Like nowhere else, words flowed from Twain’s pen in a haven high above Elmira, NY

Rustic NY stirred Twain’s Mississippi memories

ELMIRA, N.Y. — Huckleberry Finn sprang to life in a swirl of cheap cigar smoke at Mark Twain’s cozy hilltop cabin in upstate New York far from the Mississippi River.

On the centenary of the author’s death, Twainiacs will swarm Hannibal, Mo., the river town of his boyhood that inspired a raft of literary gems, and Hartford, Conn., where in celebrated middle age he moved his family to a 19-room mansion transformed now into a tourist magnet.

Only a few thousand visitors typically show up in Elmira, a small Rust Belt city in New York’s bucolic Chemung River Valley where much of his best-known fiction was actually written.

Tough times aside, civic boosters think this is one year when a bump in attendance is all but assured.

Elmirans in period costume will ride in black horse-drawn carriages to Woodlawn Cemetery in an April 24 centennial reenactment of Twain’s burial. And Hal Holbrook will reprise his “Mark Twain Tonight!” impersonation at a renovated vaudeville theater that bears the humorist’s real name, Samuel L. Clemens.

“If there was ever a town that needed a tourism boost and to get on the map, it’s Elmira,” said Martha Horton of Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery, a non-profit group. “We had much more grandiose plans but, shoot, the economy just whaled us.”

Twain was lured to Elmira by romance, marrying wealthy coal merchant’s daughter Olivia Langdon in 1870. For the next 20 summers, at Quarry Hill farm atop East Hill with its entrancing view of the valley and a receding range of blue-hued hills in distant Pennsylvania, he excelled in his craft like no place else.

“The setting worked a magic on his mind in his ability to remember” his early life along a more grandiose river, said Barbara Snedecor, director of Elmira College’s Center for Mark Twain Studies.

Here, he wrote virtually all of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” ”The Prince and the Pauper,” ”A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — novels that heralded him as an early icon of distinctly American literature.

“The Mississippi River is the inspirational memory, Elmira is the place that helps him tap into that memory, Hartford is where he refines all of those manuscript pages and makes them ready for publication,” Snedecor said.

In a nod to Hartford House, which draws 60,000 visitors a year, she added: “Half of writing is revision.”

At his most productive, Twain practically chain-smoked cigars, and his craving for a quick burn was conspicuous at 250-acre Quarry Farm, a nest of solitude away from the social hurly-burly of Hartford.

Mindful of her health, perhaps, sister-in-law Susan Crane had a windowed study built specially for Twain in 1874 not far from her Victorian farmhouse. Equipped with a writing table, wicker chair, cot, fireplace and cat door, it was designed to resemble the pilot house of a Mississippi steamboat.

After a steak breakfast, Twain would saunter 300 feet across a lawn flecked with buttercups and black-eyed susans and climb the stone steps to a promontory where the octagonal cabin was perched. Amid the chirp and crackle of nature, overlooking a panorama he called a “foretaste of heaven,” Twain often churned out as many as 2,600 words a day.

“Why, it’s like old times to step right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and … sail right on the whole day long, without a thought of running short of stuff or words,” he wrote.

Near twilight, his wife, three daughters, in-laws and servants gathered on the farmhouse porch as Twain read aloud his day’s work. “He’s gauging reaction, looking for maybe a pat on the back,” Snedecor said.

Among his best-known works-in-residence were his memoir “Life on the Mississippi” and “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It,” which captures the agony household cook Mary Ann Cord endured in slavery being forcibly separated from her children. His creation of Jim, Huck’s heroic companion, was influenced by his friendship with pig farmer John T. Lewis, a black neighbor he befriended.

To thwart vandals and accommodate tourists, the cabin was moved down to the Elmira College campus in 1952. Twain’s great-nephew, railroad executive Jervis Langdon Jr., gave Quarry Farm to the liberal arts school in 1982 — to be used only for scholarly work.

“He didn’t want any bit of commercialism,” said Irene Langdon, whose husband died in 2004 at age 99. “It’s an old farmhouse, and having lots of tourists troop in there just wouldn’t do it.”

A national historic site, the farm remains the type of haven that stoked Twain’s “red hot” writing streak. Academics can apply for residencies, and “56 books have been published by the men and women who have stayed here,” including Ron Powers and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Snedecor said.

A free lecture series attracts a few dozen visitors to the farm grounds each spring and fall. The college also has a Twain archive featuring books he enjoyed with quirky notes scribbled in the margins.

While it retains its Victorian grace, Elmira has fallen a long way from its 19th-century manufacturing heyday when it was the fire-engine capital of the world and, later, the typewriter capital. A flood ravaged downtown in 1972. By 1985, it ranked sixth among America’s most economically distressed areas.

Elmira lost out on staging a popular Twain musical in 1995 and its annual tourist throng has dropped from around 10,000 to 3,000 a year. But it still banks on the appeal of its adopted son. This year, it is offering extra trolley rides around town, a Twain nature trail and a theatrical reading of his personal correspondence.

Born in 1835 in the year of Halley’s comet, Twain predicted he would die when it returned. He slipped away in his bed at his estate in Redding, Conn., on April 21, 1910, a day after it appeared.

In 1937, Twain’s surviving child, Clara, erected a monument to him at the modest family plot. It is 12 feet high, equal to two fathoms. He took his pen name from the two-fathom “mark twain” expression deckhands would shout to signal safe passage during his days as a Mississippi riverboat pilot.

If You Go…

TWAIN’S ELMIRA: Highlights of Mark Twain centennial events and attractions at www.marktwaincountry.com.

LEGACY: Two panels featuring Twain scholars and Elmira College faculty discuss Twain’s works on Saturday afternoon, March 20, at the college’s Gannett-Tripp Library lecture hall. Call 607-735-1941.

MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! For tickets to Hal Holbrook’s show on April 21, contact Clemens Center at 607-734-8191, 800-724-0159 or www.clemenscenter.com starting March 25.

LETTERS: Theatrical reading of Twain’s correspondence with friends and loved ones, 7 p.m. April 15, Park Church in Elmira. For information, call 607-733-9104.

BURIAL: Reenactment of Twain’s burial at 11 a.m., April 24, at Woodlawn Cemetery. Call Chemung County Chamber of Commerce, 607-734-5137 or 800-MARK TWAIN.