Twain's glass conservatory has a small fountain and an abundance of beautiful plants.

In a recent trip to New York, our college friend Leny Domingo Giuttari from New Jersey invited us for a weekend in Hartford, Connecticut. There, we visited the house and museum of Mark Twain.

The Twain residence was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1963. Restoration work on the house started in 1955 and was finally finished in 1974.

Mark Twain (nee Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was some sort of jack-of-all-trades genius. He worked as a typesetter, steamboat pilot, miner, and parapsychologist before he settled on becoming a writer whose wit and satire earned him much praise. No less than William Faulkner had called him “the father of American literature.” 

In reading his works, Twain’s transformation from a pro-imperialist to anti-imperialist especially caught our attention.  In the October 15, 1900 issue of the New York Herald, Twain wrote a piece on the Philippine-American War. Said he:  “I wanted the American Eagle to go screaming into the Pacific.Why not spread its wings over the Philippines?" 

Yet he further wrote, "Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris (which ended the Spanish-American War), and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”    

Twain was born in 1835, two weeks after Halley’s Comet made a very close approach to Earth.  He was said to have foreseen his death stating, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again in 1910 and I expect to go out with it.” His prediction was accurate. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut; just one day after the comet was clearly visible in the sky.

There were many other anecdotes about Twain, who had also foreseen his brother Henry’s death in a steamboat explosion. He was fascinated with science and he patented three inventions. He led a life of opulence yet at one point he declared himself bankrupt due to unwise investments.

Twain married the wealthy Olivia Langdon who adored him and put up with his idiosyncracies. They spent their happiest years together in the Hartford house. Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962), and Jean (1880–1909). The couple’s marriage lasted 34 years, until Olivia’s death in 1904.

In 1904, Twain started dictating his autobiography to his stenographer. When the book was finished he made a stipulation: the book could only be published 100 years after his death. The centennial anniversary of his death was marked last year so the book was finally published by the University of California Press. There was an initial run of 7,500 copies and it became an instant hit with sales hitting 275, 000 copies. By late November, it ranked seventh in the New York Times best seller list.

The house we visited in Hartford would be described by our guide as weird and lavish to the hilt. Designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter from New York City, it was built on 3.5 acres (1.4 ha) of land, has 19 to 25 rooms with seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a carriage house, and a library that opens to a plant-filled circular conservatory. The conservatory features glass walls, which allow natural light to enter the library. Bay windows extend up to form turrets that are topped with porches.

The architectural style is Victorian Gothic with a typical steeply-pitched roof and an asymmetrical bay window layout. The exterior has massive decorative brackets to support the eaves. The brickwork is painted in patterns of red, brown, and black, and the wooden stickwork around the porch have attractive geometric patterns. The house was said to have been designed to look like a riverboat. 

Tiffany’s of New York was commissioned to create the interior wallpaper stenciled right on the walls in Twain’s designated patterns and colors. A guest bedroom adjacent to the library boasts of mahogany furnishings. It is in the library where Twain told stories and read. And there is a nursery, a playroom, and a large classroom for the children.

On the uppermost floor is the billiards room and private study that were off-limits to anyone who wasn’t invited to the house. This was Twain’s private sanctuary where he wrote all those famous works in the 17 years that he lived here. Twain had said, “There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.”

After numerous renovations, the house cost Twain $70,000; $22,000 was spent on furnishings, and the initial purchase of the land was $31,000.

We also visited Twain’s green museum and visitor center nearby. Opened in 2003, it displays several artifacts not shown in the house itself. There is a lecture hall, a film theater, and several classrooms. We watched a totally engaging documentary on Twain’s life and saw the original Paige typesetting machine, which was one of Twain’s bad investments.  It was just among the poor financial decisions that forced the Twains to sell the house and move to Europe in 1891. Upon returning in 1900, he lived in Redding, Connecticut where he died a decade later.

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