Stormfield was the mansion built in Redding, Connecticut for author Samuel Clemens, best known as Mark Twain, who lived there from 1908 until his death in 1910. He derived the property's name from the short story "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven". The building was destroyed in a 1923 fire.
Twain met biographer Albert Bigelow Paine in 1906 while living in New York City. He decided to purchase 195 acres of land in Redding where Paine lived, [1] purchasing his first parcel there March 24, 1906, and buying additional acreage in May and September that year. [2]
Twain hired architect John Mead Howells of Howells & Stokes, son of the author William Dean Howells who was a friend and collaborator for 45 years. [3] Twain stipulated the house should be built in the style of a Tuscan villa, after having lived at Villa Viviani (1891–1892) in Settignano and Villa di Quarto (1903–1904) in Sesto Fiorentino outside Florence, Italy. [4] Construction began in 1907; the project was nearly abandoned later that year due to cost and Twain's misgivings about Redding's relative isolation, but the younger Howells convinced him that he would suffer a financial loss on work already underway. [5] The house was completed in June 1908, [1] built on elevated land known at the time as Birch Spray Hill on the west bank of the Saugatuck River. [6]
The exterior of the house featured a gray stucco finish and green-colored roof, with the foundation measuring 70 feet by 40 feet, flanked by wings measuring 20 feet by 18 feet. [7] Howells designed the interior ground floor to include a central dining room, opening onto garden terraces and a fountain. In one wing was a drawing room opening onto an outdoor seating area; the other wing contained a billiards room decorated with caricatures of Twain. [4] [6] The hand-carved mantel for the billiards room fireplace was a gift from the Sandwich Islanders. Twain had purchased a second, ornate mantel from Ayton Castle in Scotland that was installed in the living room; that mantel was damaged in the fire but restored, and is located today at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut [8] where Twain lived from 1874 to 1891. [9]
Residents of Redding met Twain and Paine and Paine's daughter Louise at the West Redding train station on June 18, 1908, and accompanied them to the new house. [1] It was the first time that Twain had seen the house in person. [4] Dan Beard was a nearby Redding resident whose illustrations appeared in several Mark Twain books. He helped set off fireworks to commemorate Twain's arrival, describing a scene in which "sticks from the rockets fell in the pastures and sent the cattle and horses tearing around the fields." [6]
Twain initially called the villa "Autobiography House", [10] and then "Innocents at Home" [11] in reference to his European travel memoir The Innocents Abroad. [12] He changed the name to Stormfield that autumn following a storm which alluded to his short story "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" and to the profits from it which he used to finance the construction. Two burglars broke into the house in September 1908 and stole silver; they also exchanged shots with a deputy sheriff who was wounded. [13] They were later apprehended aboard a train in Bethel, Connecticut and sentenced to prison. [1] Twain briefly met the men while they were in custody [13] and subsequently posted a note on the front door of Stormfield addressed "To the next Burglar", advising them that the house contained "nothing but plated ware" which they could find "in that brass thing" by a basket of kittens; to make no noise to disturb the family; and to leave the kittens. [14] He also added an entry in his guest book to note the burglars' arrival [15] "without permission." [13]
In his leisure time at Stormfield, Twain enjoyed playing billiards and the card game hearts, reading, writing, smoking, and strolling the grounds. [13] He hosted numerous famous visitors at Stormfield, [16] including Thomas Edison who filmed the only surviving motion picture of Twain, showing him walking the grounds of Stormfield. [17] Others included Helen Keller, who lived in nearby Easton, Connecticut, [1] and muckraker journalist Ida Tarbell, also an Easton resident. [16] Twain decided to endow a library in Redding, and he began charging visitors one dollar to raise funds for it. [1] As a host, he was "dignified, courteous, and prodigal in his hospitality," Beard wrote, "possessing all of the admirable characteristics of the best type of the old-fashioned Southern gentleman." [13] On October 6, 1909, Clara Clemens married pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch, in a ceremony held on the grounds of Stormfield. [1] Twain had given a farmhouse on property that he called the Lobster Pot to his secretary, household manager and social companion Isabel Lyon as a Christmas present in 1907. He dismissed her in 1909 and regained ownership of the property. [18]
In 1909 Twain purchased a nearby farm as a home for his daughter Jean, who worked as his secretary after the departure of Isabel Lyon. Jean died at Stormfield December 24, 1909, the cause of death believed to be a heart attack during an epileptic seizure while taking a bath. Clemens wrote "The Death of Jean", believed to be the last work he ever completed. [1]
Twain was suffering from a heart ailment in the spring of 1910 and sought to recuperate in Bermuda. He returned to Stormfield April 12, 1910, and died there April 21. [1]
Officials in Connecticut and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate at $471,000 ($11.9 million today). [19] The Gabrilowitschs listed Stormfield for sale in 1910 [20] for $50,000, and the Twain estate sold off several pieces of land between 1910 and 1923. [1]
Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch gave birth at Stormfield to daughter Nina on August 19, 1910 who was Twain's last descendant; [21] she died in 1966. [22] Clara offered Stormfield for use as a convalescent facility for wounded soldiers and sailors in 1918. [23] Margaret Given bought it and the remaining property in 1923. The mansion caught fire during renovations that year and was destroyed. [1] An exterior garden stone wall is thought to be the lone remaining structure from the original Stormfield. [24]
Mary Millett bought the property in 1924 [25] and built a small replica of Stormfield. [1] She sold the house and property in 1927 to Doreen Danks. [25] That house stands today on property totaling 28.5 acres [26] on Mark Twain Lane in Redding. [1] The town of Redding appraised the property at $1.9 million as of 2017.
