An Innocent Abroad in Mark Twain’s Paris

Photographs by Benjamin Malapris

For as long as Paris has existed, a group of people known by many names—derelicts; lollygaggers; scammers; bums—have sought to pass time there at no cost to themselves. Once, some 2,000 years ago, so many such personages (then known as barbarians) came to Paris simultaneously that the city was destroyed. Today, their descendants are politely called writers.

One of the most successful to ever do it was a larkish American steamboat operator. In 1866, when he was 31, he convinced a San Francisco newspaper that the crucial thing to do in the lurid gloaming following the Civil War—as Army officials were yet racing to recover human remains before they were eaten by hogs—was to send him on a five-month “great pleasure excursion” through Europe and the Middle Eas