Repaired original

A funny trip around Central Europe with the funny, witty Marrk Twain as your companion. ( )

Hilarious first chapter (of Vol. 2), walking in the Swiss alps with his agent and courier. He sands his Agent Harris on ahead to scout out and report back, which he does after a few days, “all felt the heat in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, then we set out again…until from the Finsteraarhorn poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail” (11-13). Several pages feature such incomprehensible words. Clemens compliments his report, but asks about the words, turns out from Fiji, Zulu and Choctaw (bolwoggoly et al.) Clemens asks, “Why all this Choctaw rubbish?” Harris answers, “Because I didn’t know any French but two or three words, nor any Latin or greek at all.” Twain, “Why use foreign words anyhow?” Agent, “To adorn my page. They all do it.”(20)

Twain encountered the purported suicidal leaping-palace of Pontius Pilate, and the real St Nicholas, who’s buried in the church in Sachseln. “He has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children…He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them to become a hermit.” “St Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys Christmas Eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other people’s children, to make up for deserting his own”(24). During his hermit life, he partook of communion bread and wine once a month, but for the rest, he fasted. So Santa Claus was skinny. Guess Prof. Clement Moore’s account in 1823, the “right jolly old elf” displaced the thin saint.

Great stories of carriage rides slowly until reaching town, then faster “with the dust flying and the horn tooting”(30). Shocking to think stages drove faster through towns, to show off.

New to me, Twain’s words “Nooning,” which means lunch, and “alpenstock,” though that’s a climbing stick with an iron point. In the giant mountains, Twain finds rare cabins or hostels, near one shack— for builders of a stone house— he buys a beer “but I knew by the price it was dissolved jewelry”(74).

On one of the narrow paths by the side of a torrent when he heard a cowbell he hunted for “a place that would accomodate a cow and a Christian side by side.” That torrent was so fast he had his Agent race it, and “I made a trifle by betting on the log”(58).

When he gets to Florence, he assails Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” as the "foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses,” which appallingly signals how very far from us was this writer who seemed so close in his humor. Even more astonishing his wondering that “Art is allowed as much indecent license today as in earlier times, but the privileges of literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed in the last eighty or ninety years [since Fielding and Smollett]”(267). Modernism— James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence-- would reclaim literary license.

Around 1880 when this was written, Europe had not yet learned to make coffee (Germans using chicory), nor heat their “vast and chilly tombs [homes]”; I experienced a virtually unheated room in Perugia where I had to take a hot bath to warm myself. No breakfasts, and the rest of the food he critiques, excepting fish and grapes. “Sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake…Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper…One vegetable, brought on in state usually insipid lentils, or indifferent asparagus…A monotonous variety of unstriking dishes”(261ff).

Now began Volume I, Twain takes up birdtalk: "A raven can laugh, just like a man" -- A Tramp Abroad (Vol I, p.23). Only one man understood birds, Jim Baker, a miner. "A jay is the best talker." One jay filled a hole in the roof, dozens of acorns, but it didn't fill. When he called over other jays, they saw all his acorns had fallen to the floor of the abandoned cabin, and they mocked him. A jay's mockery is a terrible thing. "Come here," he said, "hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns." Thousands of jays came, and each "fell over backward with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same"(p.31, Uniform edition, Vol I). Jays seldom use bad grammar. A jay's interests andfeelings cover the whole ground. "A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman"(25).

He visits Heidelberg and its university, the students more relaxed than they were in nine years of gymnasium (grammar and HS). But dueling plays a big part, the five "corps" distinguished by the color of their caps. They duel with swords, with body protections, but their head vulnerable. They duel in a large open room with tables where they eat. "I had seen the heads and and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, yet had not seen a victim wine"(50). "Newly bandaged students are a common spectacle in the public gardens of Heidelberg"(55). "It was of record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term"-- twenty nine of them after he earned the right to retire from fighting (after 3 duels, none tied, of acceptable length).
Twain becomes second in a duel with tiny silver pistols; he stands behind a huge man 35 paces from the other pistol-wielder. Two shots ring out--German law allows only one bullet--and the huge man collapses on Twain. No need for the two coroners, nor the hearses, but yes, the surgeons: no injuries to the principles, though Twain is injured by the weight falling on him: Surgeons diagnose, "I would survive my injuries"(75).

Visiting a production of Lear, he notes German order, no late patrons seating themselves, no applause to interrupt, though he thinks this makes acting lonelier. American applause can urge actors onward. He finds German love of opera unfathomable, because they applaud formerly great tenors who can no longer sing. "Why do we think Germans stolid? They are very children of impulse. They cry and shout and dance and sing." Their language is filled with diminutive endearments.

On that language, Twain appends his "Awful German Language" essay, where three months with tutors, a couple of whom die, results in his one perfect phrase, "Zwei bieren," two beers. He's amused that in German a woman is female, but a Weib, a wife is not. Neuter. He complains about compounding of words forming words not in the dictionary, some very long. An English woman is "die Enlangerinn" or "she-Englishwoman." ( )

A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain (audio book, 14 hours). Published 1880. Twain wrote this as a travelogue based on an excursion to Europe, augmented with his imagination. It includes both fiction and autobiographical details of his travels. In my opinion it is of uneven quality: some chapters are observations of things he saw and experienced, but more narrative than humorous. Others chapters, whether made up or real, are Twain at his over- and under-stated best. On the positive side, the book has over 40 chapters, most dealing with a new topic: if you don’t like one you’ll soon be into another. In a time when his readers may have known less about worldwide travel, this book contains much that would be new to them. In the present day, it’s not so novel. However, when he writes with his exquisite sense of humor, it’s Twain at his best. ( )

A quirky little book. Some very clever Twain humorous observations. Other parts quite bland. It was written (or he gathered material) while he was traveling with his family in Europe (mainly Germany and Switzerland) 1878-9. He makes some amusing observations about the German language, even recommendations on how to simplify it. ( )