It's Twain Time Again

Hartford, CT: Part 1

Mark Twain’s Hartford house: fun and full of personality, or an architectural travesty?

I don’t remember how I first heard about The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, CT. I’ve only read two of Mark Twain’s, a.k.a. Samuel Clemens’, books: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, assigned many years ago in high school, and Innocents Abroad, which I now think of as “that book-group killer” since, after I selected said 680-page travelogue for a nascent book group to read at our third gathering, we never met again. As Twain himself said: "A ‘classic’ is a book which people praise and don’t read." I actually did enjoy parts of Innocents Abroad; there were just too many innocents who were abroad for too long.

In any event, I’ve been to The Mark Twain House and Museum three times and thoroughly enjoyed each visit. Samuel Clemens called his “the loveliest home that ever was,” though The Hartford Daily Times reported, around the time the Clemens family moved into the house in 1874, that it was “one of the oddest looking buildings in the State ever designed for a dwelling, if not the whole country.” In architectural lingo, the home is Victorian Gothic Revival, with a bit of Stick Style thrown in, though I think that “Victorian Fantasy” more accurately describes the structure’s colorful-and-lavishly-gabled-turreted-and-porched whimsy.

During my first visit a few summers ago, the Clemens’ butler, George Griffin, kindly escorted me through the home. The family was out, he said, and wouldn’t mind. The actor playing Mr. Griffin was so convincing that I felt like I’d fallen into a time travel rabbit hole and emerged in 1885, or whatever year I was supposed to be in.

George Griffin, the Clemens’ butler, was quite welcoming when I visited in 2018. Although he has his own house, the Clemens family keeps a room for him on the 3rd floor of their home, located strategically across the hall from Sam’s man cave.

My second visit to the Mark Twain home was on a deliciously dark and windy fall evening, when I wrote for three hours in his library. The experience was worth every penny of the $50 or $60 I paid. The ambiance! The infusion of creative inspiration! The firsthand experience of how ineffectual gas lighting is! Seriously, I don’t know how those Gilded Age folks figured out the identities of the dinner guests seated more than one person away. I’m also thinking there were some interesting under-the-table antics.

The third time I visited was last week, when I woke to yet another early June day of 50s and drizzle in Boston and thought, “Nope, I am not doing this again.” My 19-year-old daughter, Lucia, and I decided to drive 110 miles to Hartford, Connecticut, where the weather was a paradisaical 70 degrees and sunny.

While I’d thoroughly enjoyed my tour with George Griffin, I’m a lot nerdier about historical interpretation than my daughter is. (Or my sister, who I believe is still afraid that I’m going to become a Civil War re-enactor). To avoid eye-rolling the likes of which I haven’t seen since Lucia was 13, I purchased general tour tickets.

We easily filled the hour before our tour started by perusing the gift shop, reading Twain’s witty quotes that line the stairway in the welcome center and museum (“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits” is a particular favorite of mine), and viewing exhibits on Twain’s life and times.

Miraculously, this was my only purchase at The Mark Twain House and Museum’s excellent gift shop. I’m really enjoying this book, which combines snippets of Gilded Age history with recipes for cocktails such as The Brain-Duster and Horse’s Neck.

The day being, as I have mentioned, 70 degrees and sunny, we then ventured outside and visited with the volunteer gardeners, who were thrilled that we had walked on several newly laid pavers wending through a small garden. Whether it’s 5 feet or 500, I have never met a winding garden pathway that I didn’t like. Even when I can see perfectly well where I’ll end up, there’s such an allure to making the journey.

That almost sounds like a Mark Twain quote, but it needs a bit of humor at the end, something like, “unless you step on a snake.” Which in my book is not actually humorous at all but horrifying, and something that definitely would put me off of cunning garden pathways.

This is where our journey ends for now, to be picked up exactly where we left off in a future installment of “Christina’s Travels.” There’s a lot more to say about this—have I mentioned the weather?—warm and sunny June afternoon in Hartford.

p.s. Visitors aren’t allowed to take pictures inside The Mark Twain House and Museum; however, if your interest is piqued, check out newengland.com’s fabulous photo tour of the house and museum.