The Gilded Age (the late 1800s), the history of the city of Hartford, and American author Mark Twain (1835-1910) all intersected in the streets of Connecticut’s capital city. It was here in 1869 that Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) came to build his career as an author and performer, by telling American stories in American voices, trying to make sense of a changing world, while calling out the hypocrisy of this turbulent time.
Samuel Clemens, or as you may know him – Mark Twain – is considered to be one of the quintessential American voices in literature. But to become that “voice” Clemens had to hustle his way through financial instability, climb the social ladder, and build what was then a relatively new career–that of a professional creative and celebrity. He was an innovator in using new media such as photography to gain public recognition and develop what we now call branding, all in the effort to find a stable way to make a living as a writer and performer. He did this here in Hartford while he and his wife Olivia also built a home in the Nook Farm neighborhood and raised three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean. Ultimately, the instability of Clemens’ chosen profession and some bad business decisions cut short the family’s time in this city, but for a while Hartford was at the center of the Mark Twain universe and an important anchor in the developing story of the modern information economy.
To commemorate 150 years since Samuel Clemens built his Hartford home, and to showcase the role that the city played in his life, The Mark Twain House and Museum has recently opened a new exhibition, It Happened In Hartford: 150 Years of the Mark Twain House, that probes deeper into the stories of Twain’s struggles, successes, and his creative lifestyle. This exhibition starts with displays at the Mark Twain Museum Center featuring over 100 artifacts from the museum’s collection, then continues with a walking tour of through downtown Hartford and Bushnell Park. Each location on the 12-stop walking tour was specifically chosen to illuminate the very human side of Mark Twain’s growing career and life in Hartford.
A short trip through downtown Hartford, from the Old Statehouse to the Union Train Station, past contemporary office buildings and into Bushnell Park, takes the walker into a cityscape that would be part familiar and part unrecognizable by Samuel Clemens when he lived here in the late 1800s. This period was one of rapid change–and the mass production and distribution of information, in the form of widely published newspapers, magazines, and books, happened alongside full-on industrialized production of every facet of daily life, from food to transportation, to clothing, home goods and more…