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Woody Woodburn
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Fireside Tales in the Twain Home
Samuel Clemens’ home in Hartford, Connecticut, is almost as expansive as Mark Twain’s bibliography. The great author wrote some thirty books; his stately residence, built in 1874, checks in with twenty-five rooms.
The three-story mansion features a facade of mostly red brick with some painted orange, and others black, to create intricate patterns. Everywhere there are exterior angles and corners, gabled roofs and four chimneys, ornamental trusses and awnings, balconies and porches.
Inside, it was a marvel of its day featuring the latest “modern” innovations such as hot and cold running water in the seven bathrooms, flush toilets, and gaslight. It even had a newfangled telephone in the kitchen and a burglar alarm powered by batteries.
From the grand entry foyer up to the third-floor billiard room, the interior is breathtaking. To give you an idea of the opulence, nearly every inch of the walls and ceilings are decorated with intricate silver and gold stenciling designed by Louis C. Tiffany, the son of the famed jewelry store founder.
In the billiard room, hidden away from the busyness of the family, is where Twain wrote. Indeed, he penned his most important works here, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
While I could imagine Twain at work with a thick fog of cigar smoke in the air and his notes spread out on the billiard table, my favorite room was the first-floor library. And my favorite part of the library was not the bookshelves filled to capacity, but rather the fireplace mantel.
It seems that Twain loved to play a nightly game with his three daughters – Susy, Clara and Jean – when they were young in which he would spin stories incorporating all of the items resting on the elaborately carved oak mantelpiece that came from Ayton Castle in Scotland.
From left to right, these items are: a painted round vase; large seashell; marble figure of a woman; tall blue vase; silver round serving platter; at the mantelshelf’s middle, a framed painting of a woman wearing a red winter coat and black hat; bronze tile of Twain’s profile; matching tall blue vase; white pottery water jar; small blue vase; a typing paper-sized painting of a cat’s face; and a tiny bronze harp figurine. Surely only a genius could invent new tale after original tale with these artifacts.
At first blush, the cat painting is not striking. It is of an ordinary grey feline with a pink nose, white whiskers and green eyes. Also, however, the cat is wearing a white ruffled collar – a “ruff” the tour guide noted – of the sort a Shakespearean character might wear.
Despite the house being filled with many more-remarkable framed artworks, “Cat in a Ruff” is said to have been Twain’s favorite – “beloved” is the word the tour guide used. This explains why the key rule to his storytelling game was that while the tale changed each and every night, one thing remained constant: it had to begin with “Cat in a Ruff.”
A decorative brass smoke shield above the firebox suggests that the warm feelings within the library extended throughout the house, and also beyond family, for Twain had it engraved with this sentiment from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
Picturing myself as a friend who was blessed to frequent the Clemens’ house, and listen to his fireside storytelling, was reason enough to take home from the souvenir shop a refrigerator magnet of “Cat in a Ruff.”
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com