Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“Mark Twain at ‘Nook Farm’ (Hartford) and Elmira” (1885)

[127] === “Mark Twain at ‘Nook Farm’ (Hartford) and Elmira” (1885) Charles H. Clark Charles Hopkins Clark (1848–1926), political editor of the Hartford Courant and one of the co-editors, with W. D. Howells, of Mark Twain’s Library of Humor (1888), recorded his impressions of Twain in 1885. As Clark remembered , Twain spent some nine months of the year in Hartford and the summer months at Quarry Farm two miles from Elmira, where Susan Langdon Crane (1836–1924), Livy’s sister, and her husband, Theodore W. Crane (1831–89), lived. Twain’s octagonal study, on a bluff a hundred yards from the Victorian farmhouse overlooking Elmira and the Chemung River valley, was completed according to Susan Crane’s instructions in June 1874. During many of his springs and summers between 1874 and 1889, Twain wrote most of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in his study at Quarry Farm. off the platform and out of his books Mark Twain is Samuel L. Clemens—a man who will be fifty years old at his next birthday, November 30, 1885. He is of a very noticeable personal appearance, with his slender figure, his finely shaped head, his thick, curling, very gray hair, his heavy arched eyebrows, over dark gray eyes, and his sharply, but delicately cut features. Nobody is going to mistake him for anyone else, and his attempts to conceal his identity at various times have been comical failures.1 In 1871 Mr. Clemens made his home in Hartford, and in some parts of the world Hartford today is best known because it is his home. He built a large and unique house in Nook Farm, on Farmington Avenue, about a mile and a quarter from the old centre of the city. . . . In their travels in Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Clemens have found various rich antique pieces of household furniture, including a great wooden mantel and chimney-piece, now in their library, taken from an English baronial hall, and carved Venetian twain in his own time [128] tables, bedsteads, and other pieces. These add their peculiar charm to the interior of the house. The situation of the building makes it very bright and cheerful. On the top floor is Mr. Clemens’s own working-room. In one corner is his writing-table, covered usually with books, manuscripts, letters, and other literary litter; and in the middle of the room stands the billiardtable , upon which a large part of the work of the place is expended. By strict attention to this business, Mr. Clemens has become an expert in the game; and it is a part of his life in Hartford to get a number of friends together every Friday for an evening of billiards. He even plans his necessary trips away from home so as to be back in time to observe this established custom. Mr. Clemens divides his year into two parts, which are not exactly for work and play respectively, but which differ very much in the nature of their occupations. From the first of June to the middle of September, the whole family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens and their three little girls, are at Elmira, N.Y. They live there with Mr. T. W. Crane, whose wife is a sister of Mrs. Clemens. A summerhouse has been built for Mr. Clemens within the Crane grounds, on a high peak, which stands six hundred feet above the valley that lies spread out before it. The house is built almost entirely of glass, and is modeled exactly on the plan of a Mississippi steamboat’s pilot-house. Here, shut off from all outside communication, Mr. Clemens does the hard work of the year, or rather the confining and engrossing work of writing, which demands continuous application, day after day. The lofty work-room is some distance from the house. He goes to it every morning about half-past eight and stays there until called to dinner by the blowing of a horn about five o’clock. He takes no lunch or noon meal of any sort, and works without eating, while the rules are imperative not to disturb him during this working period. His only recreation is his cigar. He is an inveterate smoker, and smokes constantly while at his work, and, indeed, all the time, from half-past eight in the morning to half-past ten at night, stopping only when at his meals...