No letters have been found for the first two weeks of the trip. The Quaker City left her berth at 2:00 p.m. on 8 June (an hour earlier than had been previously announced) carrying some sixty-five passengers, only a handful of whom were from Brooklyn, let alone Plymouth Church. (See the Complete Passenger Listclick to open link and Complete Itineraryclick to open link; the latter, based on a wide variety of contemporary letters and documents, is the source of the travel dates mentioned in the notes.)

Moses Beach described the Quaker City’s departure in one of his letters to the New York Sun:

But the ship got only as far as Gravesend Bay, off Brooklyn, where the captain dropped anchor to wait out rough seas. For two days of stormy weather the ship remained at anchor while the passengers sang hymns and fought seasickness. “We are still anchored where you left us,” wrote Daniel D. Leary, a passenger and one of the Quaker City’s owners:

On Monday, 10 June, at 12:30 p.m., the Quaker City at last put out to sea. Dr. Benjamin B. Nesbit noted in his diary: “Raised anchor at 12 M, passed Sandy Hook at 2 P.M. Sea rough nearly all sick” (Charles C. Duncan 1867, entries for 8–10 June; Nesbit, entry for 10 June).

Clemens discovered almost immediately that many of the passengers were not simply older than he, they were more staid, somewhat stiff, even solemn and sanctimonious—and they did not always appreciate his playful and sometimes irreverent humor. In the “Conclusion” to The Innocents Abroad he summarized his relationship with his fellow travelers: “I was on excellent terms with eight or nine of the excursionists (they are my staunch friends yet,) and was even on speaking terms with the rest of the sixty-five.” These “eight or nine” compatible friends, whose company he frequently sought during the voyage, included Daniel Slote and Emma Beach (both identified earlier), as well as the following:

◾ Charles Jervis Langdon (1849–1916) was a youth of seventeen from Elmira, New York—the only son of wealthy coal dealer Jervis Langdon and his wife, Olivia Lewis Langdon (see the Clemens and Langdon Genealogiesclick to open link). They had sent Charles on the Quaker City excursion as a safe approximation of the more traditional grand tour. (The Langdons were founding members of Elmira’s Park Church, where Thomas K. Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher’s half-brother, presided.) Charles’s friendship with Clemens seems to have become established chiefly toward the end of the voyage, although in letters home to Elmira, Charles mentioned him as early as mid-August: “Mr. Clemens and some others dared to break the laws of the country and go in the night to the Pantheon [i.e., Parthenon].” After the Holy Land journey, in early October, Charles wrote that Clemens “made the journey from Damascus through the country” and “says he has lost every bit of veneration he ever had for the Prophets and Men of Old. Says God has his hands full to take care of them and that they were just like these present scamps who infest the ground.” Probably in October or early November he wrote that he had “been hearing Clemens’ Holy Land letters presumably read aloud by their author ... they are characteristic of him. I do not like them as a whole but he says some good things” (excerpts from Charles J. Langdon to Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon, various dates in Aug–Nov 67, Hamilton Galleries, lot 111).

◾ John A. (Jack) Van Nostrand (1847?–79) of Greenville, New Jersey, and New York City, did not make a good first impression on Clemens, to judge from his notebook near the start of the trip:

But Clemens eventually warmed toward the “good-hearted and always well-meaning” youngster, offering him brotherly advice: Van Nostrand later recalled Clemens’s “great love of veracity” and “the many lectures you have in times past given me upon lying” (SLC 1870, 58; Van Nostrand to SLC, 29 June 75, CU-MARK). This more charitable view of Van Nostrand was confirmed by Colonel Denny, who described him in his journal as “a young man about twenty years old, hansom, slender, tall, with a good face, kind heart and amiable disposition.” After the Quaker City voyage, Van Nostrand moved to the West—evidently to stave off the effects of tuberculosis—where he took up sheep farming, spending his last few years in Colorado and New Mexico, where he died at the age of about thirty-two (Denny, entry for 11 Sept; Alta California Bookstore, lot 90).

