Finding Clio in Mid-Atlantic

Abstract

When he frst stepped ashore in 1867, Mark Twain found Britain’s tiny mid-Atlantic colony of Bermuda a delightful place. Wearied by a long trip to the Holy Land, Twain found Bermuda’s semi-tropical aesthetic immediately restful. “A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water,” he wrote in Te Innocents Abroad, his memoir of the trip, “… restored the energies dulled by long drowsing on the ocean.” Twain would return habitually to Bermuda - or “Berm-o-oda” as his stretched it out in his Southern drawl. “You can go to heaven if you want to – I’d rather stay here in Bermuda,” he would quip from the verandah of his favourite hotel. Sadly, he failed to keep this promise; just weeks before his death in 1910 he was stretchered in pain off the island to return to his Connecticut home. “I have no sorrowful associations with Bermuda,” he remarked by way of consolation