The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford

Christmas Punch

2011-12-13T09:37:00.001-05:00

Sometimes Christmas cheer can be a little grating, we admit. So we've cooked up a batch of Christmas punch for you this year:

CHRISTMAS PUNCH

An Evening of David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice

featuring actress Debi Freund,

actress Angie Joachim,

TheHartford Courant's Frank Rizzo,

WNPR's Chion Wolf

and special guestTheCutMag.com's Tracy Wu Fastenberg

Directed by Jacques Lamarre

Tickets - $15 / $10 MTH&M Members & Let’s Go

(860) 280-3130 for tickets

The Mark Twain House & Museum spikes your Christmaspunch with four tawdry tales from the semi-twisted mind of humorist DavidSedaris. Drawn from Sedaris’ collection "Holidays on Ice," thisone-night-only event will feature the Hartford Courant’s Frank Rizzo reading “Front Row Center with ThaddeusBristol,” a vicious theatre critic’s reviews of children’s Christmas pageants.WNPR’s Chion Wolf will play a highly competitive gift giver who gives a wholelot more than he bargained for in "Christmas Means Giving." DebiFreund read's the story of a slick Hollywood mover and shaker shaking down achurch full of country bumpkins called “Based on a True Story” rounds out thequartet. New Orleanian actor Angie Joachim tells the tale of a holidayhomemaker turned into a homicidal hausfrau with an assist from Tracy WuFastenberg, a.k.a. "Asian Persuasion."

Chion Wolf is a voice actress, producer, photographer,songwriter, and is best known for her hijinks on Connecticut Public Radio’s“The Colin McEnroe Show.”

Debi Freund is a local actor and director, most known forher long-standing association with the Little Theater of Manchester. Sheappeared as the lead in Jacques Lamarre’s play "Gray Matters" and in2009 was named to Manchester, CT’s Arts Hall of Fame for herdramatic work.

Angie Joachim is an actor recently transplanted from New Orleans to Connecticut.She has appeared in Market Street Theater's "The Clean House" andHole in the Wall's recent "Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far."

Frank Rizzo is the principal theatre reporter and critic forThe Hartford Courant, where he has written on various arts beats for almost 3decades. He is also the New England theatrecritic for Variety and has contributed to American Theatre Magazine.

Tracy Wu Fastenberg is a contributor to the online journalof all things wack about Connecticut,thecutmag.com, as well as an occasional guest on The Colin McEnroe Show onWNPR.

Sherlock Holmes

2011-12-05T10:32:00.001-05:00

Of all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries, we love this one best: how did the brilliant actor William Gillette have such an incredible impact on our 21st century idea of Sherlock Holmes?

This week at the Twain House we explore that question. The East Haddam Stage Company will perform a "Sherlock Holmes: From Page to Stage" directed by Kandie Carle. It will be performed here at our place, and is presented by The Mark Twain House & Museum and The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

We will find out: how did Hartford’s own William Gillette go from the well-heeled Nook Farm neighborhood of movers and shakers to the New York stage and beyond? How and why did this fine Victorian actor go from farce to historical drama to the defining role of Sherlock Holmes? Follow William Gillette from Hartford to San Francisco to New York and London as he played in and wrote quintessential Victorian comedies. Then hear how the stars aligned for the fateful meeting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Gillette brought to life the super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

The East Haddam Stage Company is known for producing original works and their motto of Minimal Set, Maximum Connection, is perfect for the intimate auditorium at the Mark Twain Museum. 4 actors portray 10 characters in the life of William Gillette, from boyhood to the opening of the play that would change his life forever!

Tickets - $20; Call (860) 280-3130

Holiday House Tours!

2011-11-29T15:47:00.000-05:00

The Friends of The Mark Twain House & Museum Annual Holiday House Tour

Sunday, December 4, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

One of the lovely homes decorated in 2009

Now that you're full up on your Thanksgiving feast, why not get into the holiday spirit with one of our favorite events of the year? Visit the Twain House in its holiday best, and get a unique chance to tour private homes decked out for the season as well.

The Mark Twain House is decorated with garlands and gifts, and area homes are open to your visit in a rare opportunity to savor architecture and décor usually kept behind closed doors. Visit some of the grand houses built by prominent local architects in the late 1800s, when Twain lived here, and the early 1900s; and wonder at a house filled entirely with trees. With music and festivity to go along with it, this event has been a Hartford holiday tradition for more than thirty holiday seasons. Organized to a T by our active Friends of The Mark Twain House & Museum group!

Gorgeous floral arrangements

Advance tickets are $30 each and can be purchased at The Mark Twain House and from several local businesses. Tickets will be $35 each on the day of the tour and can be purchased at the homes. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 860-280-3130 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org. Proceeds from the tour will benefit the continued restoration, preservation, and education programs of The Mark Twain House, which is a National Historic Landmark.

See you there! (Or here!)

The most wonderful time of the year!

We've got puppets!

2011-11-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

We've been loving our Steampunk Bizzare: The Unknown exhibit, but our latest exhibit just adds to the thrills of visiting our museum center. We recently installed throughout our beautiful marble building a number of puppets from the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. Guess which Twain work they refer to?

That's right-- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In 1996, the Connecticut Repertory Theatre mounted a large-scale puppet production of this Twain classic. We're lucky enough to host these fellows in our museum all the way until March 5th, 2012. The puppets range from royals to ordinary folks, like pig boy and his pigs.

If you haven't read Connecticut Yankee (and don't feel bad, lots of people haven't-- put it on your bucket list), you might not know that it's rife with familiar characters from King Arthur's Court. Grinning knights and sassy Morgana; and once in a while, Merlin pops up.

Last Saturday was our "Free Hartford Day," and so we invited the fine folks from Ballard to come and give a live presentation of how the puppets work. They also spoke a bit about the design.

Thank you so much to the fine folks of the Ballard institute paying us a visit. Now we hope you will-- there are way too many amazing puppets to describe here! For more information on the exhibit and the museum, please visit our website.

-- The Mark Twain House

MICHAEL MOORE: ASKING FOR TROUBLE

2011-11-11T12:04:00.001-05:00

By Jacques Lamarre

Shortly after my arrival at The Mark Twain House & Museum, I started brainstorming ideas for exciting speakers to have come to Hartford. As the Director of Communications and Special Projects, it is my responsibility to program two lecture series: The Clemens Lecture and A Pen Warmed Up in Hell Lecture. The Clemens Lecture series has brought distinguished leaders in the fields of the arts, journalism and letters including Hal Holbrook, Bob Schieffer, Morley Safer, David Baldacci, and, most recently, the legendary newsman Ted Koppel. A Pen Warmed Up in Hell is the bratty cousin of The Clemens Lecture. This series spotlights authors, artists and journalists who use their work and humor to address social issues in a provocative manner.

The title of the series comes from Twain himself. It appears in a letter written shortly after he completed his masterpiece A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court:

"Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell."

In time, Twain would abandon such restraint and use his pen warmed up in hell to attack war, politics, hypocrisy, religion, and more. The Pen Warmed Up in Hell Lecture series provides audiences with the opportunity to meet modern day provocateurs who work in this same manner. Past guests include Spike Lee, Henry Rollins, Kinky Friedman, Charles P. Pierce, Andy Borowitz, and Rolling Stone’s national correspondent Matt Taibbi.

To my mind, there was one man I could ask who pretty much defines the spirit of this lecture series: Michael Moore. Has any contemporary filmmaker had a larger, ongoing impact on political discourse in this country? Five of his films - Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine, Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Roger & Me – appear in the list of the top 25 highest-grossing documentaries of all time.

When Moore released his first film in 1989, it was greeted with the following review from Vincent Canby in The New York Times:

“A Twainlike Twist for Flint, Mich.” by VINCENT CANBY
America has an irrepressible new humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain and Artemus Ward. He is Michael Moore, the writer, producer and director of the rude and rollicking new documentary feature ''Roger and Me.'' Much in the manner of those 19th-century forebears, Mr. Moore celebrates the oddities of the American frontier, once defined by the historian F. J. Turner as 'the meeting place of savagery and civilization, where democracy is strengthened.'

I started working on getting Moore to Hartford two years ago. We had a close call when he said “yes” at the time he was gearing up for the release of Capitalism: A Love Story. His promotional schedule ramped up and life got hectic for Mike, so he had to postpone. Subsequent attempts to schedule an appearance did not pan out, until recently. Mike emailed me out of the blue; he was book touring to support his new memoir Here Comes Trouble. Little did I know, the title of his memoir would be so apropos.

We knew that many of our valued sponsors would be leery about having Mike come here. We contacted them in advance and felt them out on the opportunity ahead of us. Without exception, they viewed the opportunity to present Michael Moore as a coup for the museum. Of course, we couldn’t expect them to sponsor his appearance, but they wouldn’t withhold their usual support for house preservation and restoration, our educational and other programmatic efforts. For their vision and generosity, we are most appreciative.

Not everyone at the museum is a Michael Moore fan. Some are quite the opposite. Same with our board. Again, without exception, they felt it was important to present him to the public.

When the announcement of Mike’s upcoming appearance hit the Hartford Courant, we received angry calls, letters, emails and comments on the Courant article. When we posted the event on our Facebook page, one MTH&M fan called him a “horrible man.” Many of the comments on the Courant page called him “un-American” and that the MTH&M was making a horrible mistake in bring Michael Moore to Connecticut. An email from a conservative fellow halfway across the United States, made sure that we were aware that he brought our betrayal to the attention of Rush Limbaugh. Many of the derisive comments surrounded Moore's looks, which is petty in the extreme and makes one wonder if the authors find the political views of supermodels more palatable. By far, we have taken more heat for this lecture than any that we have previously hosted (including Kurt Vonnegut, who let loose with his thoughts on the Iraq War only days after it began).

Have we made the wrong move in inviting someone who is so polarizing? Quite simply, Michael Moore is the epitome of our Pen Warmed Up In Hell series. You may not agree with his politics. Or you may believe he is a genius. You may think he is a hypocritical propagandist. Or you may find discomfort in his pointing out things we do not like to discuss. You may think he is a traitor who hates America. Or you may believe that he is a patriot exercising his free speech. But, ultimately, you could say many of the same things about Twain. Like Moore, Twain was no stranger to controversy. One only need read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Moore's new memoir Here Comes Trouble even mirrors the non-linear approach Twain adopted for his own autobiography. And both men use humor to set their scorching bonfires. Sure, bonfires produce smoke and make our eyes sting, but they also provide light and much-needed heat. The perfect environment for warming up one’s own pen in hell.

We welcome Michael Moore to the University of Connecticut’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 18th at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$45 and can be ordered by visiting jorgensen.uconn.edu or calling (860) 486-4226. The lecture will be followed by a book signing.

Meet Mallory Howard

2011-08-24T13:28:00.001-04:00

Name. Mallory Howard

Where are you from? New Britain, CT

What school did you go to? Central Connecticut State University

What is your job at The Mark Twain House & Museum? Museum Assistant

Were you initially drawn to the Mark Twain house because of an interest in Twain as a writer? I’ve always been a huge fan of Twain’s work and had visited the house many times over the years. I actually came to the Twain house initially trying to volunteer and perhaps get an internship since I was a history major in school. I ended up falling in love with the place and never left!

How long have you been working at the Mark Twain House? It will be 4 years in January!

What is your favorite part about working at the Mark Twain House? That’s a really tough question to answer. There are so many marvelous things about working at this place since there are always fascinating people to meet, stimulating educational programs or lecture to attend, and amazing events to enjoy. However, my favorite thing about working here are the truly incredible people I get to work with. Some of us are history geeks; some are talented writers, comedians, and playwrights. No matter what our individual strong points are we all respect each other for what we bring to the table. Everyone works together to make this museum a success and I’ve never met such wonderful hard working people.

Do you like Mark Twain more having worked here? I have always been a Twainiac and a fan of the amazing pieces of literature he has produced, but my love for him has drastically increased since working here. I know him more now as Sam. I love his family, his heart, and even his temper. I feel sadness and sympathy for him during tragedy and hard times. I am elated during his triumphs. I get defensive when he is attacked and proud when he is admired. He has become a huge part of my life and I’m lucky to have him.

Do you find yourself talking to friends and family about Mark Twain? I talk about Mark Twain constantly to my friends and family. I’m sure I drive most of them absolutely nuts! I find myself running into friends and the first thing they say is. “How are you? How’s Mark Twain?” He has suddenly become an additional best friend, parent, brother that everyone asks about. I never hesitate to fill them in on the latest and greatest in the Twain world. One of the best things that happened is my Dad’s deeper interest in Twain, his literature, and American history in general. I’ve turned him into a little history geek and that makes me proud!

What is your favorite room in the house? My favorite room in the house is the library. It is absolutely beautiful and there’s something so sweet, innocent and sentimental about it. I love to imagine the family sitting together listening to Twain tell a story, or enjoying a book while looking over the Park river, maybe even watching their butler George have a jungle adventure in the conservatory with the Clemens’ girls.

If you could make one improvement to the house or museum what would it be? I would love to have the mahogany room and 3rd floor guest room restored. Though I love our beloved museum center, I wish we had more noise control!

Based on your knowledge of his personality, do you think you and Mr. Twain would be friends? I truly believe that Mark Twain and I would be the very best of friends. I adore his wit, humor, little eccentricities, brilliant mind, and sarcasm. What else could you ask for in a friend? I often wish I could have one night to hang out with him. The drinks we would have, the conversations, the stories, I would beg him to tell me! I can’t think of anyone better!

What is the museum’s biggest challenge? I think the museum’s biggest challenge is trying to get people to come explore our site during an economic recession. I also think, though we’ve done an excellent job so far, we will have to constantly come up with new and exciting programs to bring in a different audience and to keep those who have been before always coming back.

What would you think Mark Twain’s comments would be on the management of his home and the museum? I would like to think that Mark Twain would be proud of us. Everyone here works extremely hard to make sure we are keeping his legacy alive in the most inventive, educational, and often humorous ways. He would appreciate our passion, dedication, and drive to making this museum a success.

What is your favorite Mark Twain piece? My favorite Mark Twain piece is tricky. I would have to say his personal book collection. We have over 200 books owned by the Clemens family in our archives, several of which have marginalia. Twain would often times scrawl opinions, thoughts, and even grammatical changes on the pages of the books he was reading. This gives us an insightful and personal look into his mind.

Statement from The Mark Twain House & Museum

2011-08-05T15:07:00.001-04:00

STATEMENT FROM GREGORY BOYKO, PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE MARK TWAIN HOUSE & MUSEUM

August 5 ,2011

On June 22, 2010, The Mark Twain House & Museum discovered that a long term employee of the institution, the former controller, Ms. Donna Gregor, had been misappropriating funds for a number of years and shielding these misdeeds from detection by the auditors.

Ms. Gregor was terminated by the MTH&M that same day. Jeffrey Nichols, our Executive Director, notified me and I, in turn, notified the other Trustees. We immediately contacted law enforcement and notified the press. Following a review of the matter, we implemented additional controls to better safeguard our assets and put in place new financial reporting mechanisms. We contacted many of our donors and other supporters and are deeply thankful for their understanding and continuing support.

We hired a forensic auditing firm and shared its completed review with law enforcement.

We also filed an insurance claim in relation to the losses which resulted in a payment to the MTH&M of $500,000 which we received in October of 2010. This recovery was reported in the MTH&M’s IRS Form 990 and serves to restore all affected funds since 2008. MTH&M continues to explore other potential claims and sources of recovery for the $580,000 of unrecovered funds from earlier years. The total amount Ms. Gregor defrauded the MTH&M is approximately $1,080,000.

Concurrently with MTH&M’s efforts, law enforcement has been investigating this matter and we were advised of a guilty plea by Ms. Gregor today August 5^th in the Federal Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut. We understand her plea includes admissions of wire fraud and tax evasion. We also understand her plea agreement includes restitution to MTH&M.

The Trustees and the staff were devastated by this event, particularly in light of its occurrence during a period when hundreds of supporters and other committed people worked so hard and selflessly to bring the Mark Twain House & Museum from a large structural deficit just a few years ago to a current modest operating surplus.

Despite the significant unrecovered losses from 2002 to 2007, we want to assure everyone that our current financial condition is sound and we recently received an unqualified opinion from our auditors.

Because of the heroic efforts of our staff, a record number of visitors, 71,500, came to the House in 2010 vs. 59,000 the year before. And, we hosted more than 50 successful events to make the institution a key tourism destination in Connecticut.

Our mission is to preserve the home where Twain wrote his most important works and, more importantly, to preserve his place as America’s greatest writer. We are more committed than ever to this mission.

The trustees have noted and are deeply appreciative of the fact that throughout this past painful year, Executive Director Jeff Nichols and his entire staff of full and part time employees and volunteers have kept their single focus on what is good for the institution. They succeeded despite enormous distraction and pain.

Also, I must also commend the Trustees who have stepped up and been a resolute and determined force throughout this ordeal. To a person, they all stayed and supported the institution with funds, guidance and support.

On behalf of the entire Mark Twain House & Museum family, we want to thank our supporters and donors for their understanding and support and we pledge to continue to make the institution stronger for many generations to come.

MARK TWAIN: POTTY MOUTH

2011-08-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

On Friday, August 5th and Saturday, August 6th at 8 p.m. at the Hole in the Wall Theater in New Britain, Sea Tea Improv will be performing R-RATED TWAIN – an evening of Twain’s naughtiest writings. The texts include speeches, poems and prose that cover such unsavory topics as masturbation, farting, sexual relations, among other unmentionables. We take a moment to consider how “The Lincoln of our Literature” occasionally took the low road…

It should come as no surprise that Samuel Clemens would have in his possession an impressive array of words. As an extremely prolific author with dozens of novels and hundreds of other written works (poems, plays, letters, speeches, articles and short stories), Twain had a prodigious vocabulary. His verbiage could be high-minded and eloquent, endearing him to the cognoscenti and literary elite. His writing also could effectively paint a portrait of the lowest echelons of society. His characters in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pap and Huck being examples, exhibit his masterly grasp of colloquial terms and rough dialects. So, really, it should shock no one that Mark Twain had one hell of a potty mouth.

Twain stated in his Notebook, “If I can’t swear in heaven, I shall not stay there.” Since he was unsure how his salty tongue would be received in the afterlife, the author seemed bent on peppering his phraseology here on Earth. In his letters to William Dean Howells, Twain did not help his case in making it to Heaven when he wrote:

“Sir to you, I would like to know what kind of goddam government this is that discriminates between two common carriers and makes a goddam railroad charge everybody equal and lets a goddam man charge any goddam price he wants for his goddam opera box.”

Phew! Alfred Bigelow Paine’s biography of Twain quotes the vitriolic master as saying, “In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” Apparently he was overcome by many desperate circumstances in his home as his daughter Clara quotes him in her book My Father – Mark Twain with the following invective: “By the humping, jumping Jesus!” His lovely wife Livy put his lips on lockdown when it came to swearing, but even she was not able to keep the consummate master of cussing from unleashing his tongue in the house. Paine recounts how Twain, who generally curbed his tongue around his wife, let fly with some scorcher of a curse that occurred within earshot of Livy. She confronted him by repeating his remark to which Twain responded:

“Livy,” he said, “did it sound like that?”

“Of course it did,” she said, “only worse. I wanted you to hear just how it sounded.”

“Livy,” he said, “it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don’t know the tune.”

Twain’s potty mouth also translated to a potty pen when he created some filthy fun in some of his private writings. The bawdy burlesque 1601, an imaginary gathering of Tudor England’s elite getting blown away by a fetid odor, was written by Twain for his best buddy Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell. A letter to a group of wealthy men who enjoyed fishing turns into a downright naughty tribute to male endowments. A speech written for a Parisian group, The Stomach Club, goes South of the border with a salute to self-gratification.

Considering his rough-and-tumble Tom Sawyer-esque adolescence, his career on riverboat docks and his time out in the Wild West, it should not be a shock that Twain could be so shocking. To be honest, we love this stuff and we are delighted to take a time to salute the type of things Twain wrote and said that you wouldn’t learn in school. We hope you join us for an evening of R-Rated Twain that would make your mama wash your mouth out with soap.

Tickets for R-RATED TWAIN are on sale now and can be ordered by calling (860) 229-3049. Tickets will also be available at the door at the Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street in downtown New Britain. The performance includes West Hartford playwright David Ryan Polgar’s short comedy Mark Twain: Ladies Man. Tickets are $15. Info and directions: www.hitw.org.

Meet Beth Miller

2011-08-03T10:31:00.001-04:00

Name. Beth Miller

What is your job at the Mark Twain House & Museum? Director of Development

How long have you worked at the Mark Twain House & Museum? A year and five months

Where are you from? Rocky Hill, CT

Where did you go to school? Trinity College, BA ’00 & MA’03

Why did you decide to work at the Mark Twain House? I was attracted to the Mark Twain House & Museum for a few reasons. It's an important local and national cultural institution, and the staff is talented. The leadership at the organization has combined frugality with creativity and invested in marketing and events to increase stability and success. The momentum here is palpable and it is a very exciting place to work.

What is your favorite Mark Twain Book? Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I have lots more to read still.

How did you become interested in Mark Twain? The wit and satire of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made me very interested in Mark Twain – that he wrote this book, in the way he wrote it, at the time he wrote it. It is stunning and very, very important.

What is the strangest fact you know about Mr. Twain? That his voluminous moustache and that he seldom smiled were to hide his bad teeth (according to his daughter, Clara.)

