Mark Twain in Jerusalem and the Holy Land

 

Samuel L. Clemens, who was reborn as Mark Twain at age 27 and two months, crawled miraculously at birth as a staff reporter for the eight-page Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, in Nevada,  and took his first steps four years later, in California, with a comic account of a frog jumping contest. 

But it wasn’t until he managed to hitch a ride on a pleasure trip to the Holy Land, in 1867, that he was really up and running. Until the young humorist stepped aboard the steamer Quaker City, neither he, nor anyone else, yet imagined how this trip would win him the world.  

Mark Twain’s Quote On Jerusalem

Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince…  

Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone… 

Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?… 

Palestine is no more of this work-day world. 

It is sacred to poetry and tradition — it is dream-land. – Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, Chapter 56

What had been the innocent imaginings of Twain’s co-excursionists, as depicted in charming books on their bookshelves back home, would give way before the unvarnished experience of his seeing for himself.

“Palestine,”  Twain avowed, “sits in sackcloth and ashes.” 

And Jerusalem, the “stateliest name in history”,  was in reality a village, so small he could circle it – all “rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt” – in a hour. 

That storied city, he concluded, was “mournful, and dreary, and lifeless” and for the life of him, he would not choose to live there.