Our Neighbor Mark Twain (February/March 1985 | Volume: 36, Issue: 2)

Our Neighbor Mark Twain

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Authors: Coley Taylor

Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)

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February/March 1985 | Volume 36, Issue 2

A year after our arrival in Redding, Connecticut, Mark Twain came there to live. Everybody in town had watched the building of his great house on a wide, more-or-less-level plain, which, on our side of it, rose above a cliff that ran along Knob Crook Brook and its lovely glen. His land had been the sheep pasture of my Great-greatgrandfather Banks and was approached by an ancient stone bridge over the brook and below a steep road that no horse cared to climb. The entrance road to his mansion was on the other side, accessible from Redding Center, West Redding, and Umpawaug.

For months, everyone knew that the great man was coming. Several friends of his had come before him, Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer, Mrs. Kate V. St. Maur, a writer and former actress, and the artist and outdoorsman Dan Beard. My father, an architect and builder, had remodeled—modernized—the houses of Mr. Paine and Mrs. St. Maur and was then remodeling the big house that Dan Beard had bought. I remember going to Mr. Beard’s with him one day. Mr. Beard invited me to join the Boy Scout troop he was then forming in Redding.

Mark Twain’s great house, in the process of being built, had been a mighty curiosity. Families drove in from miles around of a Sunday or Saturday afternoon to look at it in its scaffolding and to check on its progress. It was the chief topic of conversation. In the first place, it was designed by a famous New York architect in the style of an Italian villa, which, to us, meant palace. There were no other palaces round about.

Everyone wondered why the famous old man wanted to build a great mansion in such a lonely, isolated place; the land wasn’t good for anything but grazing, and it had hundreds of red cedar trees to prove it was useless. Then there were rumors that a daughter, Jean, was a victim of epilepsy and had to live in the country in a quiet place.

Mark Twain came to Redding on June 18, 1908. The New Haven Railroad stopped its afternoon express for the first time to let him off, and, moreover, the express would continue to stop every day to accommodate him and his friends—a proof of his importance.

A few people in town had bought some of Mark Twain’s books, and these were carefully read, loaned, or borrowed and discussed. Children were not supposed to read them, but I discovered Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and took each to the barn to read unobserved: the best haymow reading I had come across.

The doings at the Mark Twain house were excitedly talked about, especially by telephone. The telephone in those days was rather exasperating—a large oak box on the wall. You took down the receiver and turned the crank to call a number on the line. Everybody on the