Hopes for the future of the House. There are many specific projects I would like to see happen with the historic properties – and all of those projects could be realized if we had a more substantial endowment. What I hope to see in the future is a $20 million endowment so we have the operating expenses to focus on raising funds for projects in the house.

Favorite room in the house. A beautiful little room: the butler’s pantry.

Favorite Tour Story. I love the story of the Scottish fireplace mantel: it was found because a tour-goer heard the tale of the missing mantel and realized his family had it in their barn.

Have you ever received a question you have yet to find the answer to? What did George Griffin look like?

How did you learn everything you know about Mark Twain, his life, and his house? I am reading, asking questions, and listening all the time.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about Mr. Twain? I think because Twain was such a great humorist there is a perception that he had a very jolly and happy life. Parts of it certainly were, but he suffered a stunning amount of tragedy at all stages of his life and from all quarters. For all his fame and notoriety, Twain was very human – he suffered and was as flawed as any of us.

Do you like Mark Twain more having worked here? Yes – getting to know him as a husband, father, and friend has made me admire him even more.

Do you find yourself talking to friends and family about Mark Twain? I think they are all really getting annoyed with all the Twain quotes I lob into any conversation at the slightest provocation.

Based on your knowledge of Twain’s personality, do you think you and Mr. Twain would be friends? Yes, but he might have turned on me at any point.

What do you think Mark Twain’s comments would be on the management of The Mark Twain House & Museum? He would say that we have kept pace with his struggles and success, but he would have said it way funnier than that.

Meet Jes Silva

2011-08-03T09:48:00.001-04:00

Name. Jes Silva

What is your job at the Mark Twain House & Museum? Sales Associate (Tickets & Store!)

Where are you from? Born and raised in Berlin, CT. I currently live in the village of East Berlin, CT. And we all know that Mark Twain said: “Human nature cannot be studied in cities except at a disadvantage--a village is the place. There you can know your man inside and out--in a city you but know his crust; and his crust is usually a lie.”

Where did you go to school? I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Eastern CT State University. Although it’s not a Masters Degree, just like Sam Clemens, “It pleased me beyond measure when [Eastern] made me a [Bachelor] of Arts, because I didn't know anything about art.”

Were you drawn to the Mark Twain house because of an interest in Twain as a writer?

Actually no. I am more of a fan now than I was before working here.

Do you like Mark Twain more having worked here? Yes, since working here, I have developed a great love for Mark Twain. And since I drink a lot of water and his books are like water… I don’t know, I’ve got nothing…

How long have you worked here? 4 years

What makes you come back the following year? Oh-my-god, I love it all; the people, atmosphere, and the history. This is the best place to work.

Do you find yourself talking to friends and family about Mark Twain? I do! I quote him often! I talk about his family and the house to anyone who is willing to listen!

Hopes for the future of the House. I would love for the house to continue to be successful as well as see the Mahogany bedroom completed.

Favorite room in the house. I love the library. I love the look and the feel of the room. It’s so warm and welcoming that it makes me want to (don’t worry Patti, I won’t) cozy up in a chair by the fire and read, or listen to Sam tell stories.

Favorite tour story. A member of the band, The Doors, was along on one of my tours; I thought his bodyguard was the celebrity from West Coast Choppers, but little did I know that it was a member from the band and the bodyguard was only a bodyguard.

Based on your knowledge of his personality, do you think you and Sam would be friends? Totally! I could see us in the Billiard Room, playing pool and joking around. I think we have a similar sense of humor, since I subscribe to the notion that “the funniest things are the forbidden.”

What do you think is the Museum's biggest challenge? I think getting the word out that we are here is probably our biggest challenge. No one “vacations” to Hartford, Connecticut. Trying to make Hartford a destination spot is a hurdle to get over.

What do you think Sam’s comments would be on the management of his home and the museum? I think he’d think we are doing a fine job. We are not only educating the young and old about his life and times, but we are preserving his memory, and keeping him alive through that. He would like us to remember (and share with our visitors) “To us our house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart & a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes & deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived in its grace & in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up & speak out its eloquent welcome--& we could not enter it unmoved.”

Favorite Twain piece. I don’t think I can name just one. My first Mark Twain book was A Connecticut Yankee, and I am quite partial to it. The Diaries of Adam and Eve and stories about the McWilliamses are among my favorites, but I also love The War Prayer.

Playwright David Ryan Polgar turns Twain into a Ladies Man for R-RATED TWAIN

2011-08-01T11:42:00.000-04:00

Late in 2011, actor Michael Eck approached The Mark Twain House & Museum with a script for a short play by his friend, David Ryan Polgar. We found the comedy, Mark Twain: Ladies Man, funny, but at 10 minutes in duration, a little difficult to build into a full event. Fortunately, we were already planning an evening of R-RATED TWAIN with Sea Tea Improv in January and Polgar's play was a perfect fit. When performed in City Steam's Brew Ha Ha Comedy Club, Mark Twain: Ladies Man brought the house down (as did the rest of Twain's smuttiest material). Because of popular demand, we are re-presenting R-RATED TWAIN on Friday, August 6th and Saturday, August 7th at 8 p.m. at the Hole in the Wall Theatre in New Britain. As Mark Twain: Ladies Man is back on the bill, we asked the West Hartford native to share the genesis of the play.

The Making of Mark Twain: Ladies Manby David Ryan Polgar

I started writing Mark Twain: Ladies Man for a Connecticut-themed short play contest. When I think of Connecticut, he’s the first thing that comes to mind. If Maine has lobsters and Massachusetts has clam chowder, our residents have a taste for Twain.

After deciding that he would be my “Connecticut theme,” I came up with a title. Truthfully, I love to work backwards. It’s like the new movie Cowboys & Aliens—it’s a novel idea that throws you for a loop. Mark Twain as a lothario just seemed to jump out at me. Maybe it was his wit (which the ladies love), or perhaps it was his mustache. He seemed much cooler than Tom Selleck, and women fawned over him in the 80s. Next I started to imagine scenarios where the author was brought back to life and hanging out in a bar. What would he be like?

That’s the idea I played with and expanded on. What if Twain were brought back to life for the sole purpose of helping men pick up women? Would he be a good wingman or a conniving rascal? To keep the material grounded in some semblance of truth, I decided it would be fun to have every utterance of Twain be words he actually said. It’s remarkable how current Twain sounds. Twisted the right way, he can be both snarky and poetic. Of course, the quotes are taken completely out of context. This is by no means a PBS special; it’s more like a trip down the rabbit hole.

After showing an early version of the script to Jacques Lamarre and Julia Pistell at the Mark Twain House & Museum, I received a great deal constructive feedback that I used to polish up the play. For example, some of the quotes I had used turned out to be misattributed to Twain. In addition, Jacques and Julia helped me clarify how exactly Mark Twain would be wind up in a bar. Instead of spending twenty pages discussing cryogenics (and besides, a lot of times they just freeze your head), I went less sci-fi and more absurdist—he can be rented online. Take that, Craigslist.

I always like to learn something with everything I watch. So do most people, I figure. We have armchair lawyers and detectives watching Law & Order and CSI. People like small bits of knowledge delivered in a non-academic way. While the Twain in Ladies Man is a complete caricature, you do leave with a great taste of his wit. I hope that besides laughing, people also get the urge to dig deeper into Twain’s life and writings (with his recent autobiography, there is plenty to dig). It certainly made me appreciate him more.

R-RATED TWAIN, an "adults only" evening of Twain at his most ribald, is Friday, August 5th and Saturday, August 6th at 8 p.m. at the Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street, downtown New Britain. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by calling (860) 229-3049 or at the door. www.hitw.org

Meet Ross Ariola

2011-07-25T09:17:00.002-04:00

Name. Ross Ariola

What is your job at the Mark Twain House & Museum? Tour guide.

Where are you from? Western Connecticut

Where did you go to school? I am still working on it.

What is the most memorable question you have ever been asked on tour? Who the heck is Sam Clemens? And what kind of person was he in private?

What is your favorite room in the house? The billiard room is my favorite. Second is the library. “The library is where my girls and I can be children together.”

Why did you decide to work at the Mark Twain House? I wanted to have a job that made myself and others happy.

What is your favorite Mark Twain Book? Huckleberry Finn and his autobiography.

How did you become interested in Mark Twain? There are a few ingredients which made me interested in Twain. The first was my initial studies of American history and seeing how much he appears in it. Second was my re-reading of Tom and Huck a few years ago. And the final ingredient was a tour I took with Grace a couple years ago.

What is the strangest fact that you know about Mark Twain? Well there are a few that I always remember. One is the fact that his two of his best friends were a preacher and a robber baron. Another is that he predicted his own time of death during Halley’s comet. "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." But the strangest fact is that there is so much to learn about the man, that people make a career learning about his life.

How long have you been giving tours here? I have been here for about two years.

What makes you come back the following year? I keep coming back because of all the people. The employees, guests, and the Clemens’s make it a special, happy place. And, “You cannot enter it without being moved.”“The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over, he generally selects Mark Twain.”-Edison

What do you hope to see happen to the house in the future? I would like to see the Mahogany room, 2nd floor hallway bath, and the Artist friends room restored.

Do you have a favorite tour story? I like the story of his and Livy’s courtship. But with Twain, you can’t just hear one story. I have different favorites depending on the group.

Have you ever received a question you have yet to find the answer to? Yes. But I can’t think of one off hand.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about Mr. Twain? I think the biggest misconception is that some people think he was a racist. Another misconception is that he was only about Tom, Huck, and the Mississippi.

Do you like Mark Twain more having worked here? Yes, and I think he would have

actually liked the tour guides here, Unlike how he felt about tour guides elsewhere.

Other Thoughts. I believe he would have liked how the museum is today. He loved this house and management has once again allowed him to be center stage. “I can’t stand the sound of anyone else’s voice but my own.” He would have loved to see that we still love his family and are keeping their happy years alive. One of my favorite quotes is, “The trouble isn’t that there are too many fools, but that lightning isn’t distributed right.” I also like, “Just once I would like to see a Wagner opera done in pantomime.” However, I could go on and on with quotes.

"I AM NOT AN AMERICAN; I AM THE AMERICAN."

2011-06-30T11:45:00.000-04:00

With Independence Day upon us, Mark Twain House & Museum Director of Communications Jacques Lamarre questions whether or not Mark Twain was “the American.”

The quote “I am not an American; I am the American” has been popularly misattributed to Mark Twain. It even trips up the most astute Twainiacs. Ken Burns uses the quote in the superlative documentary that we show in our museum center and on the cover of the soundtrack and DVD of his full Twain miniseries. Twain did write the phrase in a notebook that he took with him on his European travels in 1897, but he was, in fact, quoting his friend Frank Fuller. Over time, the quote has become more and more synonymous with Twain, and that is not really surprising. For many of us, Mark Twain is the quintessential American. A bigger question might be: how American was he? By a lot of modern measures of patriotism, Twain could be called downright un-American.

When afforded the opportunity to provide military service for his country, Twain helped to form the Marion Rangers, a group of Confederate irregulars. After two weeks of “service,” he decamped and went westward away from the Civil War fighting that was consuming the nation.
He was unreserved in his contempt for politicians. He wasn’t afraid to let fly with snappish quotes like “Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can” (What is Man?) and “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself” (Mark Twain, A Biography)
He didn’t hold back in his criticism of President Theodore Roosevelt: “We are insane, each in our own way, and with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and irresponsible.” (letter to Joseph Hopkins Twichell)
Many Americans equate patriotism with God-fearing Christianity, but Twain openly questioned God and Man’s ability to relate to the deity: “To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.” (Mark Twain, A Biography). “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.” (Mark Twain in Eruption)
He could not maintain allegiance to one political party and openly questioned the two-party system: “Look at the tyranny of party -- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattles, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.” (“The Character of Man”)
He questioned American foreign policy, particularly our Imperialistic forays into the Philippines: “There were the Filipinos fighting like blazes for their liberty. Spain would not hear to it. The United States stepped in, and after they had licked the enemy to a standstill, instead of freeing the Filipinos they paid that enormous amount for an island which is of no earthly account to us; just wanted to be like the aristocratic countries of Europe which have possessions in foreign waters.” (Interview with The Baltimore Sun).

With all this stacked against him, how could Twain be considered “the American?” Precisely because he enjoyed the freedoms that America provides. He used our freedom of speech to question our leaders, mock hypocrisy and praise those he deemed worthy of praise. He used the freedom of the press to tell the truth, stretch the truth and create his own truth. He created the embodiment of American childhood with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He exposed our institutionalized racism that denied rights to African Americans in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. He was a Capitalist who started his own businesses and earned his own wealth. Twain also, like many Americans, faced debt and imminent foreclosure. He voted his conscience and used his freedom of religion to pursue his own path toward understanding and challenging the Immortal. He embraced the American ability to invent yourself. How else would a Samuel Clemens become a Mark Twain? Of course, he was born in America, but he also represented America across the globe. In turn, he brought the world back to American shores through his travel writing, helping us become global citizens. He became an internationally-renowned celebrity, something American culture craves. And finally, his books engendered all of the liberties that we hold dear – books that are widely read in countries where those freedoms are denied. As such, maybe Mark Twain is “the American.” Even if he didn’t say so.

How to Plan Tom Sawyer Day: Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Me!

2011-06-02T11:19:00.002-04:00

Good morning, folks. Everyone get a good sleep last night? Caffeinated? I hope you’re ready, because this morning we’re going to work on tying up all the little bits and bobs of this year’s Tom Sawyer Day—our free family day in conjunction with Connecticut Open House Day.

I’m kidnapping you and making you my first mate so you can help me with every little task associated with this year’s fun and games: Yo Ho, the Pirate’s Life for Me! Yes, pirate themed. The festivities run from 10-4 on Saturday, June 11th.

Now, maybe you came over last year for Tom Sawyer Day, and in that case you will recall the torrential downpours that made our guests want to stay inside rather than enjoy the high seas. Silly landlubbers. But we want everyone dry, so your first order of business is to:

Do a no-rain dance! Maybe that means sitting at your computer quietly, like I am. Whatever it means to you. All I’m saying is, dear Zeus, please let it not rain, because we have three bands who are dying to play outside. So therefore, your second task is to:

Listen to the music of the Red Mollys, Horizon Blue, and Dan Stevens. All three of these bands are really wonderful, and we can’t wait to have them. They are also really nice people, which we like in musicians.

Speaking of really nice people, your next job is to prepare some silly pirate jokes to swap with the Bawdy Buccaneers. They are a roving pirate duo with three levels of bawdiness (it’s going to be at family-level next Saturday).

Also, start doing some finger yoga for our arts and crafts area. You want to make an eyepatch? A flag? Get a tattoo (temporary, of course)? Bloody up some coloring books? You are going to be a blackbeard of terrifying proportions by the time you finish with our Great Hall.

But don’t leave the Museum Center without making testing the stability of your hand-made boat with The Children’s Museum. Their staff will be on hand to show you how to make an unsinkable ship.

Steel up your courage, because you’re also going to meet a real pirate in the form of professional clown and performer Joe Barney. He’s the best. And actually won’t be scary at all, just really fun.

If you’re getting tired from all this, you can also prepare to take a break and watch some or all of the classic film Treasure Island, because we’ll be showing it on loop in our auditorium all day long!

Wait a minute. We forgot to assign you the most important thing! We have animals visiting and we need you to get excited about them! Not only do we have the fabulous Beardsley Zoo bringing Caribbean wildlife, but we’ve also got A Wing & A Prayer Parrot Rescue visiting to demonstrate how amazing parrots are. We’re really excited about both.

Not enough for you? How about the pirate scene from Tom Sawyer acted out by the fantastic performers of Hartford Children’s Theater? All you have to do for that one is sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Once you’ve had enough to walk the plank, you can swim over to our neighbors at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and enjoy their Bicentennial Celebration!

What do you think, mateys? You up for it?

--- The Pirates over at The Mark Twain House & Museum

P.S. And yes, of course, there will be a treasure hunt.

We've got Blue Stars in our Eyes

2011-05-26T10:26:00.001-04:00

Hi everybody,

As Memorial Day approaches, we've decided to become a Blue Star Museum: one of more than 1,000 museums nationwide offering free admission for active military personnel and their immediate families from Memorial Day, May 30, 2011, through Labor Day, September 5, 2011.

The free admission program is available to any bearer of a Geneva Convention common access card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID card, which includes active duty military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard), National Guard and Reserve members and up to five immediate family members. Immediate family members include the spouses and children of active duty military.

Spouses of military who are deployed are eligible for free admission with their children, up to a total of five visitors. To receive free admission, spouses should bring a DD Form 1173 ID Card or DD Form 1173-1 ID Card for active duty military family members.

Blue Star Museums is a partnership among Blue Star Families, the National Endowment for the Arts and the individual museums. For details on the program, including a list of participating museums, visit http://www.nea.gov/national/bluestarmuseums/index.html.

Enjoy Memorial Day with your loved ones, and come on by for a visit-- we'll be open.

- The Mark Twain House & Museum

Mark Twain vs. James Fenimore Cooper

2011-04-29T11:56:00.001-04:00

Last year, when our friend Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone came to visit, he mentioned that Twain’s essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” was “the greatest literary takedown in history.” We had often read excerpts and heard mention of this essay, and we have decided that it’s time for this smackdown to revive itself into the twentieth century.

Each Wednesday in May, the public is invited to a good-old-fashioned literary faceoff. We’ll be taking Twain’s snark and putting it up against a modern-day defender of the victim. Unlike your usual prizefight, you can see the punches thrown for free. Just show up on Wednesdays at 5:00 for pre-game snacks and a ringside seat. The Trouble Begins at 5:30.

Does this man look tough enough to withstand the eloquent wrath of our Sam?

Round 1: Mark Twain vs. James Fenimore Cooper.

As a teaser, we’ve pulled a few choice moments from Twain’s novella-length rant against Cooper’s literary style and storytelling skills. There are so many hysterical passages to pick from, it was hard to decide, so we’re just going with the ones that tickled us the most. Let’s start with Sam’s opinion on Cooper’s plot devices:

Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

Or, my personal favorite, the idiocy of his Native American villains:

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did -- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious.

The object of Twain's fury

And, lest you suspect that Twain is too nit-picky on tiny details, this is the stirring conclusion to the whole shebang:

It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.

We can’t wait to see what James Fenimore Cooper scholar Dr. Wayne Franklin of the University of Connecticut has up his sleeve. He’ll have to have a good plan in order to get a few blows in.

Let the games begin!

TAKE A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE

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Literary PilgriAs one of the premier destinations of American literature enthusiasts, the Mark Twain House & Museum is not only dedicated to promoting the legacy of Samuel Clemens, but the many other celebrated authors (and their homes) found in New York and New England. From the serenity of Thoreau’s Walden Pond to the quaint garden estate of Emily Dickinson, we offer readers, history buffs and writers a once-in-a-lifetime journey through America’s literary landmarks…all conveniently located between NYC and Boston.

Just a short 45 minute drive from NYC, travelers can begin their literary journey at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in West Hills, NY and over the course of six days (or less, for those who are ambitious), visit the birthplace of Mark Twain’s most famous characters, get inspired by Edith Wharton’s landscape design, and visit the gravesites of Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson and Alcott at Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow.

Below, you will find the full itinerary of a New York/New England literary pilgrimage-- offering a unique, inspiring and educational summer vacation. If you should need any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us or visit us online at www.marktwainhouse.org.

Literary Pilgrimage Itinerary
Day 1: New York & Environs

Whether you start or end your pilgrimage in New York, there are several literary stops within a short drive of Manhattan.

Washington Irving's Sunnyside Nestled on the banks of the sparkling Hudson River, visitors will find the immaculately restored home of the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Located in Tarrytown, NY, you can tour Sunnyside and spend time visiting the sites made famous by Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, including the Old Dutch Church and Sleepy Hollow burying ground.
Walt Whitman Birthplace & Interpretive Center Walt Whitman, “America’s Shakespeare” was born in West Hills, NY in 1819. The newly restored farmhouse is a New York State Historic Site and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Interpretive Center exhibits: 130 Whitman portraits, original letters, manuscripts, artifacts, Whitman’s voice on tape, and schoolmaster’s desk. On the site you can find, guided tours, an audio-visual show, the museum shop and bookstore, and a picnic area.
Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is the only house museum in New York City dedicated to a writer. A small house located in the bustling Bronx, this historic property is undergoing renovations, so be sure to check their website before visiting. At the nearby Valentine-Varian House, you can check out a special exhibition entitled Edgar Allan Poe - The New York Years which adds depth to your understanding of Poe's turbulent final years.

Day 2: Hartford, CT

Mark Twain House & Museum As you may know, this is home where Mark Twain lived during the time he created his most famous characters, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. From the infamous billiard room where Twain worked on his writing (and cigar smoking), to unique exhibits in our Museum Center, to educational programs and community events, Twain’s Hartford, CT home is a unique destination for readers and history buffs of all ages.
Harriet Beecher Stowe House The famous next door neighbor of Mark Twain and the author of the best-selling, anti-slavery book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe believed that her actions could make a difference and her words changed the world. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center connects Stowe's issues to the contemporary face of race relations, class and gender issues, economic justice and education equality. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House, a charming Victorian Gothic Revival home (1871), and includes Victorian-style gardens, the Katharine Seymour Day House, a grand mansion adjacent to the Stowe House and the Stowe Visitor Center, with changing exhibitions and the museum store.
Wallace Stevens Walk About one-quarter mile away from Stowe and Twain's homes in Nook Farm, you can take a short literary pilgrimage by following the famous walk poet Wallace Stevens took from his job at The Hartford to his home on Westerly Terrace. Guiding you along the way are 13 granite markers that sequentially offer Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
Noah Webster House A short drive into West Hartford, the Noah Webster House offers visitors the opportunity to discover the man behind the creation of the first American dictionary and the "Blue Backed Speller." Tour his childhood home and learn about life in 18th Century Connecticut.

