevada as a humorous journalist, and was the author of a Gulliver sort of story, “The Jumping Frog,” but as yet he had furnished little evidence of superior literary ability. At first he lolled about the ship as one committed to utter indolence. His drolleries and moderate movements rendered him conspicuous among the passengers, while from his table would come frequent peals of contagious laughter, in the midst of which his own serious and questioning face and air of injured innocence were thoroughly mirth-provoking. Those who had twain in his own time [70] the good fortune to share with him the adventures with which his remarkable and grotesque narratives have made the public familiar recall with interest the gradual waking up of this man of genius. His keen eyes discerned the incongruities of character around him, into which his susceptibility to absurdities gave him quick insight. Here in this goodly company of pilgrims , embracing men of mind and men of manners and their opposites, he put himself at school. With what result, let the unparalleled story of the Innocents Abroad bear witness. It followed that in this journey of months, such a man as Mr. Clemens found his own coterie of congenial friends. With them he studied and discoursed of the strange countries at whose shores they were to anchor. He read their poets with inimitable pathos and he was the ship’s oracle upon the Old Masters, whom later he ridiculed in his book. To his preferred friends he revealed his true character, but, with a perversity on his part induced by the unmerited criticism of some of the company , he exaggerated his faults to others. Hence the conflicting estimates of Mark Twain’s character, which often confound those who know him for what he is. The appearance of The Innocents Abroad, which met with an unparalleled circulation, secured for its author a sudden notoriety. For an American ship to go cruising in foreign seas simply for pleasure was in those days a new departure, and although the witty author did not glorify the American traveler, his book was the event of the year. Its success attested its merit and at once he decided upon his career. It was manifest that he had found his calling, and had mined in a richer lode than California or Nevada could ever have opened to him. . . . The Quaker City sailed out of New York harbor with no celebrities on board. She brought back the Great American Humorist. Mary Mason Fairbanks, “The Cruise of the Quaker City,” Chautauquan 14 (January 1892): 429–30, 432. ...