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Innocents in Italy - Day By Day

Mark Twain's first visit to Italy in 1867, before its political unification. Italy had been under foreign domination but following the Napoleonic Wars movements for independence and unification began. The first wave, led by Garibaldi and others created the kingship of Italy in 1861. Venetia was added in in 1866 and Rome in 1870. The Quaker City first made port in Genoa followed by landings in Leghorn and Naples. Twain toured several other cities, mostly by train. These included Milan, Como, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome. Twain's adventures in Italy are presented in chapter 17 to 31 of The Innocents Abroad Genoa,

Italy, July 14.

Dear Folks— I am just on the eve of starting on a month’s trip to Milan, Padua, Verona, Venice & Rome, & shall rejoin the ship at Naples on the 9th of August.

I wrote you from Paris & Marseilles, but wrote little. It seems to me I have no time to do anything. We are rushing constantly. Since we touched dry land we have gone to bed after [midnight ]& rose again at 7 to rush all day. I cannot even get a chance to write newspaper letters regularly—but such as they are you must take them as home letters.

We tired ourselves out here in this curious old city of palaces yesterday & shall again [to-day]. We may possibly leave here at daylight tomorrow morning.3 The city has 120,000 inhabitants & ⅔ of them are women & the most beautiful one can imagine[.] We a And they are the most tastefully dressed & the most graceful. We sat in a great [gas-lit ]public grove or garden till 10 last night, where they were crowded together drinking wine & eating ices, & it seems to me that it would be [goo[d] ]to die & go there.

These people think a good deal [ [of] ] Columbus, now, but they didn’t [formerly[.] ]

Yrs aff. Sam.

Over the next two and a half weeks, Clemens, Jackson, and Slote stopped a day or two each in Milan, Bellagio on Lake Como, Venice, Florence, and Rome. They passed through, but did not stop in, Padua and Venora. On or about the evening of 25 July, after traveling from Florence with a brief stop in Pisa, they rejoined the Quaker City at Leghorn. Because the ship was expected to be put in quarantine at Naples, its next stop, they left it again the following morning and sailed for Civitavecchia on a French steamer. From there they took a train to Rome. Upon their arrival in Naples about 1 August, the same day the Quaker City arrived there, they took rooms in the city while the ship waited out its quarantine. The Quaker City sailed from Naples on the morning of 11 August.

SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family, 15 July 1867, Genoa, Italy (UCCL 00141), n. 1.

Genoa

Arriving in Genoa

In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing from the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of Genoa rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred palaces. Here we rest for the present—or rather, here we have been trying to rest, for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a great deal in that line.

The Women of Genoa

Enroute: From Genoa to Milan

Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now ready to take the cars for Milan. All day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas sitting in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines were cool and shady and looked ever so inviting from where we and the birds were winging our flight through the sultry upper air. We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration, though. We timed one of them.

Milan, Italy

16 July, 1867 Twain and 5 companions departed Genoa by train, arriving in Milan that evening. The capital of Lombardy, Milan united with Italy in 1861. Twain spent two days touring the city. He returned, with his family for a week in September of 1878. Twain devotes much of chapter 18 of The Innocents Abroad on the Cathedral of Milan. ""Everything about the huge edifice impressed Mark Twain." (Mark Twain A to Z) See:

Bellagio and Lake Como

The Trip from Milan to Bellagio

Enroute: From Lecco to Venice

From Lecco to Bergamo

Venice, Italy

First Impressions

Art Appreciation

We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder, when there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the works of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian’s celebrated Cain and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham’s Sacrifice. We have seen Tintoretto’s monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I do not know how many feet high, and thought it a very commodious picture.

Enroute: From Venice to Florence

Some of the Quaker City’s passengers had arrived in Venice from Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were expected every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no sickness.

We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is so justly celebrated. Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.

Florence, Italy
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of paintings and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under the imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles of picture galleries.
Pisa and Leghorn, Italy

Enroute to Leghorn, Twain spent several hours in Pisa, visiting the Leaning Tower and the Duomo and Baptistery. He revisited Pisa in 1892 with his family. Leghorn (Livorno), a port o'call for the Quaker City, where Twain rejoined the ship.

A bankrupt Government and palatial railroad depots and turnpikes

Railroads and Turnpikes

Civita Vechia

From Bædeker, 1867:

Rome, Italy

First Impressions

What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.

Some Cross Cultural Comparisons

Enroute: From Rome to Naples - 1867

From Rome to Naples via Cassino and Capua.

155 M. Railway in 5 1/4-10 hrs.; fares by the fast trains; by the ordinary trains, 28 fr. 15, 19 fr. 70, 12 fr. 70 c. A train deluxe, at higher fares, runs every Sat. in 4 hrs. 5 min. (returning on Mon.). — The finest views are generally to the left.

Naples, Italy

Quarantined in Naples

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