◾ Julius Moulton (1843?–1916) was the elder son of the former Jane Emma Smith and Jonathan Benjamin Moulton (1810–97) of St. Louis, chief engineer of the North Missouri Railroad. Until recently he had been employed as an assistant engineer on his father’s railroad. Denny described him as “a clever youth of about 22 Summers,” who was “tall, slender and kind” and “belongs to Church.” During the excursion Moulton wrote at least six travel letters to the St. Louis Missouri Republican. He accompanied Clemens both on the Holy Land trek and on the trip through Spain. In 1907, commenting on his reference to “Moult” in chapter 4 of The Innocents Abroad, Clemens explained that he “was a young fellow from Mo. quiet & rather diffident; he had not been away from home before. I have never heard of him since” (“Deaths,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 Feb 1916, 18; St. Louis Census 1860, 357; Denny, entry for 11 Sept; Conard, 4:497–98; Edwards 1866, 616; Edwards 1867, 590; Isabel V. Lyon’s notation on Robert P. Elmer to SLC, 4 Aug 1907, CU-MARK).

◾ Dr. Abraham Reeves Jackson (1827–92) was born in Philadelphia. In 1848 he received his medical degree from Pennsylvania Medical College and set up a general practice in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. During the Civil War he served as assistant medical director of the United States Army of Virginia. In 1869 Jackson’s wife of nearly nineteen years died, and in 1871 he married Julia Newell, whom he had met on the Quaker City trip. The couple lived in Chicago, where Jackson became a prominent and highly respected gynecologist. Clemens enjoyed his witty manner, which he described in The Innocents Abroad: “The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives” (chapter 27). Jackson was engaged to write travel letters to the Monroe County (Pa.) Democrat during the Quaker City voyage.

◾ Solon Long Severance (1834–1915) was a prominent Cleveland banker who began his career as a messenger, then worked for many years as a teller. In 1861 he joined with others in establishing the Euclid Avenue National Bank, serving in turn as its cashier, vice-president, and then president. After retiring from active business in 1867, he indulged his love for travel and prepared illustrated lectures about his journeys around the world.

◾ Emily Charity Allen Severance (1840–1921), daughter of a noted physician, had married Solon in 1860. Mrs. Severance kept a journal during the voyage, which was privately published in 1938 by her daughter. She also helped Captain Duncan write several letters reporting on the excursion, which were published by the New York Independent during the voyage (Severance, 33).

◾ Mary Mason Fairbanks (1828–98) was born in Perry, Ohio, but later lived in New York State, where she attended the Norwich Academy and the Troy Female Seminary. She taught school in South Carolina, Kentucky, and New York before marrying, in 1852, Abel Fairbanks, co-owner of the Cleveland Herald, who did not join the excursion ( MTMF , xx; Lorenzo Sayles Fairbanks, 551–52; Mary Mason Fairbanks 1898, 352–54; “Mrs. Fairbanks Passes Away,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9 Dec 98, 5; for more on Abel Fairbanks see 5 Oct 68 to Abel Fairbanks, n. 1click to open link). Mrs. Fairbanks was writing her own correspondence for her husband’s newspaper. In her second letter, dated 9 June, she recorded her first impression of Mark Twain:

The last sentence alluded to Artemus Ward, who first rose to prominence on the Cleveland Plain Dealer and had only recently been buried at Kensal Green in London. But she was quicker than this remark might imply to recognize Clemens’s great talent. In a later reminiscence she wrote:

Mrs. Fairbanks was the central figure in this whole group of Quaker City acquaintances. She and the Severances were already on familiar terms, since they knew each other from Cleveland, and Langdon, Van Nostrand, Moulton, and Clemens probably came to know her as well as each other in part through their mutual dependence on her sober, but not overbearing, advice.