In the Mark Twain House

[ note: from age 18 to 23 I lived in Hartford, CT, studying music at the Hartt School. On my 21st birthday, my wife and I toured the Mark Twain House on Farmington Avenue. The whimsical house has inspired me ever since, as has the man, though I tend to be as inclined to argue with Twain as enjoy him. --- Eric Seddon]

IN THE MARK TWAIN HOUSE 

by ERIC SEDDON

For five years I shared Hartford with your ghost,

The curmudgeon in the white suit, cigar chomping,

Vetting Charles Ives before he wedded Harmony.[1]

I too sought your council, your strange mixture

Of satire, narrative, and melodrama always

Flirting, sometimes indulging, in the tar pit of self-pity.

Like anyone from Hartford, it’s hard not to consider

The house itself your masterpiece. Perched

Above a field, reflective to this day

Of the whimsical genius too strong with native

Fiber to descend into pastiche. Your

First floor fireplaces, the Cat in the Ruff,[2]

The stories to your children, unrecorded,

The drawing room, the dining hall another place

Where guests could watch the snow descend to flame.[3]

And then there was the guest room, where I fantasized

Of sneaking in, past hours, staying the night

Not to speak with your ghostly shade, but mine:

A bit like yours: Divided, wounded, humorous

And sullen, equal parts romanticist

And sober modern critic of this town—

The Colt factory,[4] Yankee pride and commerce

Ingenuity bridled, eccentric ambitions

Boiling over the brims of decency—

If you had been my Virgil we’d both become

A meal for the lion or wolf or leopard,

Or maybe we’d still be there in that forest

Surrounded by chain link fences built

Of quips and comebacks, one-line wisdom

Slamming the door in the faces of pedantry.

The second floor landing where your wife heard

Enough of your foul language to unload,

Calmly, her sweet and savvy cavalcade of filth—

You marked, listened, inwardly digested

Her aria profane, then gently criticized

“You got the words all right, but missed the tune.”

And now to the spire of your castle: the third floor tower

Where you smoked, played pool, and wrote your manuscripts:

It whispers Thou shalt not covet Mark Twain’s muse,

Nor working habits, wit, success, or pathos, nor real

Tragedies hardening jokes beyond redemption—

Bringing a man to his knees or blasphemy

(It’s his to choose, not yours: you haven’t got

His daughters or his moustache or his accent

Or his particular brand of suffering:

Only yours). And so the visit ends and

We descend the stairs of this enduring

Monument to Mark Twain’s mortal life.

Past the piano where Sam sang spirituals,

Beyond the wallpaper that shimmered in gaslight,

Paper imported from the dream that was Olana…[5]

Out to the oddly clarified light of Hartford,

Home to us both, at one time or another,

Brighter now because of who you were,

Gentler, perhaps, because of what you wrote.

[ 2017 ]

  

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[1] Harmony Twitchell was the daughter of Mark Twain’s best friend in Hartford, and when the young Charles Ives was courting her before their marriage, he was invited to the house on Farmington Avenue in order that the famous writer might inspect his worthiness beforehand.

[2] On the mantelpiece over the main parlor fireplace of the Twain House is a portrait of a cat wearing a ruff. When Twain’s children were young, they demanded a different, improvised story from their father every night before bed, and every story had to include the whimsical cat.

[3] The dining room fireplace was designed to Twain’s specifications that it have two flues, curving up around a central window, so that guests could watch it “rain or snow into the fire.”

[4] The Colt factory was built by Samuel Colt in 1855 in Hartford, and plays a symbolic role in Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)

[5] Olana was the mansion of Frederick Edwin Church, the landscape painter, and his iridescent wallpaper so delighted Twain that he had some made like it, with a pattern that glowed in the gaslight.