Day 3: Lenox and Pittsfield, MA

The Mount Estate & Gardens, The Mount is both a historic site and a center for culture inspired by the passions and achievements of Edith Wharton. Best known for such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Wharton employed both humor and profound empathy to describe the lives of New York's upper class and the vanishing of their world in the early years of the 20th century. The gorgeous property includes three acres of formal gardens designed by Wharton, who was also an authority on European landscape design. The Mount is a stunning reflection of Wharton’s love of the literary arts, interior design and decoration, garden and landscape design, and the art of living.
Herman Melville’s Arrowhead, Arrowhead is a National Historic Landmark located in western Massachusetts. Melville purchased this historic farmhouse in 1850. It remained the home of Herman’s large and chaotic family for more than 13 years. Herman found refuge in the second-floor library where he wrote his most famous novel, Moby Dick. In the end, he wrote four novels and many short stories in the historic farmhouse.

Day 4: Cummington, MA and Amherst, MA

William Cullen Bryant Homestead As you traverse Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley, there are two poetic stops well worth making. The first, in the hamlet of Cummington, MA, is the summer homestead of poet William Cullen Bryant. The editor of The Saturday Evening Post for 50 years, Bryant was a passionate environmentalist who celebrated the landscape of America through his words.
Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and the Evergreens The Homestead, where poet Emily Dickinson was born and lived most of her life, and The Evergreens, home of the poet’s brother and his family, share three beautiful acres of the original Dickinson property in the center of Amherst, Massachusetts. The Museum offers guided tours of the houses as well as a self-guided audio tour of the outdoor grounds.

Day 5: Concord, MA

The Wayside: Home to Hawthorne and the Alcott Family A Historic Landmark, The Wayside was the only home owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and Twice-Told Tales. Before Hawthorne bought it, the house belonged to the Alcott family, who named it "Hillside." Here, Louisa May Alcott and her sisters lived much of the childhood described in Little Women.
Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Just minutes from Wayside (circa 1690) is most noted for being home to the talented Alcott family, and is where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set her beloved classic novel, Little Women, in 1868.
"Authors Ridge at Sleepy Hollow" Perched on the top-most glacial hill in the cemetery, Authors Ridge gathers together, among others, the graves of Henry Thoreau (1862), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1864), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1882), Louisa May Alcott (1888) and her father, Bronson Alcott (1888).
Ralph Waldo Emerson House Open to the public, the Emerson House is still furnished with the families’ memorabilia and keepsakes. Emerson lived here most of his adult life, wrote his famous essays "The American Scholar" and "Self Reliance," and died here in 1882.
Walden Pond Situated on 400 acres, Walden Pond is a State Reservation and National Historic Site. Henry David Thoreau lived here from July 1845 to September 1847. His experience at Walden provided the material for the book Walden, which is credited with helping to inspire awareness and respect for the natural environment. Today, visitors can enjoy hiking, swimming and educational and guided tours.

Day 6: Boston, MA

Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters This National Historic Site in Cambridge, MA preserves the home of Henry W. Longfellow, one of the world’s foremost 19th century poets. The house also served as headquarters for General George Washington during the Siege of Boston, July 1775 - April 1776. In addition to its rich history, the site offers unique opportunities to explore 19th century literature and arts. Of course, a visit to Cambridge would be incomplete without visiting Harvard University, home to too many writers to mention.
Boston by Foot Take a walking tour of the homes and haunts of such great American writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

New England welcomes literary pilgrims of all stripes - intrepid readers, history buffs or writers in need of the inspiration you can find when you follow in the footsteps of legends. For more information about writers' houses, visit http://writershouses.com/.

NOOK FARM BOOK TALKS GET FOLKS READING AND TONGUES WAGGING

2011-04-04T14:58:00.002-04:00

In late 2009, folks from The Mark Twain House & Museum started a conversation with our neighbors at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. The jumping off point of discussion: “Why don’t we start a monthly program that encourages people to read the works of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe?” As historic house museums, we preserve and restore the homes of these two legends. But as centers of education charged with promoting their legacies, we needed to get people reading…and talking.

With Nook Farm being the home of two of America’s most significant authors, as well as other literary figures like Charles Dudley Warner (co-writer of Twain’s first novel The Gilded Age, among others), William Gillette (who adapted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes into a successful stage play), and Richard Burton (literary critic for The Hartford Courant), we knew that launching an ongoing series of book talks was essential. This area of Hartford was a hotbed of literary conversation in the mid-to-late 1800s -- a tradition well worth reviving in the era of 140-character tweets, scrolling news feeds, and visual over-stimulation.

Our main concern was limiting ourselves solely to the writings of Twain and Stowe. First, they would be finite in number (although both authors wrote a prodigious amount). Second, we feared that once the “big titles” -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – were discussed, that attendance would drop precipitously. Finally, Stowe and Twain’s interests were incredibly wide and varied taking in social issues, religion, domestic concerns, humor, war, human trafficking, and more. Why not pursue books that would have interested them, as well?

As a result, we decided that we would take a broader view. Both museums agreed that we would pick an initial slate of ten books that would mix Stowe and Twain works with biographies, fiction and non-fiction that look at the Gilded Age, and modern books that would focus on issues relevant to their interests. The challenge would be how to whittle it down to only 10 books with so much ground to cover. Each museum would select 5 books and we would alternate throughout the year. The discussions would alternate between the two properties, as well. Of course, refreshments would be required to keep the participants lively! Thus began the Nook Farm Book Club.

We kicked off the series in February 2010 with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as that month marked the 125th anniversary of the controversial masterpiece book being published in the United States. Sixty-five book clubbers showed eager to talk about this landmark Twain novel. We met in the Mark Twain Museum Center classroom in a U-shaped arrangement of chairs. A first edition Huckleberry Finn and other items drawn from our collection made this first meeting quite different than a standard book club.

The second meeting drew an equally large and engaged crowd to the Katharine Seymour Day House at the Stowe Center to discuss Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book was contextualized by Stowe Center Director Katherine Kane and then the talk was off and running. Precious little moderation was required as the participants were extremely eager to share their feelings about Stowe’s landmark abolitionist novel. And to think we were discussing it only yards away from where the great lady herself lived for over two decades.

Having gotten to the two most obvious choices within the first two meetings, we were then prepared to start heading in different directions. The third book selected was Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. Of course, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made the list. Having just discussed the books, the conversation allowed us to put them into perspective alongside the other classics considered – from early landmarks Of Plymouth Plantation and The Federalist Papers up through How to Win Friends and Influence People and Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.

Illustration from "Pink & White Tyranny"

The rest of the year allowed participants to examine more obscure Twain (Tom Sawyer Abroad & Tom Sawyer, Detective), a biting society novel by Stowe (Pink & White Tyranny), a work that examines Stowe and Twain alongside their post-Civil War contemporaries artist Martin Johnson Heade and poet Emily Dickinson (A Summer of Hummingbirds), a biographical collage of Stowe (Stowe in Her Own Time), a dark novel examining Huck Finn’s adventures from his father Pap’s perspective (Finn, with author John Clinch participating via Skype), a powerful look at New Orleans post-Katrina (David Eggers’ Zeitoun), and a warm-hearted reading of Twain’s beloved The Diaries of Adam & Eve for the holidays.

At the end of 2010, Stowe and Twain staffs reconvened to examine the success of the first year and plot the second year. The first decision made was to switch from calling the meetings “Nook Farm Book Club” to “Nook Farm Book Talks.” The thought was that calling it a “book club” might preclude the attendance of people who have not actually read the books. By calling the meetings “book talks,” anyone with an interest can attend. For certain, the conversation will be more rewarding if one has read the book, but someone who has not read the book will be able to enjoy the chat and hopefully be inspired to read the book at a later date. The second change was trying to get guest authors and scholars when possible.

The first selection of 2011 was apt: A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses by the skeptical scholar Anne Trubek. Anne traveled through a blizzard to be with us in January and led an engaging conversation about her travels visiting house museums dedicated to authors. This year we celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, so the next choice was also apt: the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Stowe by Trinity College professor Joan Hedrick. Again, the author was present and participated in a lively conversation about her research. The March selection was the hefty Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, the recently released blockbuster. As Twain specified the book could not be published in full until after 100 years after his death, the author was not present, but was ably represented by Twain scholar and St. Joseph College professor Dr. Kerry Driscoll. Participants have enjoyed the small changes and attendance has been terrific.

So what is coming up for the Nook Farm Book Talks and why did we pick them? Mark your calendar and start reading!

April 7th at Stowe
HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn

This book, which focuses on gender oppression including rape, genital mutilation, and sexual slavery, is the groundbreaking selection for the first-ever Stowe Prize. Not merely a catalog of atrocities, the authors offer a path forward through empowerment, education and investment.

May 5th at Twain

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY: MURDER, MAGIC AND MADNESS AT THE FAIR THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Erik Larson

This #1 national bestseller is a remarkable and page-turning distillation of a turning point in America’s history. The excesses of the Gilded Age reach a simultaneous high and low with the creation of the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago and the arrival of the nation’s most diabolical serial killer.

June 2nd at Stowe
THE MINISTER’S WOOING by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe's domestic comedy is a powerful examination of slavery, Protestant theology, and gender differences in early America. First published in 1859, and set in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, The Minister's Wooing is a historical novel that satirizes Calvinism, celebrating its intellectual and moral integrity while critiquing its rigid theology.

July 7th at Twain

JOSEPH HOPKINS TWICHELL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARK TWAIN’S CLOSEST FRIEND by Steve Courtney

The esteemed and dynamic leader of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Joseph Hopkins Twichell was the perfect and most unlikely best friend for the irascible Mark Twain. MTH&M staffer Steve Courtney will discuss his Connecticut Book Award-winning biography.

September 1st at Stowe

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE by Stieg Larsson

The Swedish author Stieg Larsson tragically died before he saw his trilogy about the brutal adventures of a computer hacker and a dogged journalist turn into a worldwide publishing and movie sensation. This Nook Farm Book Talk focuses on the middle book of the trilogy and its unflinching look at human trafficking in the sex trade.

October 6th at Twain

THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James

Twain and his contemporary Henry James are linked as two major figures in the 19th century movement of Literary Realism. October’s meeting takes on James’ spooky classic ghost story of two children who may be inviting evil into their forlorn estate. See if you agree with Twain's assessment of a Henry James novel: "Once you put it down, you simply can't pick it up."

November 3rd at Stowe

THE LINCOLN & DOUGLASS SPEECHES

The Stowe Center considers the impact of two seminal figures of the Civil War Era: President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. We will examine the text of several significant speeches of these two famous orators and boundary-shattering abolitionists.

December 1st at Twain

THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD’NHEAD WILSON by Mark Twain

The year draws to a close with another little-read Twain classic. Roxy, a slave woman who is 1/16th black, switches her baby boy with the white son of her wealthy master. With only 1/32nd of black blood differentiating them, the two boys grow up in vastly different circumstances. Pudd'nhead Wilson marks a darker turn in Twain's writing and presages his turbulent later works. It also points the way to 2012 and a whole new year of book talks.

Nook Farm Book Talks are free and open to all. Meetings begin at 5 p.m. with a free reception featuring light snacks, wine and soft drinks. The discussion begins at 5:30 p.m. and runs an hour in duration. Book titles are generally available through the Twain and Stowe gift shops, but are also widely available in book stores, libraries and online.

Special thanks to the Connecticut Humanities Council for their support of the Nook Farm Book Talks series.

NORMAN ROCKWELL & MARK TWAIN: TWO OF A KIND

2011-03-09T16:09:00.001-05:00

The Mark Twain House & Museum is thrilled to present American Storytellers: Norman Rockwell & Mark Twain, an expansive exhibition that features Norman Rockwell’s Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. The exhibition, opening March 11^th and running through September 6^th, also features dozens of Rockwell prints, original oils, sketches and illustrations from the collections of MassMutual Financial Group, The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, MO and the New Britain Museum of American Art. MTH&M Director of Communications Jacques Lamarre reflects on how Twain and Rockwell loom large on the American conscience.

In 2003, we opened our new Mark Twain Museum Center. One of the great assets of the new facility is the ability for us to showcase some of the thousands of items we have in our collection. Most people are not aware of the treasure trove of books, letters, artifacts, furniture, art, and more that the museum has amassed over its 80+ years. The building also affords us the opportunity to exhibit other work that can help us better tell the story of Twain.

Under two hours away in Stockbridge, MA, there is another museum that is also dedicated to highlighting the work, the life and the legacy of an American icon: Norman Rockwell. Although Rockwell was born in 1894 (during Twain’s lifetime) and grew up in New York City (where Twain spent many of his later years), the two men never met. Rockwell’s first works as a professional illustrator were not published until 1912, two years after Twain’s death. As such, they were of two different eras. So why are Rockwell and Twain twinned in many ways in the public consciousness?

With books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, Twain explored many of the seemingly carefree idylls of the typical American boy’s life. Rockwell illustrated the cover of Boy’s Life, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, for several years. Twain’s books feature adventure, over-active imaginations and afternoons spent playing hooky with friends. Rockwell’s illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post and his advertisements for the Mass Mutual Life Insurance show the enthusiastic energy of childhood and the importance of family. Both Rockwell and Twain’s work are suffused with humor and contain many touching moments.

Rockwell’s art and Twain’s words were and are, in essence, for the masses. Twain stated, “My books are water: those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook) This somewhat self-deprecating remark could easily apply to Rockwell’s art, which was widely available via magazine covers. Twain’s books were sold door-to-door by subscription. Unlike the works of “great geniuses,” Twain and Rockwell’s work were readily available in everyone’s home.

Although Rockwell worked in paint, he was not referred to as a painter the way a Da Vinci or a Rembrandt would be; he was labeled “an illustrator” (a term he embraced). Twain, similarly, was seen less as a novelist and and is more frequently labeled “a humorist.” It is easy to forget how both Twain and Rockwell could be provocative with their work. Some critics have dismissed their work as lightweight, blithely ignoring the important statements they made on race (Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Rockwell’s Civil Rights-era The Problem We All Live With) and society (Twain’s writings on Imperialism and Rockwell’s iconic The Four Freedoms).

Both Rockwell and Twain have had the last laugh. They are arguably more popular than ever: recent Rockwell exhibitions have smashed attendance records at museums across the country and Twain’s Autobiography has been firmly lodged on the New York Times Bestseller list since its release. A critical reassessment of their oeuvres has forced scholars to rethink the weight of these two masters. When it comes right down to it, it is no surprise that we often think of Rockwell and Twain together. Rockwell was commissioned to create illustrations for the 1936 Heritage Press edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the 1940 Heritage Press edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Rockwell traveled to Hannibal to create his sketches, immersing himself in Twain’s world. The artist stated, “These were classics. I read through the books, making notes of which scenes would make good pictures. Of course certain scenes—for instance, Tom whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence—were required.” He went on to describe the world of Twain’s novels as, “complete and perfect to the last detail.” We would guess that Twain would express the same sentiments toward Rockwell’s work. We are delighted to celebrate the impact of these two icons that have become inextricably linked.

American Storytellers: Norman Rockwell & Mark Twain has been made possible by:

The City of Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program, Pedro Segarra, Mayor

The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation

The Saunders Foundation

United Technologies

The George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America & Alan S. Parker, Co-Trustees

The Greater Hartford Arts Council

The Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism

Kindle, Nooks, Amazon, Big Box Bookstores, or Indies?

2011-03-07T11:59:00.002-05:00

We know the paper books vs. e-reader (Kindles, Nooks, etc.) debate isn't a brand-new one. We at the Mark Twain House, however, are fascinated by this cultural shift, not only as an organization founded on a writer and publisher, but as a museum with a small bookstore within our walls. No matter what you think of Kindles and the like, their presence is having an unquestionable effect on the book industry.

If you are a book lover, you no doubt have noticed many announcements of stores small and large alike shutting down. Here's the latest we've heard.

The question at hand is: should we accept the descent of the paper book, and embrace the future of books-on-screen? Paper books likely will not disappear for centuries, or maybe ever, but it is possible that they might become more of a specialty item, harder to find, more expensive, for aficionados only. Or maybe, as large book chains struggle, this is the moment for independent bookstores to step back into the spotlight. Our museum bookstore sold an astounding number of copies of Twain's Autobiography, and despite the fact that Twain's works are in the public domain and on the internet, does a bang-up business selling the writer's works to visitors.

But let's take a moment, step back, and talk about the book itself. The internet has been churning out odes to the paper book (ironic!), many of which are worth sharing.

Here's an excerpt from Frenemy's: With real books, there are moments in a a doctor’s office. You watch a girl, maybe fifteen, pull out the Great Gatsby. You remember the moment you fell for it during the bare legged swing and lemonade sip of your sophomore summer. That month you soaked up the pain of love with the kind of awe and understanding that you will never be as brilliant as Fitzgerald. Or Vonnegut. You remember reading sentences from the great and the dead that throw you against a wall or rip your heart out, so you touch the pages and run your fingers down the ink in substitute. There are moments on the subway. A cute, tousled hair kind of guy pulls out a book you have never read. You watch his face, the movements of his mouth as he soaks it up and for a moment you love him. You take out your book, ruffle through your purse, find that paperback and let somebody fall in love with you as you struggle to read with one hand gripped on the crowded railing.

And here's Powell's Books Blog, which is a lively, wonderful conversation on literature. Powell's is a huge indie book store in Portland, Oregon, and if you haven't been there, try to make a pilgrimage sometime. This isn't an actual ode to books as much as it is a living breathing book-loving community.

And one from Julia's blog: I do not read while I am waiting to do other things. I do other things while I am waiting to read. As a child I used to lie on my parents’ bed to read picture books with my father; as he’d fall asleep the pages we’d already read together would flutter haphazardly in the wrong direction, and I didn’t have to turn to his face to know he had fallen asleep.

How about you? Any favorite articles or blogs about books?

And how about favorite bookstores? Mine's McNally Jackson in New York. And of course our own bookstore. Come visit!

-- The Mark Twain House

Autobiography: Food for Thought!

2011-03-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

Last night, Dr. Kerry Driscoll led a riveting discussion on Mark Twain's latest literary sensation, the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1. Our museum center was packed with first-time Nook Farm Book Club members, as well as loyal returnees, and of course, the staffs of the Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. In our hour together, we meandered through so many rich topics that I thought I'd put them into discussion-question form for your own book reading pleasure. Enjoy! No spoilers!

1. Mark Twain, in his story "Sociable Jimmy," described a character as "an inexhaustable talker." The same could be said for Twain himself! How do you feel about his rambiling, casual (almost chatty) style?

2. Twain undertook the dictation of this book as an experiment-- to see if he could blow apart the traditional autobiographical structure. At the same time, cubism and other artistic experimentations were on rise. What do you think the relationship was between these artistic forms? Do you think this particular bold experiment was a success?

3. Twain doesn't seem too concerned with his reader's ability to follow along with the narrative. Who do you think he was writing this book for? Did you, as a reader, feel that you were being positively challenged, or cheated out of a traditional story?

4. Since Twain abandoned chronology, did you feel free to do the same? Did you read the book in a linear fashion or did you skip around?

5. There are some beautiful passages in this work- for example, the description of narrative moving along like a stream (on page 224 of the University of California Press version). Which passages did you find most interesting or moving?

6. Many people in our discussion group felt that Twain had a manic/depressive quality about him. While it is impossible to diagnose someone 100 years after his death-- what do you think? Does his memoir exhibit a range of attention or emotion that you found surprising or remarkable?

7. One of Twain's motivations for delaying the publication of this autobiography was to air his grievances against politicians and acquaintances he didn't much like. We were particularly impressed with the vitriolic takedown of the Countess Massiglia. Any favorite smackdowns? Is it fair to take down enemies 100 years in the future, or is all fair in love, war, and autobiography?

8. One of the most amazing things about this autobiography is the fact that it was entirely dictated. Mark Twain has accomplished a rare and remarkable feat- being both a great writer and a great speaker. How do you think his conversational tone has affected his writing style, and vice versa?

9. For historians and history lovers, this book is a treasure trove of information. Any details you found enlightening or just plan interesting? Did the book give you a sense of everyday life in that time period?

10. Finally-- this book still manages to be downright hilarious. Read aloud your favorite funny passages, and marvel in the genius of humor that lasts over 100 years.

-- Julia Pistell
Communications & Membership Associate

Baldacci & Grisham & Picoult & Compton-Rock & Twain!

2011-02-14T11:43:00.000-05:00

ON SALE TODAY!

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS!

The Writer

2011-02-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.
- Letter to George Bainton, 15 Oct 1888; (first printed in The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, Personally Contributed by Leading Authors of the Day. Compiled and Edited by George Bainton. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890, pp. 85-88.)

Last Thursday, your intrepid blogger boarded an Amtrak train from Hartford to Washington, DC, for an annual writers’ conference. I registered for the conference with the intention of gathering ideas for The Mark Twain House & Museum’s own burgeoning writing program, and gather ideas I did!

The AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference is, I believe, the largest conference of its kind in the world. Each year a flurry of writers, editors, agents, literary magazines, small presses, big presses, MFA programs, and world-famous authors descend on a fantastic American city and swap knowledge. For example, I went to panels on The Future of Literary Criticism and How to Start a Successful Literary Center, and sat around at lunch tables with the director of a writing program in California as well as a poet who edits a great literary journal. Jhumpa Lahiri and Junot Diaz read from their latest works, and it took me four hours to properly peruse the new books fair. Through it all I rained down Mark Twain House brochures and spoke about our man Sam to all kinds of people who love writing.

It was, at moments, strange to be representing an author one hundred years dead at the same moment that a twenty-two-year-old writing hopeful tentatively picked up a pamphlet from another table. Not a single other writer’s house was there (although the website Writers’ Houses was, as well as the first stages of the American Writers Museum), and yet I felt that we were certainly a part of the action. Writers babbled about their love of Huck Finn and their passionate responses to the censorship controversy earlier this month. Small presses peppered me with questions about the autobiography.

One of our long-term goals here at the Twain House is to carry Twain’s legacy into the future by encouraging those around us to write as he did: write well, write often, write passionately. To that end we have begun offering writing workshops as well as an avalanche of speakers and lecturers that carry on Twain’s writing legacy today. We’ve started a separate blog, too, that you should follow just so you can check in with the work that’s being produced here. You can also sign up for a class yourself (spots still open!) and please stay tuned for announcements on writers’ getaway weekends and other unique programs.

We love Twain for his masterful use of words, and for his commitment to putting his thoughts down on paper. Feel connected to this great American author, this great humorist, this great cultural observer. Write something today.

-- Julia Pistell
Communications & Membership Associate

EXILES FROM EDEN

2011-02-08T15:50:00.002-05:00

For Samuel Clemens, the years he lived in Hartford were the happiest of his life. His time here was not always an idyll, but he built a breathtaking home that symbolized his success and filled it with a loving wife and three cherished daughters. The years he was in residence saw the creation of his greatest works. Tragedy, of course, visited him from time to time with the death of his son Langdon and his failed business investments, but overall his time in Hartford was fairly Edenic.

In 1891, due to mounting debts, the Clemens Family left the house. The family departed for Europe to begin a lecture tour that was to last one year. As their European sojourn stretched to four years, the family returned for a respite in Elmira. In 1895, commencing a round-the-world lecture tour that would ultimate culminate in the book Following the Equator, Sam, his wife Livy and their middle daughter Clara set sail for Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and India. Daughters Susy and Jean stayed with family in upstate New York with the intention of rejoining their family in England at the conclusion of the tour. As is well known, on a visit to Hartford, Susy contracted bacterial meningitis and died in the house in 1896, just as Livy and Clara were crossing across the Atlantic to be by her side. The loss of Susy was a crushing blow and the family never again lived in the Hartford home. In a sense, they were cast from their Eden.

In 1893, during the family’s itinerant wanderings, Twain undertook writing a light burlesque of the Book of Genesis’s creation story. Extracts from Adam’s Diary is a non-religious take on the first man’s time in and out of the Garden of Eden. A humorous and cranky look at how Adam adjusts to life with Eve, the short tome is comprised of diary entries that detail their quotidian existence. From the outset, Adam is not pleased with his mate:

“Monday – This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company.”

Over the ensuing days and weeks, Eve troubles him greatly by naming the animals, moving into his hut, and putting fish in his bed. One would think he would not be excited about her interactions with a certain serpent, but Adam actually finds relief in her new friend:

“She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.”

Of course, after the famous apple-eating incident, all hell breaks loose and they are expelled from the Garden. Worse, Eve starts having babies which mystify and befuddle poor Adam.

Twain submitted Extracts from Adam’s Diary for publication in the Niagara Book, a souvenir promoting the 1893 Buffalo World’s Fair. He tweaked his copy to include Buffalo-area references, thereby locating the Niagara Falls in Eden. The book would later be published as an illustrated, stand-alone piece in 1904.

After the publication of Extracts from Adam’s Diary, Sam lost his beloved daughter Susy and his wife Livy’s health began to deteriorate. In 1902, the family moved to Florence, Italy in an effort to rejuvenate Livy in a warmer climate. She struggled through the ensuing two years and died in 1904. Predictably, the loss of his wife was a desolation for Sam. In 1905, he channeled his grief into a surprising sequel to Adam’s diary.

Eve’s Diary was created as a companion piece to the earlier Extracts from Adam’s Diary, but it is a much more mature, heartfelt piece of writing. Whereas Adam’s scribblings evidence greater humor, Eve’s reflections on life in Eden are much more emotional. Where Adam is grouchy and wants to be left alone, Eve is wide-eyed with wonder, brimming with love and curiosity. Adam is content with things being as they are, peppered with the occasional adventure (like hunting and fishing trips or a ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel). Eve needs to understand things, name them, conduct experiments and engage in conversation, especially with the man that shuns her at almost every turn.

In time, begrudgingly at first, Adam grows in affection for Eve. He even seems to forgive her the lapse in judgment that precipitates their exile from Eden. In fact, the Fall itself (Eve’s temptation and subsequent passing of the apple to Adam) doesn’t even merit a mention in Eve’s Diary. It is as if Twain couldn’t bear to lay that at Eve’s feet. She writes:

“When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it anymore.”

But, she does not mourn the loss of the Garden because she has found love:

“The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content. He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth and sex. If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and do not really much care to know…”

It is clear that Twain sees Eve as the superior being – her love is unconditional; Adam’s love is qualified. Ultimately, after forty years living together, Eve hopes for them to die together. Her wish goes unfulfilled and the final entry of Eve’s Diary is written by her bereft husband at her grave. One cannot help but feel that the loss of the Clemens’ home in Hartford wasn’t really the expulsion from the Garden; the greatest loss is losing the ones you love and that the true Garden lies within the border of our hearts. To quote Adam’s eulogy for Eve:

“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”

The two diaries have been integrated into one text and will be performed on Saturday, February 12^th at 8 p.m. by acclaimed actors Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker. Tickets for this special Valentine’s Weekend event are $50 ($40 for Museum Members) and can be ordered by calling (860) 280-3130. Admission includes a romantic champagne and chocolate reception and book signing with Eikenberry and Tucker.

INVITING THE FOX INTO THE HEN HOUSE

2011-01-11T16:33:00.001-05:00

On Friday, January 14^th at 5:30 p.m., The Mark Twain House & Museum joins The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in presenting author Anne Trubek lecturing on her new book. Presenting authors in conversation is central to our mission. Seems like a no-brainer, right? We’re museums dedicated to writers. Well, in a move that the Hartford Courant calls “counterintuitive programming,” this is no ordinary lecture offering. In fact, to borrow a great quote from our friends at the Stowe Center, we might be inviting “the fox into the hen house.” Why is Anne Trubek the fox in this scenario? Because her book is highly critical of who we are and what we do.

In 2010, Trubek released her much-discussed book A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses. The book is equal parts travel writing, literary history and memoir. It is also a jeremiad of sorts about house museums dedicated to celebrated writers. Maybe jeremiad is too extreme a term. Her book is, at a minimum, a critical look at why and how we preserve the homes of certain writers for public consumption. In so doing, Trubek feels like the writer’s home becomes a fictional construct – oftentimes made to look as if the writer just stepped away or composed of furnishings not native to the house or history re-written to reflect the writer’s work instead of their lives. She chronicles her journey to the homes of beloved writers like Mark Twain, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as authors who have fallen into obscurity like Tom Wolfe (no, not that Tom Wolfe) and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

In essence she is asking the question, “What do we hope to get out of a visit to a writer’s house?” Her thesis: If you want to know a writer, you read their work. That seems fairly obvious. Undoubtedly a reader would get a lot closer to the heart of Mark Twain by reading Life on the Mississippi or his newly-released autobiography than they would by visiting The Mark Twain House. In Trubek’s estimation, guests to a writer’s house are at the interpretive mercy of curators, overly-enthusiastic or ill-informed tour guides, cash-strapped budgets, urban blight and well-stocked gift shops. As a result, the effort to get a better appreciation of a writer is often muddied or misguided. Worse, there are folks who go to historic house with no knowledge or appreciation for the former occupant (eg. Tourists who flock to Hemingway’s Key West retreat to see the cats).

As an employee of the museum, I found reading A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses a frustrating and immensely rewarding experience. We pride ourselves on trying to put together a visitor experience that leaves the guest with a greater knowledge, appreciation and admiration for Mark Twain. I like to think we do that and I am sure the same goes for our compatriots over at the Stowe Center. But as I read the book, I saw the validity of many of Trubek’s opinions. Do we falsify history when we have a piano in the house that is almost exactly like the one the Clemens owned? Have we implicitly re-written Twain’s history to reflect the characters in his stories? Do we shortchange audiences by making the Clemens Family’s time in Hartford seem overly happy? Are we doing Twain a disservice by selling magnets, busts and mugs with his likeness on them? What story are we telling? These are all legitimate questions that Trubek challenges us to answer honestly.

Sometimes on our days off, employees of The Mark Twain House & Museum will go visit other writers’ houses (yes, we’re nerds like that). Often, these employees will come back and say what the other house did right or what the other house did wrong. Of course, these opinions are subjective. Writers’ homes, like their books or poems, are fixed things, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t equally open to a variety of interpretations and readings.

As the custodians of Twain’s Hartford home and legacy, we are charged with interpreting Twain for a variety of contemporary audiences: book lovers, school kids, architecture aficionados, tourists looking for something to visit on the way from Boston to New York, hardcore Twainiacs, history buffs, and more. We cannot be everything to everyone, but we can do our best to honor Twain honestly. And, sometimes, it is nice to let foxes like Anne Trubek into the hen house to keep us on our toes.

- Jacques Lamarre, Director of Communications

The Mark Twain House & Museum Responds to the new "Huck Finn" Controversy

2011-01-05T14:11:00.000-05:00

The recent announcement of the NewSouth Books’ upcoming release of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn – a new edition of the Mark Twain classics that double-yokes the two seminal novels into one text while eliminating the controversial “n”-word and the use of the term “Injun” – has created a firestorm of attention. The novels, which Twain worked on during his time in Hartford, continue to provoke controversy, passion and discussion.

The Mark Twain House & Museum currently has an exhibition entitled Yours Truly, Huck Finn that considers the creation of this enduring classic. The exhibition features first editions, original illustrations, publication history, pop culture representations, and a section on the book being censored and banned. Yours Truly, Huck Finn, which was originally scheduled to close this weekend, has been extended through Sunday, January 16 to allow guests to learn more about the book.

Mark Twain House & Museum Executive Director Jeffrey Nichols states, “Although we admire Dr. Alan Gribben’s scholarship and share his desire to have the books be widely accessible in schools, we encourage readers to experience Mark Twain’s original text whenever possible. Our education department actively works with schools across the country to contextualize the troubling race relations and use of the ‘n’-word during Twain’s lifetime. We invite teachers to contact us if they would like assistance on how to integrate the text into their curriculum in a socially and historically responsible way. We invite the public to visit our current Yours Truly, Huck Finn exhibition to explore why the novel has endured for over 125 years and the house where Twain lived while he created this masterpiece.”

Yours Truly, Huck Finn is sponsored by The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation with additional support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

LOOKING BACK/MOVING FORWARD

2010-12-23T11:13:00.005-05:00

2010 was a remarkable year for Mark Twain in general and The Mark Twain House & Museum in particular. Time recently catalogued the “Comebacks of the Year” and included in the list was Twain. Of course, this is funny to folks here at the museum because Twain never truly went away (a necessary ingredient for a comeback). Our Centennial Celebration – the observance of Twain’s death plus his 175^th birthday and the 125^th anniversary of the U.S. publication of his masterwork Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – only served as a reminder of this giant among men who still walks, speaks and breathes (if a little raspishly after all those cigars) among us.

Two years ago, The Mark Twain House & Museum appeared to be down for the count. Financial difficulties put the future of this National Historic Landmark in doubt. Thanks to generous supporters, a rallying cry from Twain-lovers across the globe, and the dedicated stewardship of a hard-working staff and board, the rough waters were leveled and the ship was righted. But smooth sailing, as any scholar of Twain will tell you, is not what Samuel Clemens was about. His chosen pen name indicates the point at which dangerous passages become safe waters and vice versa. We had to dive into our Centennial Celebration and make a splash.

In order to change the course of The Mark Twain House & Museum, we turned to Sam himself and created a multi-faceted celebration of his life, his times, his interests, his foibles, his family and, of course, his legendary work. Thanks to our generous friends at The Hartford Financial Services Group, our Centennial Sponsor, we were able to hit the ground running in January and haven’t looked back, until now, in the waning weeks of 2010. Some highlights…

A performance of Mark Twain Tonight! by the indefatigable Hal Holbrook
A far-ranging collaboration with Hartford Stage, Hartford Public Library and Connecticut Public Broadcasting to celebrate Twain and his classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The blockbuster success of Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 plus a symposium on Twain at St. Joseph College
A brand new website that adds more resources for folks looking to know more about Twain and his home in Hartford
Authors in conversation including Twain biographers Laura Skandera Trombley, Jerome Loving, Michael Shelden and food historian Andrew Beahrs discussing Twain’s Feast
A Centennial Séance that exposed the bunk and chills of Spiritualism (plus a breathtaking Mark Twain House cake created by the Ace of Cakes)
Four fascinating exhibitions that explored Twain’s legacy, his house’s architecture, and his seminal works
Thousands of children visiting the house and museum for the first time to learn about Twain
The launch of the Nook Farm Book Club with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
A delightful Spring and Fall series of free lectures examining Sam and his obsessions, The Trouble Begins at 5:30
Expanding education programs with Capital Prep and Bulkeley High School
The debut of Writing at The Mark Twain House classes with Lary Bloom, Suzanne Levine and Susan Campbell
Fun and eclectic programs like our Tapping into Twain Oktoberfest, Sam’s Summer Social & Moustache Party, Steampunk Tea Party and Party on the Mississippi.
Lectures and programs with national figures such as Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, Tiffany & Co. Design Director Emeritus John Loring, Irish punk rock author Larry Kirwan and Montblanc North America CEO Jan-Patrick Schmitz.
Family-friendly events like Tom Sawyer Day, Saturdays with Sam and Stowe & Twain’s Old Fashioned Christmas
Popular outreach lecture programs held at libraries and organizations throughout the state by Education Program Manager Craig Hotchkiss
Sold-out Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours that probed the darker elements of Twain’s home and history
Lively performances by the Ebony Hillbillies, Hartford Opera Theatre, Sea Tea Improv, Varla Jean Merman, HartBeat Ensemble, and dozens of others.
A celebration of fellow Connecticut icon P.T. Barnum for the circus impresario’s Bicentennial with a special exhibition plus lecture and family programs
…and so much more!

In all, we had over 50 unique events plus mini-exhibitions, collaborations and speaking engagements. And the world sat up and took notice. We’ve had press coverage ranging from local features, regional write-ups and national attention from USA Today, The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning, Wall Street Journal, Ghost Hunters Academy, among others. We also were profiled by international journalists including the BBC, German Public Radio, Portuguese and Russian magazines, a Japanese newspaper, Australian radio, and an Israeli internet reporter, to name but a few. Special thanks goes to Vault Communications, our amazing PR firm, and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving for their support of our expanded marketing efforts.

The result of all of this activity and attention? We have experienced a 13% increase in house tour visitation this year and a 16% increase in revenue. In August 2010, we had our highest attendance for a month ever. Program attendance alone has soared over 60% higher than previous years. We’ve grown our membership base and the Mark Twain Museum Store has exceeded its sales goals (thanks due, in no small part, to our new Store Manager Laura Van Dine and the arrival of a certain autobiography).

Another result of all of this activity? We’re exhausted. And planning how to top ourselves. We’ve already announced special programs for early 2011 including a lecture by author Anne Trubek (A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses), a visit from humorist Roy Blount, Jr., an evening of R-Rated Twain, and a celebrity reading of Twain’s Diaries of Adam & Eve with Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker. We hope that you plan to join us again and again as we look ahead to where Mark Twain will take us. Subscribe to our email newsletter, become a member, follow us on Twitter and/or become a fan on Facebook to keep up-to-date on everything we have in the works. Please know that at the close of our Centennial Celebration that we plan on continuing our efforts to celebrate the man who has given us so much joy.

Thank you to our board, staff, donors, members, visitors, fans and friends for making this an unforgettably awesome year. See you in 2011!

- Jacques Lamarre

Director of Communications

TWAIN & DICKENS

2010-12-13T15:16:00.006-05:00

This week, The Mark Twain House & Museum welcomes back HartBeat Ensemble’s play EBENEEZA – A HARTFORD HOLIDAY CAROL. HartBeat’s contemporary twist on Charles Dickens’ beloved Christmas story of compassion lost and redemption found will be performed at The Mark Twain Museum Center on December 17, 18 & 19. In this new adaptation, Mark Twain serves as the Ghost of Hartford’s Holidays Past. This interpolation of Twain and Dickens is not the only time the two literary greats have crossed paths…

Charles Dickens and Mark Twain are iconic authors that are instantly associated with the countries from which they hailed. Both have become legends for work that championed the down-trodden and used humor to skewer the hypocrisies of the wealthy and the ruling class. Dickens’ Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and A Christmas Carol have come to define our image of Victorian England. In much the same way, Twain’s major works Tom Sawyer, Roughing It, Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee have become identified with the restless American spirit during the late-1800s. Just as Twain’s term “The Gilded Age” has become the de-facto name for the excesses of Victorian America, the term “Dickensian” has become synonymous with the squalor and hardships thrust upon the poorest of the poor in Industrial Age-England.

Dickens, in a move that Twain would emulate throughout his career, supplemented his income as an author by conducting speaking tours. While Twain’s legendary performances were equal parts stand-up comedy, storytelling and speechifying, Dickens’ appearances were more of a lecture or a reading. Twain’s speaking engagements in England (which were staged by Dickens’ own manager, George Dolby) were every bit the success that Dickens’ found on his two tours of America. What you may not know is that these two legends were in the same room at the same time and never met.

In 1867, Charles Dickens arrived in America for a series of 76 public readings. On December 31st, he was to appear at New York’s Steinway Hall. One of the fortunate ticket-holders to see the most popular novelist of the day was a man on the verge of becoming the most popular writer of his time – Samuel Clemens. The occasion was particularly significant for Sam because it was his first date with his future wife, Olivia Langdon; her parents had purchased the tickets and had invited the young suitor to join them for the lecture.

Twain documented his attendance of Dickens’ reading for the Alta California newspaper in February, 1868. Twain writes about Dickens’ arrival onstage:

“Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, ‘spry,’ (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman…with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage -- that is rather too deliberate a word -- he strode. He strode -- in the most English way and exhibiting the most English general style and appearance.”

Twain goes on to assess Dickens:

“His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward gives him a comical Scotch-terrier look about the face,which is rather heightened than otherwise by his portentous dignity and gravity. But that queer old head took on a sort of beauty, bye and bye, and a fascinating interest, as I thought of the wonderful mechanism within it, the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men and women, and put the breath of life into them and alter all their ways and actions, elevate them, degrade them, murder them, marry them, conduct them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow, on their long march from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its godship over them, never make a mistake! I almost imagined I could see the wheels and pulleys work. This was Dickens--Dickens. There was no question about that, and yet it was not right easy to realize it. Somehow this puissant god seemed to be only a man, after all. How the great do tumble from their high pedestals when we see them in common human flesh, and know that they eat pork and cabbage and act like other men.”

And, finally, Twain assigns a poor review to Dickens’ reading from David Copperfield:

“I was a good deal disappointed in Mr. Dickens' reading -- I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed. The Herald and Tribune critics must have been carried away by their imaginations when they wrote their extravagant praises of it. Mr. Dickens' reading is rather monotonous, as a general thing; his voice is husky; his pathos is only the beautiful pathos of his language -- there is no heart, no feeling in it -- it is glittering frostwork; his rich humor cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to himself. And what a bright, intelligent audience he had! He ought to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout, at his own good will or pleasure -- but he did not. They were very much tamer than they should have been.”

Despite Twain’s tough words, he did possess some admiration for the British legend. While out West in the early 1860s, Sam delighted in reading Dickens’ Dombey and Son. (The Singular Mark Twain, Fred Kaplan, p. 95) According to R. Kent Rasmussen’s Mark Twain A-Z, Twain claimed to read A Tale of Two Cities every two years, visited Dickens’ grave at Westminster Abbey in 1872 and welcomed Charles Dickens, Jr. to his Hartford home in 1887. Close to 143 years after Twain went to see Dickens in New York, the two intersect again in Hartford with HartBeat Ensemble’s performance of Ebeneeza.

An Autobiographical Stroll

2010-12-06T09:17:00.004-05:00

Happy Monday morning, dear Twain fans and readers!

This past week was a hootananny here at The Mark Twain House & Museum-- we celebrated Sam's 175th birthday with a Party on the Mississippi, wrapped up our Nook Farm Book Club with a discussion of The Diaries of Adam & Eve, brainstormed about nonfiction in this week's writer's workshop, and took over 500 people through the house during our annual Friends Holiday House Tour. Whew! That was all fantastic but our staff is ready for a long winter's nap.

Luckily, this quiet morning is a fantastic time to get back to the reason we're working so hard: Twain's writing. This is one of my first opportunities to sit down and peruse the best-selling, very recently published, much buzzed about Autobiography of Mark Twain, so we can flip through some sentences together. Ready, dear readers, for a coming attraction of the book?

