Mark Twain Home

After we toured the Harriet Beecher Stowe home with a docent from her Visitor Center, we were transferred to a docent from the Mark Twain Visitor Center who took us on a tour of the Mark Twain Home.

After you park in the parking lot for the Mark Twain Home, you are greeted by these steps which lead you to the Visitor Center.  There is also a nice wooded pathway up to the Visitor Center and that is what we took.  Since we came in this way, we purchased our tickets here and then we wandered through the Museum and Gift Shop. 

I am standing near a Lego Mark Twain which 

is just outside the Gift Shop

We knew there was a cafeteria in the Mark Twain Museum so we thought we would eat lunch here.  But, as you can plainly see, they had shut it down for the Labor Day weekend.  So, we just starved until we were finished with both tours!

We are looking down at the Auditorium in the

 Mark Twain Visitor Center.

We watched a video about Mark Twain's life which was excellent and gave us more of an understanding of his life.  Mark Twain outlived his wife and three of his children.  Only one survived him.  He was a wonderful author but a terrible businessman.  He spent his fortune investing in a typesetting machine and then never sold one of them.  They ended up moving to Europe where it was less expensive to live for many years.  Later on he did a lecture tour of Europe and was able to pay off his debt and return to America.  However, while Twain was on his tour, his daughter, caught meningitis in America and died in their home.  Twain's wife could not return to their home because of it and they finally sold the home.

Now in this Mark Twain and I agree whole heartedly!

Mark Twain Memorial

On the right side of Mark Twain are his characters

and on the right side are people that inspired him

Lee as Mark Twain

 Mark Twain's Home

This is the front of Mark Twain's home and the tour groups enter through the carriage entry into a gorgeously decorated enormous entryway where guests were greeted.  We really both loved this home except that everything was decorated so darkly.  It had loads of windows but they light it as it was in Mark Twain's day and so it is much much too dark inside.

Mark Twain said that the happiest 17 years of his life were spent in this home.  It is also where most of his well-known books such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were penned. His house has another claim to fame as it housed one of Hartford's first phones.

We both loved the Conservatory which is off of the parlor.

The Carriage House