Connecting the Twain and Stowe dots

You can only be in Connecticut if you’re connecting the Twain and Stowe dots which helpfully isn’t difficult as they were good neighbours.

And lucky for us literary tourists that they were as visitors to the Constitution State can immerse themselves in Mark and Harriet in the one trip.

And more fortunate still that their hood, Nook Farm, is just a 15 mile drive down from Hartford Bradley International Airport.

Which we all know has the best connections with Aer Lingus flying New England lovers (that’ll be us) to Bradley with the added bonus of pre-clearance.

And coming in at €483.90 for a sample October round trip.

Now Mark Twain, as well as giving us Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and championing bushy moustaches, is a figurehead of travel and travel writers.

And we could all do worse than follow this sage advice…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

“And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

Although even the most travelled of us would do well.

To match his adventures of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

A proud Connecticuter

Twain, or Samuel Clemens to give him his birth name, was clearly a proud Connecticuter.

And he loved Nook Farm where he built his dream house in 1874, next door to Harriet.

You can book a tour ahead of Twain’s house.

Either a general house tour for $26 for adults, $24 senior citizens, and $14 for kids and a living history tour for $29 for all adults and $21 for kids.

We’d always plump for living history, particularly when it’s interactive.

With an actor playing one of Twain’s servants and sharing his wisdom.

Including tales of the Great Eccentric such as the cats he would keep in the pockets of his billiards table.

Families are well catered for in Nook Farm with a Growing up in the Gilded Age interactive tour, best-suited for children between the ages of four and nine.

While Twain’s sense of fun is to the fore in a Cluedo-based tour with the victim Huck-themed and named Pap Finn.

And a Graveyard Shift Ghost Tour.

Stowe way

Harriet Beecher Stowe was well ensconced, having moved into Nook Farm in 1871.

And going on to live here for the last 23 years of her life.

By then abolitionist Harriet was firmly embedded as the most famous woman in America.

On the back of her pioneering book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

All of which prompted Abraham Lincoln to greet her in Washington DC in 1862 thus: ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.’

Look out for that reference in a framed photo near the foot of the staircase in the Stowe House.

And seeing you’ll be in Hartford then you’ll be sure to take the Riverwalk.

And dwell a while at the statue of Lincoln and Stowe built by Bruno Lucchesi in 2006.

Of course we’re studied in the state and Yale and New Haven following last year’s drift through New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut).

But alas not visiting Hartford on our Amtrak tour.

We’ll be back, though, again, connecting the Twain and Stowe dots.