On the structure of the narrative: "It starts out with good confidence, but suffers the fate of its brethren-- is presently abandoned for some other and newer interest. This is not be wondered at, for its plan is the old, old, old unflexible and difficult one-- the plan that starts you at the cradle and drives you straight for the grave, with no side-excursions permitted on the way. Whereas the side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history."

On his family: "As I have said, the Clemens family was penniless. Orion came to the rescue."

On first meeting Helen Keller when she was fourteen years old: "Mr. Howells seated himself by Helen on the sofa and she put her fingers against his lips and he told her a story of considerable length, and you could see each detail of it pass into her mind and strike fire there and throw the flash of it into her face."

On politics: "I said that no party held the privilege of dictating to me how I should vote. That if party loyalty as a form of patriotism, I was no patriot, and that I didn't think I was much of a patriot anyway, for oftener than otherwise what the general body of Americans regarded as the patriotic course was not in accordance with my views; that if there was any valuable difference between being an American and a monarchist it lay in the theory that the American could decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't; whereas the king could dictate the monarchist's patriotism for him..."

If you have the Autobiography, what are some of your favorite lines?

If you don't, and would like one, order it from our store-- it sells out within a few days of each new shipment, so plan ahead for the holidays if you'd like one.

Otherwise, let's hear what you think!

- Julia Pistell
Communications Associate
The Mark Twain House & Museum

The Big Top Goes Green

2010-11-10T11:44:00.009-05:00

Concurrent with the 2010 Twain Centennial Celebration, The Mark Twain House & Museum has been helping to celebrate the bicentennial of another Connecticut icon this year – P.T. Barnum. The circus impresario and entrepreneurial legend was born in 1810 in Bethel, CT and we have been helping Bridgeport’s Barnum Museum with their year-long party by offering circus-inspired events in Hartford. This Saturday, November 13^th at 11 a.m., we welcome ARTFARM, a Middletown, Connecticut based troupe that creates high quality theater with a commitment to environmental sustainability and social justice, and their high-flying Circus for a Fragile Planet. This program is the final of our 2010 "Saturdays with Sam" Family Matinees, so fill your clown car with the kiddies for this unique show!

Imagine a circus in which actors juggle bottled water, polar bears dance on melting ice floes, the props and set are recycled, and the core of clowns are called the Fossil Fools. That’s part of what you get in ARTFARM’s Circus for a Fragile Planet, a brand new educational circus performance featuring juggling, clowning, physical comedy, acrobatics, unicycling, stilt dancing and other circus arts built around a strong environmental message.

The show is written, directed and features ARTFARM co-founder Dic Wheeler, who plays an offbeat Austrian scientist whose attempts at enlightening the audience about critical environmental issues are undermined by three fun loving clowns with an agenda of their own. Featuring a lively contemporary and classical musical score, Circus for a Fragile Planet is a side-splitting, mind-opening blend of circus and science.

The fast-paced, hour-long show has entertained and inspired audiences of all ages. The circus has performed with great success at universities, arts centers, festivals and nature centers. What every audience receives is a terrific small-scale circus which leaves them asking “what changes can I make in my lifestyle to become a more responsible world citizen?” The show addresses issues such as global warming, critical habitat, resource management, alternative energy sources, bottled water, recycling, species sustainability and individual responsibility in a way that is accessible and upbeat, accentuating the positive choices each individual or community can make to help build a better future for the planet. And the company shows up in a colorful bus powered by waste vegetable oil!

Check out ARTFARM in action here!

Tickets for Circus for a Fragile Planet are only $5 for children and $10 for adults. To reserve, call (860) 280-3130 or purchase tickets at the door. "Saturdays with Sam" is supported by Aetna, Hartford Steam Boiler and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

This just might be your last reminder. No. I mean it this time.

2010-11-03T12:35:00.002-04:00

By Susan Campbell

I'm teaching a course in creative non-fiction at Mark Twain House & Museum from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays from Nov. 10 to Dec. 22.

We'll explore the likes of E.B. White (of course), Kay Redfield Jamison, Azar Nafisi, Mark Twain, himself (of course) and many others. Come read some fabulous writers, and work on your own fabulous writing, as well.

The cost is $500 for the six-week course (no class is scheduled for November 24). To register, call Steve Courtney at 860-247-0998, Ext. 243, or email steve.courtney@marktwainhouse.org.

And yes, I'm pretty sure this is the last reminder because time is running out. That is all. Thank you.

Susan Campbell's Dating Jesus won the Connecticut Book Award for Biography/Memoir this year. She is an award-winning columnist at the Hartford Courant, where her work has been recognized by the National Women's Political Caucus, New England Associated Press News Executives, the Society for Professional Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and the Sunday Magazine Editors Association. Her column about the shootings at lottery headquarters in March 1998 was part of The Courant's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. The mother of two adult sons, she has a bachelor's degree from University of Maryland and a master's degree from Hartford Seminary. She lives in Connecticut with her husband.

So what is Steampunk?

2010-10-29T10:41:00.002-04:00

This Saturday at 2:00 (that's TOMORROW!), The Mark Twain House & Museum is thrilled to announce the first of several Steampunk events here at the museum. Our museum center will be filled with gears, goggles, and everything in between. Our host will be Miss Kitty, an elegant local Steampunk expert.

So what is Steampunk, you ask?

Steampunk is a subculture based on the ideas of Victorian science fiction and alternative history. That's a really clunky way to express a beautiful thing, so I will pass the explanations to Miss Kitty herself:

And just what is "Steampunk"? Steampunk is the future as imagined through the eyes of the past. It is mechanical gears and boilers, dirtiness mixed with shininess of brass and copper with the deep red of cherrywood. It is a time for tea and gadgets, airships and ether. Steampunk is a trip to the moon through the barrel of a cannon. It is progeny of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells finding their voice in fiction, fashion and music. Steampunk is all of these things, none of them and more. Steampunk is "punk". One doesn't need to go to the store to buy Steampunk. The do-it-yourself mentality reigns freely. Steampunk is what you make it, but you might want to bring some brass goggles along for the ride.

The Event will include a Victorian style afternoon tea with tea sandwiches, petite pastries, fruit, scones, tarts and other delectables and music, . Attendees are encouraged to come in costume, but it is not required.

Point being: Steampunk is a heck of a lot of fun. Come by and check it out!

Saturday, October 30 · 2:00pm - 4:00pm
The Mark Twain Museum Center
351 Farmington Avenue
Hartford, CT

Tickets for the Steampunk Tea will be $10 ($5 for Twain House members), and tickets for the Zombie panel at 4:00 are $5 (free for members!). Call (860) 280-3130 to buy tickets and/or become a member today!

- Julia Pistell
Communications Associate

TWAIN & SHAKESPEARE

2010-10-26T11:22:00.009-04:00

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, the basement of The Mark Twain House will become a theatre – a spooky theatre, to be sure. Capital Classics, a dramatic troupe known for producing summer open-air productions of Shakespeare in Hartford and West Hartford for two decades, will be presenting A Macabre MACBETH, a special reader’s theatre performance of the Bard’s bloodiest tragedy underground in the Clemens Family’s mansion. This one-hour adaptation receives a Halloween twist by emphasizing the story’s witches, ghosts and bloody revenge.

Initially, A Macabre MACBETH may seem like an odd choice for a Twain Museum program, but one doesn’t have to work too hard to see the connections…

Despite being the first quintessentially American author, Twain loved the British. One only need look at A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Prince and the Pauper to see that Twain had a great deal of fun delving into English history and literary styles. His naughty burlesque 1601 is extremely low humor dressed up in stuffy Old English that would have made Chaucer proud (or blush). His trip to Oxford University in 1907 to receive an honorary degree was one of the proudest moments of his life. (Photo: Twain in his Oxford University robes)

It really isn’t a stretch to imagine that America’s greatest author would have tremendous respect for Britain’s most beloved dramatist. Shakespeare pops up via mangled interpretations of Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Hamlet in the the King and the Duke’s “Royal Nonesuch” in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain goes to great pains to question Shakespeare as the reputed author of his plays and sonnets in his essay, Is Shakespeare Dead? Despite being a humorous expose that threatens the very foundations of world literature, the essay betrays Twain’s knowledge and appreciation of the Shakespearean canon.

The Mark Twain House has been the site of a number of family theatricals. Olivia Clemens adapted The Prince and the Pauper as a home entertainment often starring her daughters Susy and Clara in the title roles and her husband as Miles Hendon. Susy created an original play entitled The Love Chase, performed by the Clemens girls and friends in the Hartford home’s Drawing Room using the curtained-off entrance to the Dining Room as their backdrop. As part of their home education, the girls would put on short theatricals in the second floor schoolroom (the fans currently on display schoolroom were utilized as props in the shows). The Mark Twain House & Museum’s collection contains Susy’s copies of Shakespeare’s plays. (Photo: c.1884 Susy as the Prince and friend Margaret "Daisy" Warner as the Pauper)

Much of Macbeth’s action takes place in and around ancestral castles in Scotland. On an1873 trip to Scotland, Sam and Olivia Clemens happened upon a fireplace mantle that was created for Ayton Castle in Berwickshire. The ornate, wood-carved mantle was never officially installed in the castle as the man for whom it was designed died before the piece’s completion. The Clemenses purchased it and had it shipped to their Hartford home where it was installed as a centerpiece in the library. Fittingly, Shakespeare’s notorious “Scottish Play” will be performed directly underneath the fireplace mantle. Among the piece's wood carvings are tributes to the arts - an artist's palette, a musical lyre, a writer's scroll and two faces that look suspiciously like the enduring and ancient symbols of the theatre - comedy and tragedy masks.

Capital Classic’s “A Macabre MACBETH” runs Thursday, October 28 at 8 p.m., Friday, October 29 at 10:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 30 at 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be ordered by calling (860) 280-3130.

TWAIN'S BRRRAAAAIIINNNSSSS...

2010-10-20T11:28:00.009-04:00

In 2009, Quirk Classics exhumed a dark and comic twist on Jane Austen with Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultra-Violent Zombie Mayhem. In the book, Grahame-Smith takes the treasured romantic tale of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy and spikes it with unwanted undead running amok across the English countryside, ruining garden parties and society balls. The Bennet daughters are not only girls to be married off into good families, they are highly valued for their mastery of the ninja arts and their facility with dispatching the walking dead that have become so pesky to the landed gentry.

The instant success of the zombified Pride and Prejudice begat a spate of sequels and spirited massacres of other Austen classics including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Unmentionables; Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters; Mansfield Park and Mummies; Emma and the Vampires; and Jane Bites Back. Not content to assault Austen, the monster mash-ups started infecting other classics in the canon: Jane Slayre, Android Karenina, Little Women and Werewolves and Wuthering Bites, to name a few.

At The Mark Twain House & Museum, we assumed that it was only going to be a matter of time before Mark Twain’s works were going to be similarly splattered with zombie action. Our patience was rewarded with three traumatic tales that use Twain’s iconic Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. First out of the grave was W. Bill Czolgosz’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & Zombie Jim: Mark Twain’s Classic with Crazy Zombie Goodness (a limited release in 2009 via Coscom Entertainment, Huck Finn & Zombie Jim will be published nationally by Simon & Schuster in February 2010). In Czolgosz’s twisted tale, a mutant strain of

tuberculosis has swept the South, causing the recently deceased to bebagged to avoid the spread of contagion. If the dead reanimate and are docile, they are used as slaves for the good of society. If they are vicious, they are dispatched. When Pap Finn, the worst of these “baggers” reanimates, Huck sets out for freedom with his friend Bagger Jim.

In August 2010 via Tor Publishing, Don Borchert decided to exhume The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by adding “…and the Undead.” Using the skeleton of Twain’s tale of boyhood adventure, Aunt Polly not only tries to keep Tom on the straight and narrow, she must also protect him from the marauding “Zum” that have shambled out of the grave. Instead of painting Aunt Polly’s fence, Tom must trick his friends into sharpening the fence posts that will gore any zombies that attempt to ransack his home. Of course, Tom’s nemesis, a mutant Injun Joe, provides hair-raising and vomit-inducing action that propels the story forward. Much of Borchert’s book utilizes Twain’s original text and piles on the marauding corpses.

IDW Publishing decided to take a different tack in attacking the classics. In their new omnibus Classics Mutilated, they have unleashed genre writers on classic characters and freshly inter them in new stories. Thus, Huck, Tom and Jim have an all-new adventure in the H.P. Lovecraft/Song of the South send-up Dread Island, written by prolific horror and crime novelist Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale is the “Champion Mojo Storyteller” behind The Hap Collins and Leonard Pine Mysteries, Bubba Ho-Tep and the Jonah Hex graphic novels. In Dread Island, the novella that serves as the centerpiece of Classics Mutilated, Twain’s iconic characters set off for a mysterious island in the Mississippi that is home to Uncle Remus’s friends Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, among others.

On Saturday, October 30^th at 4 p.m., The Mark Twain Museum Center will host Mark Twain & The Army of Darkness, a conversation between Borchert, Lansdale and Czolgosz (appearing via Skype from his home in Saskatchewan) about what it took to give Twain’s classics a macabre makeover. The conversation will be moderated by Sam Hatch from WWUH’s Culture Dogs and will include a sneak preview of scenes from the film-in-progress Ninja Zombies, currently being shot in Connecticut. Borchert and Lansdale will be signing their books immediately following the lecture. Admission is $5 and free for museum members. Interested attendees (live or dead) can avoid a grave mistake by calling (860) 280-3130 to reserve their plot. There will be a Steampunk Tea Party before the lecture at 2 p.m. Admission to the tea is $10.

So what would Twain think of this literary massacre? Evidence suggests that he would have been all for assaulting Austen’s work. In a letter to William Dean Howells, Twain writes, “It seems a great pity that they let her die a natural death.” Writing to Rev. Joseph Twichell, he states, “Everytime I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Twain himself speaks from beyond the grave with the 2010 release of his sprawling autobiography which roams the Earth after being buried for 100 years. As for Twain’s other novels being mutilated, one has to wonder if we can look forward to The Prince and The Putrid, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Crypt and Good’ndead Wilson.

- Jacques Lamarre, Director of Communications

All of us contain Music & Truth

2010-10-14T14:45:00.002-04:00

This Saturday, The Mark Twain House will collaborate with many of our neighbors to present an evening of Music and Truth related to our favorite author, Mark Twain. "Music and Truth: A Tribute to Twain" will be held at Immanuel Congregational Church across the street from The Mark Twain House on Farmington Avenue. The following remarks will be the opening to the event.

When Mark Twain was living in Vienna in 1898, he heard an impressive piano recital by Stefan Czapka, a fellow student of his daughter Clara. Afterward, he autographed a photo for Czapka, and inscribed above it: “All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out.”

Tonight a number of talented and lively musicians, actors and readers will get the truth out, with a vengeance. Acclaimed pianist Paul Bisaccia, Hartford Children’s Theatre, the professional choral ensemble Voce, and The Mark Twain House & Museum are all contributing to celebrate the music Samuel Clemens both loved and loathed, along with readings from his beloved works. Highlights will include selections from the musical The Apple Tree (based on Twain’s “The Diaries of Adam & Eve”), spirituals and popular tunes from the Victorian Era, a world premiere of a piano piece by Hartford composer (and Twain contemporary) Dudley Buck, a little sampling of Richard Wagner, a composer who failed to measure up to Twain’s standards (Twain said in A Tramp Abroad that “Some of Wagner’s operas bang on for six whole hours on a stretch!”).

It’s deeply appropriate that this concert is being held at Immanuel Congregational Church, which is instutionally descended from the Rev. Horace Bushnell’s church – Bushnell the rebel theologian and park-builder, who in old age used to drive his carriage at high speed down Farmington Avenue, kicking up the dust in front of Sam Clemens’ house. Clemens knew and admired Bushnell, and used the reverend’s famous book on child-rearing to help raise his three high-maintenance daughters.

According to tradition, when Immanuel was built across the street from his Hartford house one year after that Vienna piano recital, Sam Clemens, back in town on a visit, dubbed it “the Church of the Holy Oil Cloth.” The unusual green-and-cream patterns on its façade reminded him of the standard colors and patterns of oil cloth, the material used on kitchen floors before linoleum was invented.

The Mark Twain House & Museum is proud to participate in this major event in the Woodland Concert series, paying tribute to Twain on the Centennial of his death – and the 175th anniversary of his birth. As neighbors of the church, we have been happy to partner with it in this effort as we have partnered with many other community groups – continuing our role as an important site in Hartford, the place that Mark Twain called chief among all the cities he had seen.

- Julia Pistell & Steve Courtney

“Music & Truth: A Tribute to Twain” is sponsored by Reid and Riege, P.C., The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, Hartford Dental Group and St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, the Greater Hartford Arts Council, the J. Walton Bissell Foundation, Inc., and Barbara David.. The event is one in the museum’s continuing series of Mark Twain 2010 Centennial Celebration events . The Hartford Financial Group, Inc., is the Mark Twain House & Museum’s Centennial Sponsor.

Banned Book Week

2010-09-29T15:53:00.002-04:00

A post by our fantastic new curatorial assistant, Mallory Howard.

In honor of banned book week, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Mark Twain’s infamously banned novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the late 1800’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was originally banned because Huck Finn was a “bad boy” who had no morals and bad manners. Mothers certainly didn’t want this example to be set for their children and therefore did not allow the book to be read. It also came under fire for its language, but not the language that we find offensive today. In Concord, MA part of the reason it was banned was because Huck said, “sweat” instead of “perspire.” In more recent years Huck Finn has been banned due to its use of the “n-word,” which shows up consistently throughout the novel. This coarse language is deemed by some to be extremely offensive and results in some schools refusing to teach it or carry it in their libraries. Those who defend the novel argue that too often the language is taken out of context and should not be viewed with 21st century eyes, doing so can indeed cause conflict. However, when studied from a 19th century context, the book coincides exactly with how most people spoke, felt, and thought.

Another criticism of the novel, which has helped in the argument of the books banishment, is the portrayal of Jim, the African-American slave who travels with Huck down the great Mississippi river. Some are upset that Twain depicted Jim as an “unintelligent, jolly, black man,” who seems unable to accomplish much of anything. This is a common misconception people have about the character of Jim. In chapter nine of the book, Jim and Huck encounter a sunken boat with a dead body inside. When Jim takes a closer look he realizes it is Huck’s abusive, alcoholic father, Pap Finn. Pap is the reason Huck is determined to run away in the first place and Jim quickly realizes if he relays this information to him, he is a goner. He needs Huck as protection, to shield him from the possibility of being hunted down and dragged back to slavery. Jim is concerned with self preservation and proves to be quite intelligent in making sure that he is successful is attaining his goal to leave the South and the enslavement that goes with it.

Craig Hotchkiss, the Program Manager for the Mark Twain House & Museum states that by banning books like Huck Finn, “We are diminishing the power that literature is supposed to have. Great literature it supposed to be disturbing and uncomfortable.” We at the Mark Twain House are dedicated to educating others about the importance of reading books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite our best efforts to correctly teach the book and broaden the understanding of the novel and its important messages, it is still banned in schools and libraries across the United States. No restraints should be placed upon books, for they represent the freedom of speech and expression that we have fought so hard for and continue to fight for. Protest the injustice of book banning by exercising your freedom to read what you want to! I encourage all of you to pick up Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or any other banned book, and read it!

- Mallory Howard

Weddings and dinners and all sorts of things!

2010-09-23T09:53:00.002-04:00

The Mark Twain House & Museum is thrilled to announce that we are re-invigorating our facilities rentals. That's a really boring way to say that you can now rent spaces in our museum for delightful and intellectual events in your life, such as a company conference, screening your movie in our theater, or in the case of a lovely Hartford couple-- get married on the ombra!

Aren't they great?

To learn more about facilities rentals please visit our website.

- The Mark Twain House & Museum

"The Gilded Age" Onstage

2010-09-08T10:57:00.005-04:00

In advance of Ellen Faith Brodie and David Pellegrini of Eastern Connecticut State University's September 16th reading of a new stage adaptation of “The Gilded Age,” Mark Twain House & Museum’s Director of Communications Jacques Lamarre explores the novel’s previous journeys to the stage. The reading will be performed by students from Eastern CT State University's Performing Arts Department Theatre Program

Mark Twain is most famous for his novels, short stories, and his observant and incisive non-fiction. He is also well known as an orator who circled the globe entertaining audiences with his quick witticisms. His stage performances, although portraying no one other than himself, were a master class in comic timing and displayed his consummate grasp of how to hold a crowd rapt. Despite his indubitable way with words and his undeniable stage presence, one area of accomplishment eluded him that seemed to be well within his reach -- to be a truly successful dramatist.

During Twain’s lifetime, he was an avid theatre-goer. According to Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “young Sam Clemens was exposed to mock Shakespearean orations and swordfights, minstrel shows, and amateur theatricals. When he left home at age seventeen, he attended his first professional theatre in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Keokuk, Iowa.” (“Mark Twain and the Theatre,” Afterword, Is He Dead?, p. 147) He spent time writing theatre criticism during his tenure as a journalist for the Virginia City, Nevada Territorial Enterprise and he championed the cause of the acting profession when he became a founding member of the still-extant Players Club in New York. As much as he loved attending and debating the merits of plays, he saw huge money-making potential in the theatre.