Over the years, the Town of Redding spent some $575,000 to acquire more than 160 acres of the original Stormfield property, which today is maintained as a preserve including 4 miles of hiking trails open to the public. [27] In 1986, a Redding town meeting voted not to commission a study assessing whether to designate the Stormfield area a historic district. [28]
Redding is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,765 at the 2020 census. The town is part of the Western Connecticut Planning Region.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
The Saugatuck River is a 23.7-mile-long (38.1 km) river in southwestern Connecticut in the United States. It drains part of suburban and rural Fairfield County west of Bridgeport, emptying into Long Island Sound.
Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard was an American illustrator, author, youth leader, Georgist and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
The Autobiography of Mark Twain is a written collection of reminiscences, the majority of which were dictated during the last few years of the life of American author Mark Twain (1835–1910) and left in typescript and manuscript at his death. The Autobiography comprises a collection of anecdotes and ruminations rather than a conventional autobiography. Twain never compiled the writings and dictations into a publishable form in his lifetime. Despite indications from Twain that he did not want his autobiography to be published for a century, he serialized selected chapters during his lifetime; in addition, various compilations were published during the 20th century. However, it was not until 2010 that the first volume of a comprehensive three-volume collection, compiled and edited by The Mark Twain Project of the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, was published.
Woodlawn Cemetery is the name of a cemetery in Elmira, New York, United States. Its most famous burials are Mark Twain and his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens. Many members of the United States Congress, including Jacob Sloat Fassett are also interred there.
Ossip Salomonovich Gabrilowitsch was a Russian-born American pianist, conductor and composer.
Jane Lampton "Jean" Clemens was the daughter of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Olivia Langdon Clemens. She founded or worked with a number of societies for the protection of animals.
Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. Paine was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee and wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is located on 206-208 Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the United States. It was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain, from 1844 to 1853. Clemens found the inspiration for many of his stories, including the white picket fence, while living here. It has been open to the public as a museum since 1912, and was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 29, 1962. It is located in the Mark Twain Historic District.
John Mead Howells was an American architect.
One-cushion billiards also known as cushion caroms is a carom billiards discipline generally played on a cloth-covered, 10-by-5-foot, pocketless billiard table with two cue balls and a third red-colored ball. In a one-cushion shot, the cue ball caroms off both object balls with at least one rail being struck before the hit on the second object ball. The object of the game is to score up to an agreed upon number of cushion caroms, with one point being awarded for each successfully made. If no object ball is contacted, one point is deducted. If there is ambiguity as to whether the second ball was contacted, it is resolved against the shooter. It is governed by the Union Mondiale de Billard, the world governing body of carom billiards.
Clara Langhorne Clemens Samossoud, was an American concert singer, and the daughter of Samuel Clemens, who wrote as Mark Twain. She managed his estate and guarded his legacy after his death as his only surviving child. She was married first to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, then to Jacques Samossoud after Gabrilowitsch's death. She wrote biographies of Gabrilowitsch and of her father. In her later life, she became a Christian Scientist.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).
Isabel Van Kleek Lyon was Mark Twain's secretary for most of his final years. While in this position, she gained significant influence over Twain's personal and business affairs. Twain fired her in 1909 for reasons that remain in dispute.
Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940) was an American sculptor, best known for his death mask of President Ulysses S. Grant and a portrait bust of Mark Twain.
The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his family from 1874 to 1891. The Clemens family had it designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the American High Gothic style. Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan has called it "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock."
Ethel Newcomb (1875–1959) was an American pianist. A pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, she became a successful soloist and ensemble performer across Europe and the United States during the early 1900s. Respected for her interpretations of the work of Beethoven, she was reportedly sought out as a mentor herself by students from across the globe after she opened her own music studio in New York prior to World War I.
Jane Lampton Clemens was the mother of author Mark Twain. She was the inspiration of the character "Aunt Polly" in Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She was regarded as a "cheerful, affectionate, and strong woman" with a "gift for storytelling" and as the person from whom Mark Twain inherited his sense of humor.
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