One day in Mystic, we drove an hour north to Hartford to see two historic homes, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the Mark Twain House and museum. The two houses are in a section of Hartford known as Nook Farm. The neighborhood, in the western section of Hartford, was established in the 1850s by brothers in law, John Hooker and Francis Gillette. On 140 acres of woods near the last trolley stop on a bend of nook, they platted areas for houses that catered to the upper class. It became the home for writers, politicians, reformers, and activists.
Within that neighborhood, Harriet Beecher Stowe purchased a home with the proceeds from her highly regarded novel promoting abolition and the evils of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe (1811-1896) published more than 30 books, but she is most remembered for Uncle Tom’s Cabin which became a rallying cry for the abolition movement. Published in 1852 after being serialized in The National Era newspaper, the novel sold 10,000 copies in its first week. Later, characters, Tom, Little Eva, Eliza and Topsy became characterized in vaudeville shows, silent film and as late as the 1960s, color film.
Stowe purchased the house, a wooden Victorian style with a covered side and front porches, gingerbread trim, and gabled eaves in 1873. Harriet continued to live in the house after her husband, Calvin E. Stowe’s death in 1886 until her death in ten years later. Her twin daughters, Hattie, and Eliza, cared for her until her death.
Beginning in the 1920s, Stowe’s niece, Katherine Seymour Day, collected many of the furnishings that had been distributed to friends and heirs such as family china, paintings, couches and bedstands. I was particularly interested in Stowe’s desk and correspondence table, where papers, letters and research were stacked in piles and scattered around on the floor. She was a talented painter of landscapes, plants, and flowers. I recognized Florida landscapes among them.
Those landscapes are related to my interest in Stowe. After the Civil War and for more than 15 years, Stowe and her family spent the winters in Mandarin near present day Jacksonville. Her book, Palmetto Leaves, is part of the collection at the Manatee County Historical Records Library where I worked for so many years. I often referred to her book for descriptions of scenes, people and events when writing my own novels. I know Stowe more from her time in Florida than her abolition or romance writings.
The neighborhood of Nook Farm, the location of his publisher and partly Stowe’s reputation in publishing, lured Samuel Clemons, known more popularly as Mark Twain to Hartford in 1871. The family moved into a twenty-five-room brick home next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe in in 1874. Construction of the house cost $45,000, an extraordinary amount for that time.
The Clemons family lived in the house for seventeen years and during that time, he wrote five books including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His pen name, Mark Twain, came from his life on the Mississippi River and refers to a measurement of the depth of water that the riverboats required.
We were able to walk all three floors of the house with a guide and heard stories about the family and the furnishings. We learned that Sam and Livy Clemons slept with their heads at the foot of their massive Italian bed adorned by cherubs because Livy liked going to sleep with the angels watching over her and Sam wanted to see what he had spent so much money to buy. We visited the three Clemons daughters’ nursery which had been featured on a ghost hunting television show I saw recently. Alas, we saw no ghosts!
On the third floor, we viewed Sam’s “man cave” with a large billiards table and a very small desk pushed into the corner away from windows to prevent Sam from becoming distracted while he was writing. Though we could not take any photographs, I purchased a couple of postcards which I photographed to illustrate two of the rooms we saw.
Near the house is a museum dedicated to Clemons’ life featuring a timeline and a film narrated by Ken Burns. The film and exhibits helped us put the house into perspective and learn about Sam’s life before and after his time in Hartford.
While neither house is dog friendly, it is historian friendly. Neither of the two-house guides resented my many questions and I learned a lot. I highly recommend visiting both houses if you are in the area. Do note that reservations are required by the houses are so close that you can easily see both in half a day.
NOTE: I know that both Twain and Stowe are disregarded in many circles today because their images of slavery, race and black culture are stereotypical and misleading. I’ve been thinking a lot about how both were attempting to help generate support for blacks and protests against slavery (Stowe) and the failures of reconstruction (Twain) but how their writings actually contributed to racial divides, racism, prejudice and myths. While they were impactful in their time, in current day, we look back and see their problems. Often, we let their problematic words, dialogue and imagery overshadow the lessons they were trying to teach. Stowe and Twain are not alone in this area. I’d love to have a private discussion with anyone else who has opinions about these issues. Let’s talk. Email me: cathslusser1@gmail.com
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