The only play Twain wrote that was a success during his lifetime* had an odd beginning, much like the novel that serves as its basis. Twain’s first novel, a collaborative effort with his Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, was born as a result of dinner table conversation. After eviscerating novels that they found lacking, their wives challenged them to write one that was better. The two men took up the challenge and the resulting novel The Gilded Age – A Tale of Today was published in 1873 and became an immediate success. R. Kent Rasmussen sums up the book as “a sprawling epic with multiple story lines and dozens of characters…a melodramatic saga of a Midwestern family nearly destroyed by its faith in illusory wealth and a fierce satire of post-Civil War America. The novel skewers government and politicians, big business and America’s obsession with getting rich.” (Rasmussen, Mark Twain A-Z, p. 167) Aside from a title that has since become associated with the gilt-edged era of excess that it satirizes, The Gilded Age may be best remembered for the character of Colonel Sellers, a comic schemer who always sees fortune in speculation shouting, “There’s millions in it!”

Undoubtedly, Twain and others saw millions in Colonel Sellers coming to life onstage. In 1873, Twain and Warner filed for copyright protection for “The Gilded Age: A Drama” and approached playwright Dion Boucicault to adapt the work for the stage. After Boucicault insisted on a three-way split of the profits, the idea was shelved. According to Jerry Thomason and Tom Quirk, Twain may have attempted his own adaptation of the novel in February 1874, an effort that was ultimately discarded. (Introduction, Colonel Sellers: A Drama in Five Acts, The Missouri Review, p. 111) In April 1874, Twain and Warner discovered that, despite their copyright, a stage version of The Gilded Age dramatized by G.B. Densmore had been launched in San Francisco and became an immediate hit with comic actor John T. Raymond playing Colonel Sellers.

Twain smelled money and quickly entailed the San Francisco production and purchased the Densmore script for $400 ($200 for the script with an additional $200 promised if Twain’s adaptation became a success). Twain set up an agreement with Warner that each author of the novel owned the rights to the characters they had individually created without royalty due to the other. Successfully quarantining any financial obligation to Warner, Twain set about adapting, augmenting and embellishing the Densmore script (while, apparently, pinching some of Warner’s material despite their agreement). The resulting stage play was subsequently entitled Colonel Sellers and written with actor John Raymond in mind.

Colonel Sellers made its debut at the Park Theatre in New York on September 16, 1874. The play was an immediate success with audiences. Critical opinion appears to be sharply divided. “James T. Fields found it ‘simply delicious’; President Grant went backstage to compliment Raymond; and the Atlantic, as well as several daily papers, was full of praise.” (Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, p. 180). Other reviews were not as kind: “George Odell’s Annals of the New York Stage dubbed Colonel Sellers ‘a wretched thing,’ while the New York Tribune called it ‘excessively thin in texture.’” (Fishkin, Afterword to Is He Dead? p. 149) Twain himself acknowledges the piece’s shortcomings in a letter to William Dean Howells, “It is simply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers, and as a play I guess it will not bear a critical assault in force.” Regardless of the critical reaction, the play must have exceeded Twain’s expectations – it toured consistently for 12 years and brought him royalties in excess of $100,000 during its time on the road. “The daily reports of the profits arrived in Hartford around dinnertime, and Howells recalled that Clemens would spring to his feet, fling his napkin on his chair, and in ‘wild triumph’ read aloud the ‘gay figures.’” (Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, p. 180)

Sadly, the success of Colonel Sellers was not a harbinger of future success on the boards for Twain. His next effort Ah Sin, a collaboration with Bret Harte, was by all accounts a disaster and closed after one week. Attempting to return to the Colonel Sellers well, he wrote a sequel with William Dean Howells for John Raymond to perform entitled Colonel Sellers as a Scientist. Raymond, whose relationship with Twain had begun to sour, demurred at the opportunity to revisit the character in an inferior vehicle. Twain went on to eviscerate Raymond in Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography, stating, “The real Colonel Sellers was never on the stage. Only half of him was there. Raymond could not play the other half of him; it was above his level. That half was made up qualities of which Raymond was wholly destitute. For Raymond was not a manly man, he was not an honorable man or an honest one, he was empty and selfish and vulgar and ignorant and silly, and there was a vacancy in him where his heart should have been.” (Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography, p. 9) This disparaging assessment is pure Twain, but shocking when measured alongside the extraordinary debt Twain owed Raymond; thanks to the actor, Twain made more money each year that Colonel Sellers toured than he realized from his books. During his lifetime, it was one of his greatest financial successes.

In 1986, Hartford’s relationship with The Gilded Age was reignited when Hartford Stage engaged playwright Constance Congdon to adapt the tale under the direction of Mark Lamos. In 2010, Eastern Connecticut State University professors Ellen Faith Brodie and David Pellegrini have created their own stage adaptation of the novel, once again bringing Colonel Sellers to dramatic (and comic) life. Finding the book’s original subtitle “A Tale of Today” to still be apropos, Brodie and Pellegrini’s version dials down the melodrama and pushes Twain and Warner’s themes of political gain and financial greed to the fore. The Mark Twain House & Museum will present the first public reading of their script at a free program on Thursday, September 16th at 7 p.m. in the Museum Center auditorium. The Brodie/Pellegrini version will then be fully staged by the ECSU Performing Arts Department Theatre Program November 9th through 14th, 2010 at the Harry Hope Theatre on the University’s campus. Undoubtedly, Twain would be thrilled to find that Colonel Sellers is still bringing in the crowds.

*Twain’s recently-exhumed 1898 play Is He Dead? is generally conceded to be his best work for the stage and enjoyed modest success on Broadway during the 2007-2008 season and subsequently on regional stages.

Mark Twain’s Connecticut

2010-08-31T13:22:00.001-04:00

The Mark Twain House & Museum is very pleased to be collaborating with the folks at the Wilton Historical Society (Wilton, CT) and the Mark Twain Library (Redding, CT) on the exhibition, Wilton’s Friend: Mark Twain, which opens on September 1st at the Wilton Historical Society.

Over the course of his seventy-four years, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) traveled to over thirty states, and crisscrossed the globe, visiting five continents, crossing the Atlantic twenty-nine times, and crossing the Pacific and Indian oceans as part of his round-the-world lecture circuit. He wrote to his mother, “All I do know or feel, is, that I am wild with impatience to move—move—Move!”

When the time came for him to settle down, Clemens chose Connecticut. In fact, the only two homes that he ever constructed for himself were both in the state. In 1874, as his career was exploding, Clemens built a large mansion in the Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford for his growing family. In 1908, toward the end of his career, he built an Italianate-style villa, which he named “Stormfield,” in Redding.

Both of these homes represented a sense of stability and permanence to Clemens, and they were equally special to him. Wilton’s Neighbor, Mark Twain, brings together artifacts belonging to The Mark Twain House, Mark Twain Library, and the Wilton Historical Society to give an intimate look at Twain’s life in both Hartford and Redding.

Visitors to the exhibit will get a chance to see some special items from our collection that you don’t normally see when you visit Hartford. Items such as Twain’s billiard cue and humidor, his patented inventions of the “Mark Twain’s Memory Builder” and Self-Pasting Scrapbook, and his family’s picnic basket (which includes some silverware items lifted from Long’s Hotel in London) all give insight into the lives that our beloved author and his family led while living in Connecticut.

We hope you’ll get a chance to visit Wilton’s Neighbor: Mark Twain before it closes on October 31st.

~ Patti Phillipon, Chief Curator of The Mark Twain House & Museum

Double Blog

2010-08-12T11:04:00.006-04:00

The Mark Twain House & Museum is constantly working on several projects at once-- you may have noticed our advertising for our Ghost Tours, foodie events, educational programs, and more-- but we're also building up momentum on a project that isn't quite as fancy but vitally important to the author's legacy.

Last Spring we launched a brand-new program that has long been a dream of the staff here: Writing at The Mark Twain House. Our flagship course was taught by Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine and focused on Memoir. Our students spent eight weeks writing and critiquing their work. Due to their successes, we're delighted to announce that we will continue to offer Writing Workshops at the Mark Twain Museum Center for as long as aspiring and established writers keep on coming back to take them.

We also are committed to displaying our writers' voices, and so we have started a second blog entirely devoted to the product of these workshops: Writing at The Mark Twain House. That blog will display the writing of our students as well as announce upcoming courses and report on the progress we're making in the program. Please follow it!

As if that weren't exciting enough, we're also thrilled to announce that the next round of Nonfiction writing workshops will be taught by the illustrious Susan Campbell, author of Dating Jesus and columnist for the Hartford Courant. Classes will treat all manner of non-fiction work, from opinion writing to autobiography to essay writing to general truth-telling, guided by the spirits of E. B. White, Jessica Mitford, Tracy Kidder and Joan Didion, among others. The six sessions run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings, beginning Nov. 10 and running to Dec. 22 (no class Nov. 24). There is a fee of $500. Call Steve Courtney at 860-247-0998, Ext. 243, steve.courtney@marktwainhouse.org.

We hope that you are as excited about this set of programs as we are! Let us know in the comments what you think, what kind of writing workshop you'd take, and which writers you'd love to see here at the Twain House.

-- Julia

Scholarly Pursuits

2010-07-30T09:22:00.002-04:00

At Boston University on August 20-22, three staff members of The Mark Twain House & Museum will be giving lectures at the Twain/Tolstoy Symposium. Mallory Howard will speak on Twain's marginalia, Julia Pistell will give a lecture on wit in Twain's nonfiction, and our Chief Curator Patti Phillipon will deliver the keynote address. We're all very excited and a bit nervous to collaborate with so many fantastic scholars.

This is Julia writing today's blog post, and I have been working on my lecture every day for the last week or so. I'm fairly new to the Twain House, and much of my time is spent doing things like researching famous moustaches and organizing the logistics of writing workshops, so I'm trying to catch up on my scholarly work. I'm currently reading the Justin Kaplan biography Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, and I've already written about several other Twain biographies is a previous post. I've worked for the Twain House for a year now, and have picked up what feels like a lot of information about Sam's legacy and work. Yet, I can't help but feel that I will never be a real Twain scholar. There's just so much to know.

It's also a horse of a different color to become a Twain expert as opposed to, say, a J.D. Salinger expert. Twain wrote so much, and an absolutely insane amount of letters, and has captivated the American imagination for about 140 years. There are so many experts that have come before us, what does it take to throw a hat in the ring?

My favorite line in the Kaplan biography is the following: "Recognizing that Orion was bound by the laws of his nature to a lifetime fickleness of purpose and a butterfly vagrancy, Sam once meant to reassure him that there was no reason why a kaleidoscope should not have as good a time as a telescope." I've decided that my current kaleidoscopic view of Twain is lovely in its own way, and an excellent jumping-off point for becoming more telescopic.

So what do you think, loyal readers? At what point does someone become an expert? A scholar? An aficionado? A Twainiac? I'm going to keep thinking about it, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, too.

-- Julia

Letter from a Fan

2010-07-20T09:39:00.002-04:00

We asked one of our most frequent Mark Twain House facebook commenters about her enthusiasm for Twain. She wrote us this lovely letter. Thanks, Marie!

Good afternoon!

Well, I was asked why I am so fascinated by the Mark Twain House, and all it entails. Let me share some of my thoughts on this.

First, it is exciting to know that the Mark Twain house, and museum, is only about 30 minutes from me, here in Ct. It makes me proud, as well, because he gave the world so much.

Next, I am a writer, and when I step into the M.T. house, I step into his world, and relate to many things: he was a deep thinker, and writes of his beliefs, interests, and things he wanted to share so much. He learned to take care of himself growing up, as I did, and he grew up by the river--I grew up by the Atlantic Ocean.

During his time, there were slaves, and although we no longer have slaves, I am a slave to my writing, many times kept captive, because there is so much I would like to share with the world, but held back.

For me, I absolutely love anything from the 1800s: antiques, the styles, the way they lived, the decor, the beauty of the homes, and all. To step into Samuel Clemen's home, and visualize him and his family living there, or the family sitting at the table for meals, or know he reclined in that house creating stories and more, profoundly warms my heart.

It all may sound corny to you, but he was an every day person who achieved a goal in life--writing and sharing his innermost thoughts, and I am the same, just not a well-known.

Honestly, I only know of what I relate to in what I have mentioned. When I worked in a middle school, and we talked about Samuel Clemens, I learned quite a bit, and the wheels started turning in my head because I related to many things about him.

When I realized the Mark Twain House was not that far, I couldn't wait to get there, and to actually step foot into the past. I have visited a few times, and each time I am almost speechless to know that I walked the same stairs he and the family did, be in the rooms that he actually was in, and more.

How I would love to sit down with him today and experience how he thinks, and maybe, realize that we are both alike as writers; the good days, the bad days, the writer's block, how he got his ideas--I bet I have been through the same things he has.

To think that his beautiful house only cost about $40,000 back then. Could you imagine what it would be worth today, with all those rooms and all the land, as well as the servants house (?) etc.

I am a deep thinker, but down to earth. I think Samuel Clemens was a little bit eccentric. However, in my closing thoughts, I want to say that I feel one in the same with someone whom I have never met, but have the chance to visit the Mark Twain House whenever I want, and be "wow'd" because maybe one day someone will be feeling the same about me. I am not sure he wrote poetry, but most of my work is poetry--a therapy for me; I have been writing since I was 8 years old. I am only now working on children's stories, a memoir, other books, and worked for newspapers, writing feature stories--I believe Samuel Clemens also worked for newspaper outfits.

When I visit, I take pictures of as many things as I am allowed at the Mark Twain House, and use my photos as postcards ( as well as hundreds of other "kodak moments"), and love to send them to children I know, elderly, the lonely, the sick, shut-in's, etc. and share with them something special, teaching them, and giving them something special to experience. Most of them will never get there, so I am very lucky that I can!

If anyone is interested receiving, or know of someone who would like to receive my "Mark Twain" postcards, or other postcards because they are shut-in's or lonely, etc, please let me know. I do a postcard/card/letter ministry at no charge--it is my hobby.

Know that the Mark Twain House is getting some free publicity! It makes me happy to do this--if Samuel Clemens only knew!

Thank you for your time.

Marie Serio DellaValle

10 Moustaches We Love

2010-07-13T14:26:00.008-04:00

Tomorrow's Summer Social and Moustache Party will be just that-- a party. Amongst all of these lectures, musical tributes, family events, writing workshops, and sold-out tours, we wanted to give a nod to Sam's love of a nice evening socializing.

There are so many fantastic elements to this event I can't even bring myself to put them into full sentences:

- Only $10 and $5 for members!
- Ice Cream from the UConn Dairy Bar included in admission (locally made!)
- One Huckleberry Vodka Lemonade ALSO included in admission (courtesy of 44 North!)
- Puppeteer Anne Cubberly will be on hand to help you make your own felt moustache
- Catie Talarski of WNPR will be on hand to judge best Moustaches (real and fake)
- Locally renowned band String Theorie will play on the porch of the house
- Bocce, badminton, Twister, horseshoes and more to play on the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center lawn
- Scrabble, Balderdash, chess, and more to play indoors if it rains!
- A cash bar no matter what! The happiest happy hour of all!
- 5-8 PM on a Wednesday-- I'd call this the best happy hour ever.

But without further ado, I present to you ten moustaches we love.

1. Salvador Dali. If you're going to wear a moustache, might as well accessorize with an ocelot.

2. Charlie Chaplin. Just classic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKbDNY0Zwg

3. This guy! Keep watching for the 'stache.

http://vimeo.com/7877526

4. The fine folks at Movember. This is actually a LOT of moustaches, but the cause is awesome and you can participate all over the world.

http://us.movember.com/

5. My friend Rachel's dog's moustache.

6. Sexy fish moustaches.

7. Fun uncles of the world. I have a fun uncle with a moustache, do you?

8. Wow!

9. This person is serious about his efforts.

10. Of course...

See you tomorrow evening, rain or shine!

- The Mark Twain House & Museum

The Greatest Person from Back Then Ever

2010-06-29T10:25:00.004-04:00

One of our current exhibitions in our Museum Center is Legacy: an examination of how Mark Twain’s presence still lives with us today. After reading what authors and public figures (including Tom Wolfe, David Baldacci and Roy Blount Jr.) have to say about Twain’s relevance, many of our guests write their thoughts on Sam and his legacy in one of our guest books. Today we thought we’d pull out a few of our favorite comments.

Without further ado, here are my top ten favorite Legacy comments and the reasons why I love them:

1. “How to describe Mark Twain’s Legacy? America is his legacy. Some people know more about him than they know about US Presidents. More people know his stories than probably any other author.” -- Jon

The Mark Twain House & Museum draws visitors from all over the world for just this reason. Sometimes it seems like everyone can tell a Sam story, or feels that they personally know Tom and Huck. Fiction is powerful.

2. “Mark on Sam: You were so ahead of your time in the sympathetic portrayal of Jim.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the major reasons that we still study Sam in school, and Jim is one of the major reasons the novel is so fantastic. Thanks for reminding us, Anonymous!

3. “Mark Twain would have an ipad and an appearance on ‘Oprah.’ ”

Yes! Always the celebrity, and always curious about new technology.

4. “Becky Thatcher is the coolest character EVER created.”

I tend to agree. Becky is such a smart, hilarious, brave little girl. It’s no wonder Tom fell so hard for her.

5. “Dear Mark Twain you are an asome writer to me you’re a good ilistrater” – Frome your Best Brother: Edwin

Based on this commenter’s handwriting, I think he’s just learning to read and write. We’re pretty excited that Twain’s stories are compelling to even the newest of literary minds.

6. “You helped me enjoy my childhood in a little town in Iran.” -- Faridet, age 60

Tom Sawyer isn’t just a boy from the Mississippi River: he’s every kid, as we’ve learned over and over from our visitors.

7. “I heart Samuel Clemens. P.S. Sorry about your kids.” – Katelyn

I know, Katelyn. I know. For those of you who don’t feel the pain, watch Ken Burns’ documentary and cry along with Katelyn and me.

8. “I think it’s cool that he has a lot of humor.” - Kevin

Well hey, so do I! That’s one of the reasons I love working for this place!

9. “I think Mark Twain did a good job with his life. He has a great wife, kids, personality. So Mark Twain is actually a good man. He also traveled halfway around the world. Good job Mark Twain.” – Shella

Not all writers were as successful as Sam at nearly every single facet of life. Even though he suffered trials and tribulations throughout his life, Shella is right: good job, Mark.

10. “You are the greatest person from Back Then ever.”

Heck yes!

Honorable mention: “Alex Trebek is the Best!”

For $1000: What is Julia's favorite comment in the comment book?

A Quagmire of Quotations

2010-06-16T16:11:00.007-04:00

Mark Twain is justly known for his many quips, witticisms and pithy observations. Across his novels, short stories, letters, speeches, plays and newspaper stories, he left a vast amount of quotable statements on everything from “Abstinence” to “Zug.” Seemingly he had an opinion on everything – human nature, animals, war, religion, politics, literature, love, family, money, history, friends and enemies. There are volumes dedicated to his succinct and often humorous assessments on a plethora of subjects.

One challenge with Twain quotations is the frequent misstatement of what he said. An example is the infamous “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!” quote. We have used this quote in print ads and on a t-shirt in our store. It is, in fact, not what he said – or at least not how he said it in the following note written in May 1897:

“James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, this report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Shame on us for perpetuating this mistake!

The famous quote attributed to Twain “I am not an American. I am the American.” makes for great copy. Unfortunately, Twain himself (American or not) did not say this about himself – he was repeating a quote from his friend Frank Fuller. Similarly, the much-repeated “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics” is attributed to Twain who was, in fact, quoting Benjamin Disraeli. The very funny “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds” was actually said by the very funny Edgar Wilson Nye.

Recently I was asked by two visitors to our website to confirm the provenance of two quotes commonly attributed to Twain:

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

After doing some research and asking around, these two popular quotes that are routinely attributed to Twain could not be definitively confirmed as his words. I reached out to Barbara Schmidt, the webmaster and creator of the superlative www.twainquotes.com and asked her to share some of the most commonly repeated apocryphal Twain quotes. In her words (and, yes, I am attributing this quote with confidence): “Twain has been labeled a ‘quote magnet.’ Anything that sounds good is often misattributed to him.” The following is her list of some of the most frequently misattributed quotes.

"The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco."

“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.”

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

“Be careful of reading medical magazines; you might die of a misprint.”

“Don't argue with people who buy ink by the barrel.”

“Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” (or “Denial ain’t a river in Egypt”)

Barbara is not saying that Twain didn’t say these things per se. On her website, some of these alleged quotes are followed by the statement, “This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but until the attribution can be verified, the quote should not be regarded as authentic.” When in doubt, Barbara recommends the following: “One of the best ways to research misattributed quotes is to use Google book and Google news archive searches for exact phrases. You will often find the first usage of such a phrase long after Clemens's death and not in any of his known works.” When we are in doubt, we generally turn to Barbara’s website or Caroline Thomas Harnsberger’s excellent Everybody’s Mark Twain and Mark Twain at Your Fingertips. Of course, our store has several terrific Twain books that are filled with correctly attributed quotes.

Much like the “Telephone Game,” these supposed Twain quotes may have been passed along, reported, re-reported, misstated, attributed and misattributed. In the end, many of them are simply very funny and therefore sound very Twain. He probably would be amused, but just like all of us, he probably would not be thrilled to have people put words in his mouth!

Jacques Lamarre

Director of Communications

Is The Mark Twain House really haunted?

2010-06-10T14:40:00.003-04:00

Shortly after I arrived at The Mark Twain House & Museum a year ago, I received an inquiry from the Smoking Gun Research Agency (SGRA), a CT-based paranormal group. Having received seven reports of suspected ghostly activity from visitors who had attended tours of the house, they were requesting the opportunity to conduct an investigation of the Clemens Family home.

