It's really not as morbid or crazy as it sounds....but it's accurate. Yesterday I spent a few hours in Hartford, CT to breathe in some more greatness. My first stop was the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. In 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin, her groundbreaking anti-slavery novel was published. Ten years later, Lincoln reportedly said to her, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war..." - little because she was under 5ft tall. The guide told us that, today, it is impossible to know if her book really started the Civil War, but at the time it was quite a force!
She wrote several other books, including The American Woman's Home (1869). In it, topics including house design, kitchen planning, and gardens. It is quite possible that she is the reason we keep plants in our homes & have built in cupboards and shelves in the kitchen.
About a year after the Stowe family built their modest retirement home in the Nook Farm neighborhood (below)...
Mark Twain built his grand Victorian home (below). This is where he wrote of the adventures of Tom and Huck! It is beautiful inside.... hard to say whether his is more beautiful than the man who built next door about a year later and tried to out do him (pic 2 & 3).
No photos can be taken indoors in these homes....not surprising, but kind of a bummer. There are not tours of this Day House, which is now used for Stowe Center administrative offices ...however, a guide saw me admiring it and gave me a first floor tour just to be nice. The carved wood is incredible, but that's also true of Twain's.
This same guide also reminded me that Katherine Hepburn was buried just a couple miles up the road in a cemetery with many notables (like JP Morgan and Mr. Colt as in the gun). I have long admired her as a woman and an actress, so I stopped to pay my respects.
Our 8th graders have been studying Harriet Beacher Stowe and even wrote a paper this past week on whether or not they thought her book caused the war. Now I'm going to have to show them your blog post.
ReplyDeleteI have always been a big fan of Mark Twaine. I'm a little jealous of your stop at his home.
This was a good road trip post! Can't wait for more. New England is a beautiful place.
By the way, the trees you see in CT are not orignal from when the pilgrams landed. They cut down all the trees building and developing that area. Then trees had to be replanted once they started moving west. (Just a little piece of history for you from my CT days!)
SL
I can't believe you didn't visit here when you lived here....
ReplyDeleteThanks for educating us about the CT trees....