http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/design/twain-and-stowe-homes-being-renovated-for-historical-accuracy.html 2016-10-13 23:23:46 Twain and Stowe Homes Being Renovated for Historical Accuracy Harriet Beecher Stowe had a shopping problem, but managed to keep her house. Mark Twain made bad investments and had to rent out his home next door. === Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain lived on adjoining properties in Hartford, and they each agonized over decorating choices and related expenses. The two expansive brick homes, built in the early 1870s on a hillside near the leafy grounds of a mental hospital, were turned into museums decades ago, and the curators keep updating the décor in pursuit of greater historical accuracy. Rooms at both sites are being restored, and the artifacts going on view convey how Stowe and Twain created peaceful hide-outs for writing. At the Candace Wheeler, a friend of the Twains, designed the wallpaper. Mrs. Wheeler, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest belonged to a New York decorating team called Associated Artists, which stocked the Twain home with brass filigree, woodcarvings and stenciled plaster in motifs from North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They also collaborated on designs for rooms at the During a recent tour of the Mark Twain House & Museum, Tracy Brindle, chief curator, and David Scott Parker, a preservation architect for the project, explained the workings of the house’s original (and high-tech at the time) gaslight, plumbing and telephone systems. Bells and speaking tubes for communicating with servants are still set in the walls. A reproduction of an 1880s flush toilet will be installed in the guest suite bathroom. Twain’s sickly wife, Olivia, sometimes huddled by the suite’s gas fireplace, which is studded with red and blue tiles. She encouraged Twain to write at a tidy desk that she had set up in a sunny conservatory next to the suite. But he preferred to work upstairs in his billiard room, smoking a pipe and scribbling at a side table that a reporter once described as being “strewn with papers, and affording very little elbow room.” In 1874, Twain lamented to his in-laws that decorating the house was a distraction; he was embroiled in discussions “by the tapestry devil who is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table.” He described himself as “a man who loathes details with all his heart.” (His tirades are posted at the His writings from the 1890s show how much he missed the Hartford house while on the road for years at a time. He squandered his savings by investing in unprofitable inventions, including typesetting machines, and was forced to rent out the house. He tried to recoup his fortune by giving performances overseas, as the historian Richard Zacks documents in a new On the trip, Twain took along Olivia and their middle daughter, Clara. Their other daughters, Jean and Susy, stayed behind. Jean had epilepsy. Susy, a writer and singer, endured bouts of depression and her behavior grew erratic while her parents were away. She consulted Hartford spiritualists “who claimed to be able to strengthen her voice,” Mr. Zacks writes. In 1896, she died at her childhood home of meningitis. She was 24. Twain never fully recovered from his guilt that he had abandoned her at the brink of poverty. And the family never moved back into the Hartford house. Twain sometimes envied the financial successes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, his Stowe mourned in her upstairs office, which is lined in blue and gold wallpaper. It adjoined a study for her husband, Calvin, a biblical scholar and her literary agent. Early in their marriage, she persuaded him to allot her some private work space. “If I am to write, I must have a room to myself,” she insisted. In the 1890s, as she declined into dementia, she kept rewriting the text of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and sometimes wandered into the Twain house, mistaking it for her own. Stowe’s home is currently empty but remains open for tours while windowpanes and climate control and fire suppression systems are added. The furnishings will be reinstalled next year, based on new research. A parlor’s wallcoverings from the 1960s will be replaced with paper that resembles creamy silk trimmed in reddish maroon scalloping. Black-and-white jute floor mats will be laid out in Stowe’s office. Another upstairs room will be decorated with wallpaper based on 1850s prints of scenes from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” (The originals surfaced at Jean Dunbar, a historic interiors consultant for the restoration, said Stowe stocked up on wallpaper rolls, curtain fabrics, fringe and carpets, even if she didn’t have use for them. Stowe would explain to her relatives that the prices for a particular paper or textile seemed low, so she would make purchases “because I couldn’t help it, it was so pretty.” Stowe had, Ms. Dunbar said, “a very serious shopping problem.”