Being new to the historic house museum business, I was not aware that these requests are a fairly common occurrence. I asked around if we previously had allowed paranormal investigations in the house. The answer was “no.” I then asked if the house was thought to be haunted. The answers ranged wildly. Some of the staff have reported no experiences whatsoever. Several employees do not believe in ghosts and think it is all bunk. Surprisingly, however, there were a substantial number of historic interpreters (a.k.a. tour guides) and security staff who had experienced the unexplained. Twain’s daughter Susy did die tragically in the house and many believe she never left. Some think the Clemens Family’s butler George Griffin is still looking after the home.

We agreed to allow SGRA into the house for a one-night investigation in August 2009. Although the house did not come alive that night with the full array of paranormal activity that people report experiencing – knocks, bangs, full-body apparitions, spectral voices, articles of clothing being tugged, cigar smells – SGRA did feel the house was “energetically active.” This Saturday, June 12th at 2 p.m., they will offer “Haunting Twain,” a free public presentation of their investigation at ParaCon 2010. Their program is open to the public and will occur at the Howard Johnson Conference Center in Milford, CT (visit http://www.sgra.org/paracon2010/ for details).

In September 2009, we welcomed SyFy’s hit television show Ghost Hunters for a much more comprehensive investigation of the house. They sent three teams into the house at different times. They were armed with infrared cameras, video and audio recording devices, EMF detectors, and more. Their episode aired in December and revealed knocks, bangs, EMF spikes and shadow movement that could not be easily explained.

In March 2010, we were visited by SyFy’s Ghost Hunters Academy for a follow-up investigation. They conducted a two-night investigation involving several teams of cadets all vying for one coveted spot as a member of TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). If you want to find out the results of their investigation, you will have to watch our episode, which airs Wednesday, June 16th at 9 p.m. The Twain Team will be gathering at Woody’s Fish Tank (915 Main Street in downtown Hartford) to see and hear the TAPS Team findings. Please join us that night starting at 7 p.m. for a fun event.

So, ultimately, is The Mark Twain House haunted? The skeptics are still skeptical. The believers are even more convinced that there is something floating around in the house. Me? I haven’t experienced anything, but I’m open to the possibility. We invite you to make up your own mind by taking our Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours which start up this summer on Friday, June 25th. These hour-long nighttime guided tours of the dimly lit Picturesque Gothic mansion are by reservation only, so call (860) 280-3130 to reserve your spot. You can review the evidence, hear spooky episodes from the Clemens Family history, discover Victorian traditions surrounding séances and death, and maybe, just maybe, you might hear something that goes bump in the night or see something that will make your hair stand on end.

- Jacques Lamarre, Director of Communications

A Drag Queen at The Mark Twain House? Really?

2010-06-03T10:24:00.006-04:00

On Friday, June 18th at 8 p.m., The Mark Twain House & Museum welcomes international chanteuse and drag comedian Varla Jean Merman for a one-night-only fundraising event. Having been seen at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, London’s West End, TV’s Project Runway, Ugly Betty, and New York’s Public Theatre, Varla (a.k.a. Jeffery Roberson) is certainly one of the top drag performers in the world. But a drag queen at The Mark Twain House? Really? This may seem, well, a bit odd. Actually, very odd. But, with minimal effort one can find the connection.

In Twain’s masterpiece Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the titular character dresses as a girl to gain intelligence on recent events on the river. “I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns and I turned up my trowser-legs to my knees and got into it.” He steals off to the home of a woman whose husband is out searching for the escaped slave Jim. After bungling his nom de drag and committing various other feminine faux pas, the woman exposes Huck’s charade with invaluable drag advice on how to properly thread a needle and the ladylike way to throw something at a rat. The book contains other sequences of cross-dressing shenanigans involving the “King” dressing as Juliet and Jim dressed as Aunt Sally.

Twain’s recently unearthed and revised stage comedy, Is He Dead?, features a protagonist who cross-dresses to commit fraud in the art world. An artist, in order to escape crushing debt and a life of penury, decides to fake his death in order to become successful. “One of us must seem to die – must change his name and disappear – we’ll make his name sound throughout the world, and the riches will come. Francois Millet must die!” Knowing that an artist’s work is far more valuable if the creator is dead, Millet and his co-conspirators scheme to “kill” the artist. After convincing everyone that he has succumbed to a horrible fate, he returns dressed as his sister, the Widow Daisy Tillou, to collect the money that will undoubtedly start accumulating. When Millet makes his first appearance in drag, Twain’s stage directions paint a not-so-pretty picture: “The Widow, young, handsome, cheaply but prettily dressed with hat or without it, as you please, comes mincing out of the bedroom, smoking a corncob or briarwood pipe.” Millet complains, “You see I’m femininely ignorant. I could make fatal mistakes in talking…I’ll do the best I can…I can’t stand too much of an exhibition. Let me run in and fix my hair.”

Cross-dressing appears in other Twain texts including The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, and various short stories. Linda A. Morris’s book Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-dressing and Transgression more fully explores drag in Twain’s literature along with the Victorian and Minstrel Show traditions that influenced this aspect of his writing. And if you still don’t believe that Mark Twain might welcome a drag comedian at his home, you can check out the photo of Twain himself bedecked in a dress and a bonnet, performing in a family theatrical with daughter Susy. He has even smartly accessorized with a hot water bottle.

Varla Jean Merman is “The Lady Behind the Moustache” is Friday, June 18th at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by calling (860) 280-3130.

- Jacques Lamarre, Director of Communications

Free Saturdays of Summer

2010-05-28T09:23:00.001-04:00

One thing that we at the Mark Twain House love about Hartford is how often our nonprofits collaborate. We have two big free Saturdays coming up, and we'd love for you to know about them!

This very Saturday, our Education Director Craig Hotchkiss will participate in the Wadsworth Atheneum's Last Saturdays program. Craig will deliver a historical and playful storytelling activity, and some of our fun Twain swag will be in attendance, too. The program will be held at the Wadsworth on Main Street in downtown Hartford. Visit Craig and see if you can tell a story as great as one of Sam's!

Even more exciting, on June 12th, we will be hosting a smorgasboard of artists, actors, craftsmen, and musicians to celebrate Tom Sawyer Day for FREE. June 12th is also Connecticut Open House Day, one of the many Big Read events, and Hartford's Magical History Tour (in conjunction with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and the Amistad Center for Arts & Culture). Phew! That's a lot of collaboration!

Tom Sawyer Day will run from 10 - 5 on June 12th and will feature some incredible locals, including:

- The Cupcake Brake (like an ice cream truck for cupcakes)
- Sea Tea Improv
- Puppetteer Anne Cubberly
- The Bawdy Buckaneers
- The Hartford City Ballet
- The Children's Museum
- On-site Leapfrog and Marbles
- A stretchers-telling contest (you can do better than "the dog ate my homework!" Prove it!)

And about twenty more attractions-- all for free! It will be a full, fantastic day here at Nook Farm (with free shuttle service down to the Wadsworth & Amistad Center).

Can't wait to see you here on June 12th!

- The Mark Twain House

Mark Twain Talks to Us

2010-05-27T10:04:00.003-04:00

In 2003, as I was researching a biography of Mark Twain’s best friend – a minister, if it can be believed – I got a chance to spend several winter weeks alone in the great hilltop farmhouse in Elmira, N.Y., where Twain wrote many of his significant works. (The house, Quarry Farm, is maintained by The Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, one of the key Twain loci.) I took along a box of microfilm shipped there for the purpose by the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California, Berkeley. When I switched on the light in the microfilm reader and scrolled through the pages, I saw Mark Twain documents like none I’d ever seen – reams and reams of typed stories, reminiscences, ramblings and observations, marked up for publication, numbered and covered with scratched-out portions and marginal notes, sometimes studded with news clippings. Entire sections were repeated with slight changes; some were handwritten. It was really hard to follow.

These were the pages of Twain’s Autobiographical Dictations, the fruits of a massive project the writer undertook in 1904 to record his life. He spoke to a succession of transcribers and set himself specific guidelines: “Start it at no particular time of your life; talk only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime.” So here were, in a chaotic pile, stories of his home life in Hartford, Connecticut, where he spent two happy and productive decades; loving portraits of his daughters and his wife, Livy; some funny (and brave) things that my biography subject, the Reverend Joe Twichell, did; long tales categorizing in excruciating detail the failings of those around him; and, suddenly, bitter diatribes like this one headed “The Character of Man”: “His history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one – the solitary one – that possesses malice….That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae.”

It’s passages like this, I’m guessing, that caused him to put the lid on parts of this autobiography for 100 years, along with other entries that simply put others in a bad light. He wanted to be untrammeled in his expression, and couldn’t be if he had to restrain himself with thoughts of libel, political orthodoxy, and blasphemy. No big biographical revelations, the California editors tell me; simply the man plain, or as a newspaper put it in his own time: “without respect of persons or social conventions, institutions, or pruderies of any kind.”

Now that century-long wait is over, and the extraordinary editors at the Mark Twain Papers & Project are publishing the first volume of these autobiographical writings in November. They have at long last, through many years of close manuscript detective work, sorted that 5,000-page pile of dictations and scraps and pieces into the order Twain himself wanted. In the past week this glorious coming event in Mark Twain scholarship has finally gotten the attention it deserves, thanks to a piece in The Independent, the London newspaper. But it’s more than an event in scholarship: It’s a new chance to hear the voice of Mark Twain as he talks to us directly, wandering his New York rooms in his dressing gown, or in evening garb after an event at Delmonico’s, speaking in loving tones of his dead, bright daughter Susy, or in bitter tones of how human beings stand below even the most repulsive of God’s creatures.

Steve is Publicist and Publications Editor here at The Mark Twain House & Museum and the author of the award-winning Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend (University of Georgia Press, 2008).

Our Tweets Will Be a Part of History!

2010-05-21T10:37:00.002-04:00

Back in April the Library of Congress announced that they acquired every tweet ever made, thanks to a gift from Twitter, Inc. And they will continue to acquire tweets as they are made! I apologize if I'm behind the times, I've just seen this headline now. But how cool is that?! I tell the kids on my tours a lot that historians 150 years from now will have a hard time researching our generation because everything is texting, IMing, Facebook message, wall posts, tweets and emails, and those things seemingly are lost when they are deleted. Over the years the art of the letter and the love letter, the diary and journal, writing in longhand - they've disappeared. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone? Not a birthday card or a thank you card, but an actual letter. Got out a piece of lined paper and a pencil and wrote a letter to someone telling them how you're doing and asking them the same? I haven't done this in... years. So 150 years from now, what will historians have to say about me? All of my texts and emails... they'll be gone.

So it's nice to know that my tweets will last. Although, what will our tweets say about our generation? Justin Bieber was a trending topic for how many weeks... 15? Let it be known for the record that I had no part in that!

What do you think about having your tweets housed forever in the Library of Congress? There is a group out there who disagrees with it, so they've created hashtag #noLOC, so if you use that in your tweet, the tweet will be automatically deleted after 23 weeks and your tweet will not end up in the LoC.

We can't all be Mark Twain's and go down in history for our humor. We may as well go down in history for our excessive and twasome tweeting!

*Caitlin

"The minor events of history are valuable, although not always showy and picturesque." -Mark Twain

At What Age Does Museum Advocacy Begin?

2010-05-07T09:41:00.003-04:00

As we are now in May and my staff has got a full month of school field trips under their belt, it seemed appropriate timing for the Reach Advisors to send out an email about the importance of field trips and how important they are to the growth of advocates for museums. They surveyed over 40,000 households that were active museum visitors and asked them about their museum experiences as children. The results, they found, were that 1/3 of those surveyed remembered visiting museums with school (rather than with a mother or father). They then went even further and found that as children, those whose parents were less educated meant the memories of school field trips were even more common. "In short, for children who grow up in households with lower educational attainment, school field trips are an incredibly powerful and important pathway to future engagement with museums as adults, figuring in nearly half of memories for those whose parents have the lowest educational attainment."

Previous studies found that the time in a child's life that is the most influential to creating a sense of advocacy for museums is between the ages of 5 and 9. So what does this all mean? What's the point? The point is that every day schools are cutting the budgets for field trips or getting rid of them entirely. Schools are taking less trips, and for the lower-income school districts this means no trips at all. And if you remember, for those lower-income familes/schools, where it is more likely that parents have less formal education, these trips are so important for those students.

We've been fortunate here at the Mark Twain House, that for the past few years we've been able to receive grant funding to provide a Free School Visit program to the priority districts in the state of Connecticut. This allows those schools to visit for free, and we are able to provide a subsidy for their bus costs. So far this year we're finding that bookings for the Free School Visits has increased approximately 130%! More and more schools are taking us up on it because there aren't many other museums that offer a similar program.

So this of course got me thinking about the kids who come through here daily. In the past few weeks we've had students from Stamford, Waterbury, Darien, Hartford, West Hartford, Haddam, Reading, Massachusetts among others. When I give a tour, I spend an hour with these 3rd, 4th, 5th grade kids who are completely enthralled by every word coming out of my mouth. They demand to know what every object was used for and where Mark Twain sat and what he touched. They tell me continuously that they want to live here and can they move in? Their excitement is contagious and by the end of the tour I really think that I've made an impact. Then I open the door and they exit the house and their talk turns to the candy they bought in the store and they just got a new pair of shoes and don't you like my hair today? And I think, well hopefully they'll remember this visit next week. It's encouraging to know that their visits stick with them and turn them into advocates later in life. We need more of those.

To read past blogs by the Reach Advisors about school trips go here and here, and for more information on the study go here.

*Caitlin

"Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog." -Mark Twain

100 Years, 100 Ways of Thinking about Sam

2010-05-05T10:00:00.005-04:00

Hello there, Mark Twain fans!

Julia Pistell here, Caitlin's office neighbor and comrade in Twain scholarship. I will be helping out with the blog from time to time to keep you up to speed on our thoughts and programs. I pledge to live up to her high standards.

Last weekend, the New Jersey paper the Star Ledger published a short essay I wrote about three Twain biographers. These three writers will be visiting us on Monday, May 10th to discuss their work. It's all part of the NEA's Big Read. The biographers don't always agree, so the panel has the makings of an enthralling literary debate. We hope you'll be there.

Below is an excerpt of my Star Ledger piece. Read it over, think up some questions for our panel, and come by on Monday!

***

In 1909, Thomas Edison, a resident of Menlo Park and West Orange, filmed Samuel Clemens at his home in Redding, Conn., thus creating the only moving picture of America's most popular writer. Edison's brief footage shows Twain as he still lives in our cultural imagination: dressed in white, smoking a cigar.

Now, at the centennial commemoration of the death of Samuel L. Clemens, the author’s life has transformed into the legacy of Mark Twain. How we recall Twain today is reflective of how he wanted to be remembered: as, in his purported words, not “an American, but the American.” Three new biographical works revise this image.

Michael Shelden’s ”Mark Twain, Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years” (Random House, 528 pp., $30) is “the story of how this consummate showman staged his parting scenes, what he did to perpetuate his fame and how he made it pay long after he was gone.” Shelden’s work addresses an essential fact about Twain: As a writer, he understood the power of symbolism. Twain is the one who pointed out the association of his birth and death with the passing of Halley’s comet; who permanently stuck Huck, Jim and a raft into the American imagination; and who appeared in a white suit one day, as Shelden says, “impossible to ignore.”
And yet there are conflicting ideas about who Twain was and who he is to us now.

Laura Skandera Trombley’s ”Mark Twain’s Other Woman: The Hidden History of His Final Years” (Knopf, 352 pp., $27.95) relies on the personal writings of Twain’s secretary, Isabel Lyon, to argue he had a darker side, kept out of both his autobiography and the biography he authorized Alfred Bigelow Paine to write while Twain was alive. Trombley seeks to unearth “the story that Mark Twain was determined no one would ever tell.”

Jerome Loving’s more traditional biography, “Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens” (University of California Press, 520 pp., $34.95), says Mark Twain “began as a humorist and ended as a pessimist.” Loving tells yet a third story, a “segmented or episodic life, much like his greatest fictions.” Loving argues that Twain’s final years are merely an epilogue to his life, and that “Mark Twain also died that early June day” in 1904 when his wife, Olivia, died, rendering both the white suit and his relations with Lyon insignificant. The final years that preoccupy Shelden’s and Trombley’s books are, Loving implies, less important than the years Twain spent altering American literature.

The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Conn., whose mission is to cast a wide net on the author’s interests, is untroubled by the complex and conflicting interpretations of Samuel Clemens. On May 10, these three authors will convene there to discuss their respective books and Twain’s legacy.

See you there!

-- Julia

The Death of Twain - 100 years

2010-04-28T10:15:00.007-04:00

Last Wednesday, April 21st, was the Centennial of Mark Twain's death. Around the country and in the major Twain sites there were celebrations to be had and a man to be remembered. In Elmira they re-created his funeral procession; and in Redding, Connecticut they held a wake. Here in Hartford we didn't have anything to re-create since he wasn't here at the time or after his death, so we decided to see if we could bring him back. We had a seance with famous illusionist Todd Robbins. We had some cake, and ate it too. We had a ghost tour with famed medium Lorraine Warren. But alas, no Sam.

The seance with Todd Robbins started off with our Mark Twain reading from the letter Sam sent to Harper's Weekly about obituaries and how people should write down ahead of time what they want their last words to be because at the actual time that one is dying you can't possibly think of the perfect last words. And "An obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it. In such a work it is not the Facts that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meanings which he shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgements which he shall deliver upon them." (Twain, "$30k Bequest") Mr. Robbins then took the audience through some psychic tricks - creating a pendulum and moving it with their minds. Then he invited spirits into the room and speaking with the spirits called upon audience members who would know who "James" was or who had a dog named "Bandit". He then invited Twain to come into the room. The lights went out, and whispers surrounded them, whispering "The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved" (from Albert Bigelow Paine). Twain was speaking about death and life, and the audience was covered in rose petals and when the lights came back on they found themselves surrounded by pages from Tom Sawyer.

When the seance concluded the attendees came out into the Great Hall for the unveiling of the Centennial cake which was in the shape of the Mark Twain House and made by Charm City Cakes, of the Food Network show Ace of Cakes! The cake was beautiful, complete with details of the slate on the roof and flower pots by the porch. Students from the Lincoln Culinary Institute graciously came and cut the cake for us.

Once the cake was consumed the VIPs were led over to the house for a private ghost tour with Lorraine Warren (most famously known for The Amityville Horror). With Rebecca Floyd leading the way (she was on Ghost Hunters while they were here) on the ghost tour Mrs. Warren would tell stories about her own experiences inside the house. Here's a video of her inside the master bedroom talking about a time when she had entered the room and saw Sam's daughter Susy lying on the bed. Susy passed away inside the house at the age of 24 in 1896.

All in all it was a wonderful evening. Those who came had fun, remembered Twain and celebrated his live and his home here in Hartford. If you attended, feel free to leave a comment on how the program went!

*Caitlin

"Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart." -Mark Twain, Adam & Eve

Tom Sawyer at the Hartford Stage

2010-04-10T14:26:00.002-04:00

Last night a bunch of the staff went to see Tom Sawyer at the Hartford Stage. I heard that it was great from others who had been during preview week. We had great seats and watched for two hours as a handful of twenty-somethings brought us back to our pre-teen years. The characters were enthusiastic and energetic and ran around the stage like we used to do as kids. They brought back the feelings we had as kids; shy around the boy/girl we liked, mischievous, thinking the best thing ever was to run around screaming our heads off.

The novel was adapted really well for the play and hit on all of the major scenes of the novel. As someone talks about Twain and Tom Sawyer I didn't feel as though anything had been left out. Throughout the play there are these little narration scenes where one of the characters will leave character and tell the audience something about what is going on. This really helps keep everyone up to speed with what is going on, seeing as they are performing an entire novel in two hours. The stage was used in some really creative ways to create more space than was naturally available. This was especially so in the cave scenes.

Personally, I was entranced by the Becky character. I imagine it must be really hard to have to act like a little girl for two hours but she was really wonderful. I imagine it probably isn't too tough for the boys to act like little boys for two hours, but what do I know?

I tweeted throughout the whole (before, intermission and after), if you'd like to read what I was saying you can see it here: http://www.twitter.com/twainhouse. Funny enough, "Becky's" parents came to visit the museum today. They picked up the Tom Sawyer flier and I commented how wonderful the play was. The laughed a little and said thanks, that their daughter was Becky Thatcher. Later, before their tour started, I saw her mom putting in her face in the Becky Thatcher cutout in the museum center. I'm sure their daughter will love seeing that!

If you're in the Hartford area, I highly recommend going to see the play! If you've seen it already, feel free to share your comments on how you think it was below.

*Caitlin

"In writing "Tom Sawyer" I had no idea of laying down rules for the bringing up of small families, but merely to throw out hints as to how they might bring themselves up, and the boys seemed to have caught the idea nicely." -Mark Twain

Was Mark Twain America's Most Important Novelist?

2010-04-02T11:38:00.003-04:00

This month's cover story of Knowledge (a BBC magazine) is yours truly - no, not me. Mark Twain. Though I don't see why they shouldn't do a story on me, but that's another story. There is a great six page spread on Twain, his influence, his writing and what he still means to us today. In this, the month of his death, Twain is gracing the cover of more than one publication. He's also featured on Hartford Magazine's cover. I haven't gotten my hands on Hartford Magazine yet, but Peter Messent, the author of the article in Knowledge sent us a copy. It's a well-written piece on Twain's life and legacy, including a time line of major events in Twain's life. At the end there is a section called "For & Against" where two scholars go head-to-head on a topic. This month's question: "Was Mark Twain America's Most Important Novelist?". In one corner for the FOR argument is Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Professor of English at Stamford Univ., Twain scholar and friend of the Twain House. In the opposite corner with the AGAINST argument, Paul Giles, Challis Professor of English at the Univ. of Sydney.

