Mark Twain's Bermuda -- "You go to heaven... I'd druther stay here."

Among the many places where Mark Twain wandered penning articles and books along the way was a place that continued to lure him back again and again.....Bermuda.  Having spent almost as many days in Bermuda as Twain did in his life time (between 1867 and 1910 Mark Twain spent a total of 187 days in Bermuda), I can well understand the magnetic force that caused him to visit these enchanted isles over and over.

He arrived for the first time in Bermuda as many travelers do today by cruise ship.  In  November of 1867, Twain walked from the deck of  the SS Quaker City into the sub-tropical paradise towards the end of a long cruise that took him from New York to the Mediterranean, the "Holy Land" (Israel) and back to New York with a group of religious pilgrims.   It was during this trip that Twain wrote "Innocents Abroad," the best selling of his works during his life time. 

On his first brief visit,  Twain is said to have visited many of the places where passengers wander whose cruise ships pull into Hamilton's harbor.  He joked about the  enormous rubber tree (still there) on the grounds of Par-la-Ville Park.   The park which I passed through many times myself is just beyond one of the main streets in Hamilton  (Queen Street) near the post office.   It was the Postmaster William B. Perot, who laid out the gardens of the park in the mid-1800s.  A classic stone Bermudian moon gate bedecked with blooms and vines probably was likely the entrance Twain used.  

Fairmont Hamilton Princess today

Over time Twain became one of Bermuda's most famous visitors and advocates. In recognition of this role, busts of him are still to be found ...one, as was pointed out to me by twitterer fairmontham (official tweep for the Fairmont Hamilton Princess), is located in the lobby of the Fairmont Hamilton Princess.  Shame on me for not remembering this statue that I passed many times on my visits there.  

It was Twain who helped bring Americans back to Bermuda after the American Civil War.  Few  Americans wanted to visit the island paradise in the post-war years still angered by the blockades run from there supporting the South during the conflict.   Twain reminded Americans of Bermuda's seductiveness promoting the isles not just for short summer vacations but for longer sojourns during cold and bitter US winters.  In a 15,000-word sketch "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" published in four installments in the Atlantic Monthly from October 1877 through January 1878 he devotes two chapters to his second trip to Bermuda in 1877.  It was these articles that helped attract many affluent Americans there starting in the 1880s... and on January 1, 1885 the Hamilton Princess opened to accommodate many of these new travelers.  Mark Twain was a frequent guest.

A view of Hamilton Harbor from hilltop overlooking Hamilton, Bermuda

Twain returned for many longer sojourns in the "Bermudas" often making back to back trips in his later years. He resided most of the time at Bay House, at 4 Old Slip Lane, at the end of a private access road off Pitt's Bay Road in Pembroke Parish only a short distance from Hamilton. The house, still there, is on the coast facing the waterfront of Hamilton Harbor with views of nearby small islands. 

While on Bermuda,  Twain would frequently meet up with other prominent guests of the isles.  He chatted on one visit, for instance, with Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle (1906), which had just caused a national sensation in the US at the time.  And on another, he played minature golf and lunched with President Woodrow Wilson.  

While I am sure Twain's Bermuda,  the Bermuda of 100 plus years ago was much more tranquil than today -- no cars (he was instrumental in keeping them out of Bermuda for 30 years) or mopeds, fewer tourists, no industry to speak of.  But no matter,  many of the qualities that drew him there continue to bring me to Bermuda again and again, if not always in person, in spirit, to it's subtle suggestion of Britain, it's unparalleled serenity, it's breathtaking vistas,  it's many hidden, enchanting little nooks, it's warmth not only in climate but in it's only-to-be-found-on-Bermuda people with their amazing polite manner and lovely clipped version of English.  Twain encountered something very special from his first visit and went back to seek it there to the very end of his life.  “You go to heaven if you want to,” Mark Twain wrote from Bermuda in 1910 during his long last visit, one hundred years ago, “I’d druther stay here.”

More information on Mark Twain in Bermuda:

Books:

Mark Twain and the Happy Island. Wallace, Elizabeth. 1913. Chicago, McClug. 139 pages. Illustrated.

Mark Twain In Paradise – His Voyages to Bermuda. American writer Donald Hoffmann. The special relationship that Mark Twain had with turn of the century Bermuda. University of Missouri Press, 2006.

Websites:

http://www.bermuda-online.org/twain.htm