For the yes argument, Ms. Fisher Fishkin uses quotes from authors and world leaders to make her point. She quotes Ernest Hemingway with his famous line, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain..." She also uses Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe as an example, saying that HUCKLEBERRY FINN inspired him to write his first novel. Also, the term "New Deal" used by FDR came from Twain's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. She finishes saying, "Humane, sardonic, compassionate, impatient, hilarious, appalling, keenly observant and complex, Twain inspired great writers in the 20th century to become the writers they became...The generative power of the writer Eugene O'Neill called "The true father of all American literature" is unrivaled.

For the no argument, Mr Giles says that "For all of Twain's innovative aspects, did he have the encylopedic range of Herman Melville, the crystalline clarity of F Scott Fitzgerald, or the political impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe?" It seems as though Mr. Giles believes that there really can be no argument for any one writer to be given the credit of being the most important novelist. He says that in universities today, to discuss which novelist is greater than another is "absurd". He finishes by saying that "to call [Twain] the most important American novelist is like calling Chrysler the most important American automobile manufacturer: it's a sonorous statement, but not an especially meaningful one."

So now I ask you, loyal Twainiacs, for your thoughts. And so does KNOWLEDGE! If you have thoughts on this subject I encourage you to share them here but also to email them to editor@bbcknowledge.com!

*Caitlin

"Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right." -Mark Twain, Notebook, 1902

What does Twain's Legacy Mean to YOU?

2010-02-24T14:51:00.011-05:00

Mark Twain's legacy. How does one aptly describe what his legacy is, how it affects society, how it affects us individually? In our new exhibit that opened a couple of weeks ago, we asked our visitors to do just that. We've left an open journal with pens and colored pencils and asked you to tell us what Mark Twain and his legacy means to you.

Here are some of the responses:

"What I most admire about Senor Twain was his relentless capacity to poke verbal holes through the armor of pretense and absurdity worn by many around him. I imagine that he made many people uncomfortable and we generally need more of that."

"Mark Twain gave the world at large and Hartford CT specifically the benefits of his wisdom and literary voice - a living legacy we will treasure FOREVER." Bonnie K. Goldberg 2/13/10

"Mark Twain's house is really cool and interesting!"
Maya R. Greenberg, 12 yrs old

"The greatest writer in USA." 2/20/2010

And then, there was this:

So? What about you? What does Mark Twain and his legacy mean to you?

*Caitlin

"Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right." Mark Twain, 1902

Frank Lloyd Wright = Tom Sawyer

2010-01-24T13:18:00.006-05:00

That's right, I said it. Frank Lloyd Wright and Tom Sawyer are the same person. Don't believe me? I wouldn't have believed me either until I went on a tour of Taliesin West, his winter home in Arizona. The complex is incredible; and I say complex because not only is it his home, but it is also his office, a school, work room, cabaret theatre and music pavilion. The history behind the building of Taliesin West kept my rapt attention for a 90 minute tour. He and his apprentices/students started with nothing but desert, and worked to build this "campsite". That's how Wright thought of it, as camping. Our tour guide referred to it as camping "Wright style", which is why their campsite included a pool, pianos, Wright's 30 cars (all red) and more. The buildings were built with local materials; literally rocks picked up off the ground and added into the walls. Canvas was used for ceilings (as it doesn't rain often) and windows. There was no glass (until his wife suggested it, at which point Wright said, "I have a great idea! GLASS."). The students camped out in the desert while building Taliesin West, and still do to this day. The site still maintains an architecture program where students can get a bachelors or masters in architecture. There are currently 32 students at the school, and 7-10 get accepted every year. The budget for the buildings was roughly $10,000. So, how did they manage to build all of this with that kind of a budget? I'm getting to that.

So I know you're wondering, what does this have to do with Tom Sawyer? Well I'll tell ya, every time I go on vacation there will be something Twain that I'll run into. Without fail. And yes, working at the Mark Twain House I eat, sleep, breathe and dream Mark Twain. I even bleed Mark Twain. Vacation, however, is vacation. A time to leave it all behind. So I was pretty happy when day 4 of my 7 day vacation rolled around and I was Twain-less. I thought, Arizona didn't even exist when Twain visited the Nevada Territory, I won't run into him here. And then I took this tour. Halfway through the tour we're sitting in the living room admiring the unique chairs and seating they have when a visitor asked how he managed to build all of this for so little money. The tour guide laughs and says, "Well, it was him and the students building it so he didn't have to pay for labor and the materials mostly came from the land. They used desert sand and rocks to build the walls and mix the concrete. And then, since it was his students helping him build he didn't have to pay them. Actually, they were paying him to attend this school! My visitor services manager calls him "the Tom Sawyer of Architecture". And there it was. My Mark Twain reference halfway through vacation while on tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's home.

If you're ever in the Phoenix area I highly recommend taking this tour. The history, the buildings, the views... absolutely worth it.

*Caitlin

"Nevada Territory is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, granite, chalk, slate, plaster of Paris, thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, gamblers, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, sharpers, cuyotes, preachers, poets and jackass-rabbits." -Mark Twain

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

2010-01-15T15:27:00.003-05:00

This is a really great little piece of writing by Twain that I want to share with you.

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s," and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or so, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c," "y" and "x"--bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez--tu riplais "ch," "sh," and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte same 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Have fun with all that :)

*Caitlin

Mark Twain's Marginalia

2010-01-08T14:27:00.007-05:00

Mark Twain had an extensive library. As an avid reader he collected books of all shapes and sizes, subjects and specialties. He would spend his time reading, and commenting. Most of his books have handwritten comments in the margins (marginalia) and we here at the Twain House have spent some time going through and documenting this marginalia. Not only is this cool because this is Mark Twain's ACTUAL handwriting we're looking at, but also because these are never before seen or published or talked about Twain quotes and thoughts. Who better to share with never before seen quotes than with all of you Twainiacs? You're welcome. :)

For instance, did you know that Mark Twain used the word "dude"? You wouldn't think that Mark Twain would have been the dude type, but he did use the term. In his marginalia in More Tramps Abroad he writes, "Oh throw this dude out" at one point. And of course he would have argued with authors and disagreed with sections of books and contributed his own opinion. For instance, in The Voyage of the HMS Beagle Round the World by Darwin, he writes in one of the margins, "Can any plausible excuse be furnished for the crime of creating the human race?". And not only would be disagree and comment on the text, but he would comment on the authors themselves! Perhaps my favorite, and what best represents how Twain could be cruel and blunt, is his marginalia on the title page for Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. Originally written in Greek and then translated by one John Dreydon (and others) Twain writes (words from the text in black, Twain's comments in red): "Translated from the Greek into rotten English by John Dreydon and others... The Whole Carefully Revised and Connected by an ass." How could you get any more Twain than that?

On a nicer note, we also have the Bible that Same and Livy used for their wedding. And on the first page are their initials, "SL & OL" - Samuel Langhorne & Olivia Louise, plus the date, February 2, 1870. There are also passages outlined within the Bible that potentially may have been read at the wedding itself, but there is no marginalia to prove that for us.

We're only a fraction of the way through the Twain books that we own and we're excited to make it through the rest of them. You can be sure I'll be sharing more Twain marginalia with you as we decipher and copy over his quotes.

Enjoy!

*Caitlin

"I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man...it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals."

Christmas with the Clemens Family

2009-12-23T10:19:00.011-05:00

Christmas at the Mark Twain House is one of my favorite times of the year. The house is transformed into something even more beautiful and exquisite, if you can believe it. We're fortunate that Sam and the family wrote down so many of their memories of Christmas; it was a special time for the family and we're honored to be able to share their memories with so many visitors during the holiday season. I thought it would be nice to share some of these stories and photos for those of you who haven't been able to visit the home during the holidays. Mind you, the photos do little justice to the actual feeling of being inside the house, so I hope you'll make your way to Hartford to visit anyhow. But for now, as you read on let yourself imagine that you are visiting the house on Christmas Eve day, 1881.

You pull up to the house in your horse-drawn sleigh and your coachman helps you step down. You walk up to the front door and knock and wait for their butler George to greet you and welcome you into the house. As you enter the home you are in awe at how the lights twinkle off the stenciling in the front hall, and the beautiful greenery they have carefully placed on the mantle and above each doorway. As you enter further you glance at the fireplace and you see two bootprints on the floor. George takes your coats and from the next room a little girl runs out to say hello. She sees you looking at the bootprints and tells you that Santa left those there years back and told the girls not to clean it up as it would be a reminder to them to be good all year long. She leads you into the next room where Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens and the other two daughters, Clara and Jean are waiting to greet you and wish you a Merry Christmas. Susy, Clara and Jean show off their decorations that they've made for the Christmas tree. Paper ornaments, crochet snowflakes, popcorn and cranberries and tinsel adorn the tree. The tree has just been decorated and the scent of the fresh green tree fills the room. You sit near Mrs. Clemens and tea is brought into the room. She tells you that this holiday season has been so busy and a bit hectic with the decorators still finishing the decorating within the first floor of the house, and putting together all of the gift baskets that you saw in the front hall which are to be delivered to some of the needy families in Hartford this evening and of course, shopping for the girls. Speaking of the girls, they've just begun playing the piano and singing Christmas carols and are encouraging you to sing along! "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!" After the song, you stand up to say good-bye, as you have a few other friends to see before the day is over. Mrs. Clemens asks if you'd like to see the rest of the first floor before you leave, she knows the girls would like to show you what they've been working on. She walks you through the dining room, where the table is set for what is sure to be an elegant dinner this evening. On the table, there is a beautiful silver centerpiece. You ask her where she got the epergne, and she tells you it was on the table during their wedding reception, a gift. You follow her into the library where there is a fire crackling in the fireplace and the table is covered in paper, string and popcorn. The girls have been busy at work finishing the last of the ornaments for the tree. They've spend the past few days popping corn in the fireplace and stringing it along with the cranberries, crocheting and cutting out paper snowflakes, and making cornucopias to fill with nuts. In the alcove there are scraps of cloth and sewing materials and Mrs. Clemens tells you that the girls made doll clothes for a cousin of theirs as a gift and haven't cleaned their mess yet. As she walks you back into the front hall to have George gather your coat you peek back into the drawing room where the girls are talking animatedly with their father, relaxed now that their duty to entertain is over... for now. Their house is simply enchanting with the decorations, festive and yet homey. The girls have helped to decorate and it's clear that this is a family home and they are all so happy to be here together celebrating the holiday.

George helps you into your coat and you say good-bye to Mrs. Clemens and walk outside to your sleigh, waiting to take you to your next destination. You look back the house as you leave and through the window you can see that Mrs. Clemens has joined the family in the drawing room, and it is picture perfect, seeing them all together in their beautiful home.

(Photo credits for the front door, front hall, drawing room and dining room to Hunter Neal)

*Caitlin

“Joy, and peace be with you and about you, and the benediction of God rest upon you this day! …There is something beautiful about all that old hollowed Christmas legend! It mellows a body – it warms the torpid kindnesses and charities into life. And so I hail my darling, with a great, big, whole-hearted Christmas blessing. God be and abide with her evermore.” -Mark Twain, to his wife Olivia, Christmas of 1871.

The Spirit of the Season!

2009-12-12T16:57:00.002-05:00

I stumbled upon this great website today. It's called Redefine Christmas, and is based out of Westport, CT and it aimed at getting people to "change the way we look at giving and receiving." As a little kid Christmas was all about getting presents and asking Santa for toys and dolls and clothes. As I got older it was still fun to get presents but I began getting involved with food drives and volunteering at the food pantry to help put baskets together. I began to realize that during this season of family and giving, there were families out there who couldn't afford to give presents to their kids or make a nice meal. Christmas and the holidays should be about not only giving to your family, but giving to others as well. Redefine Christmas is working to create awareness about this simple idea that so many have forgotten and is hoping that people will give donations as gifts to charities and to the less fortunate. It's a wonderful idea and it's so nice to see a website (and Facebook and Twitter) dedicated to this cause.

It reminded me also of the Clemens' Christmas. Every year the family would exchange gifts, the girls would get letters from Santa and presents laid out in their classroom to open on Christmas morning. And an important tradition that they took part in every year was to create gift baskets for the poor in Hartford. According to Katy Leary, their housekeeper, “She [Livy] always had a crowd of people, children and old people and grown-up people, too, depending on her and she fixed them up wonderful baskets with a big turkey and cans of peas and tomatoes and vegetables and then, oh, a bottle of wine and a great big box of candy, and nuts and raisins, and then there was always some stockings and underwear and a few pretty things, too. She used to give every one of them a present, individual-like, extra. She knew, it seems to me, just what each person wanted most and she shopped for weeks before Christmas, doing up all those things and having all those baskets ready…” And then on Christmas Eve the Clemens girls would get dressed up in their winter outfits and get in the sleigh with Patrick the coachman and deliver the baskets to the needy families they were created for. Livy continued this practice well into the time when the family was having financial hardship, knowing that there were other families who were still less fortunate than they.

Let's all invoke the spirit of Livy and remember that we have the ability to help make someone else's holiday better. Make a donation is someone's name as a gift, or ask that others do it for you as your gift.

Happy holidays!

*Caitlin

“Joy, and peace be with you and about you, and the benediction of God rest upon you this day! …There is something beautiful about all that old hollowed Christmas legend! It mellows a body – it warms the torpid kindnesses and charities into life. And so I hail my darling, with a great, big, whole-hearted Christmas blessing. God be and abide with her evermore.” -Mark Twain, to his wife Olivia, Christmas of 1971

Ghost Hunters Premiere and Contests!

2009-11-23T09:00:00.004-05:00

So by now everyone knows that Ghost Hunters visited The Mark Twain House back in September. Everyone's been asking us when the show would air and now we know! The Mark Twain House episode of Ghost Hunters will air on December 2nd! To celebrate we are holding a premiere party in collaboration with the Connecticut Science Center that night! The evening will start with the Smoking Gun Research Agency (a local ghost hunting group) talking about the equipment they use and the sciences behind what they do. THEN at 9pm the show will air! Check out the preview! And to win tickets to this event, read on!

We're holding a YouTube contest for Twain's birthday, which is November 30th. We want YOU to upload a video of you, your brother, your kids, whoever... singing happy birthday to Mark Twain! Upload it to YouTube with the tag MarkTwainHouse and then head over to our YouTube page and post the link in our comments section! Upload it by end of day on November 30th, we will judge and pick a winner on December 1st and you'll be on your way to the premiere on the 2nd! GOOD LUCK!

The relationship with Ghost Hunters began a while back when the show called us to inquire about filming on site. At the time staff was short and we weren't able to pursue having them come on site. Then this past August Ghost Hunters inquired again and we took them up on their offer! Our marketing coordinator worked with the producers to agree upon two nights where our staff and their staff could be on site. For two consecutive nights in September the TAPS crew came to the house and did their investigation. We weren't allowed to tell anyone that TAPS was coming or which nights they would be here; we were afraid that Ghost Hunters fans would swarm the house! The first night is the official investigation. No staff is allowed inside or around the house while the investigation is happening so we don't impact the outcome. The TAPS crew stayed from about 5pm-5am filming. They came back the next night to film interviews with staff and other footage inside and around the house. About a month later they came back to the house and filmed the reveal. When you watch the show you'll see the reveal is filmed inside the front hall of the house, with our very own Rebecca Floyd, Manager of Interpretive Services! Rebecca is the only staff member at the Mark Twain House who actually knows if and what Ghost Hunters found. She has been sworn to secrecy and try as we might, she hasn't said a word about it. So just like you, we are all waiting for the December 2nd airing to see what's going on inside our house! We hope to see you all at the CT Science Center to watch the premiere with us!

*Caitlin

Ghostly experiences at The Mark Twain House

2009-10-25T10:18:00.002-04:00

Our Graveyard Shift Friday night ghost tours have been so popular that we sold out the month of October within a couple of weeks. We've been getting great feedback from those who have taken the tour. For those who have been to the house in the past, they say it's great to see the house in a new light (literally, it's REALLY dark). And for those who have come to the house for the first time, they are interested in coming back for the full tour. BUT the most interesting are the comments from the people who have experiences in the house while on the ghost tour!

A week ago, 3 women on one of the tours said they distinctly heard children giggling on the floor above them, when there was no one else inside the house. Another girl said she heard heavy breathing behind her, when there was no one there, in the same spot in the house where our local CT paranormal investigators heard heavy breathing as well, and we hadn't told that story to the tour yet! Another gentleman heard a crash on the floor above them, when again, they were the only people in the house. All of these incidences are interesting, except that only a few people on the tour heard or felt something.

But then, last night, that all changed. Last night on the 9pm ghost tour the ENTIRE TOUR heard the same thing. While the tour was in the master bedroom and the tour guide was talking, at one point he stopped talking and the whole tour turned around because they all heard voices coming from the first floor of the house. It was loud enough that Jason, the tour guide, heard it and had to stop talking. I was told it was two male voices, clearly having a conversation, but the words were indistinct. Jason assumed that it was some of his colleagues beginning to close up the house since he was the last tour going through... except that he was the only male staff member working last night. Still, he assumed he had heard wrong and told his tour that it must be Twain staff members downstairs. It scared someone on the tour so much though, that he was asked to yell downstairs and see who it was. So Jason walked out to the balcony and called down, "Caitlin? Mallory? If that's you please say something because we can hear you." Silence. At this point Jason started to get a little nervous. But he walked back into the master bedroom and continued on with his tour. A couple of rooms later, while Jason was discussing the girl's classroom, the same thing happened. He was interrupted by the sound of two men talking on the first floor of the house. Now, the way the house is set up, the rooms on the second floor are all situated around the grand staircase that winds its up the middle of the house. That means that if anyone is talking in the front hall, where the staircase begins, if you're on the second floor you will hear them talking. So again, Jason stopped talking and the ENTIRE TOUR listened to two men conversing, and then the noise disappeared. At this point Jason was not able to reassure his tour that it was his colleagues, because now he was a little freaked out. After his tour Jason asked every staff person if they had been in the house while he was giving his tour, and none of us had. So, where did the voices come from that 22 people heard?

Come and see if you have an experience of your own!
Dates available: 10/1, 11/6, 11/13 and 11/14. 5 tours a night beginning at 6pm and running every 45 minutes with the last tour at 9pm. Call for availability, 860-280-3154.

*Caitlin

"Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded -- that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings." - Mark Twain, A Ghost Story

Tapping into Twain - Oktoberfest 2009!

2009-09-24T09:46:00.002-04:00

Our 2nd annual Oktoberfest is coming up next week! Last year's event sold out at 302 tickets and we are determined to make this year bigger and better! We have more brews, more food and great music lined up for the evening!

Tickets are $35 in advance by calling 860.280.3154. For designated drivers, those who want to come and enjoy the food and music but will not be drinking, we have a $15 ticket. If you procrastinate and decide to take your chances at the door, tickets are $45.

THE BREWS:

The Hartford Better Beer Co. will be pouring their Arch Amber Ale, which is named after the Soldiers and Sailors Arch in downtown Hartford; Arch IPA which is new this week; and Praying Mantis Porter, our state insect!

ROGO Distributors is bringing Otter Creek, Saranac Pale Ale and Saranac Pumpkin Ale, Ubu Ale and Ubu IPA.

Franklin Distributors will be on site with some Belgian beers that they say most people haven't tried; a couple of Oktoberfests and LOTS and LOTS of Magic Hat! Magic Hat #9, Magic Hat Circus Boy, Magic Hat Roxy Rolles and Magic Hat Odd Notion, a Belgian chocolate stout.

Rhode Island Distributing will have Shipyard Pumpkinhead, Sea Dog Pumpkin and Narragansett.

Local brewery City Steam will be pouring their well-know Naughty Nurse Amber Ale and their Acapulco Gold Pale Ale.

Olde Burnside Brewing will be here again this year with Ten Penny Ale, Dirty Penny and Pennyweiz.

John Harvard's will be here as well with some of their locally made brews.

Hartford Distributors will be on hand with the brand new Budlight Golden Wheat.

You may also see Long Trail, Hooker, Blue Point and more, but you'll have to show up to find out!

THE FOOD:

There will be sliders, thai chicken salad and chocolate brownies from the Wood N Tap. Agave will chips and homemade guacamole, spicy beef empanadas and mango chicken.

Hook & Ladder is providing dalmatians (mini dogs wrapped in dough), Maxim Fire Engine Mac & Cheese and Captain Walsh’s Beer Battered Chicken Tenders. Rookie's in Cromwell will bring some of their chicken wings.

The Half Door is bringing their delicious Shepherd's pie. City Steam will have meatball sliders, apple butternut bisque and some of their homemade bread topped with mustard and duck.

Barb's Pizza is making some pizza bread. Moe's Southwest Grill is bringing some of their tortilla chips and famous salsas.

Vaughan's will be on site, food is TBD, but it will be delicious! The Kitchen at Billings Forge will also be here with another vegetarian option!

EVERYTHING ELSE:

Zok's Home Brewing will also be on hand to answer any home brew questions that you have and to show you the latest and greatest home brew equipment!

Jeff Mainville's Acoustic Smackdown will provide the tunes.

*Caitlin

"Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink-- under any circumstances." -Mark Twain