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Florence Griswold's home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, was a boarding house which became a favorite of the American Impressionist painters who retreated there to sketch and paint the picturesque rural setting. The nearby salt meadows, rocky upland pastures, and tidal rivers--all bathed in brilliant summer light--appealed to the Impressionists.

In the 1890s Florence Griswold turned her home into a boarding house as a means of keeping the large property which had been left to her. As artists began to come to stay, they found a hospitable place within which their camaraderie could flourish. The first to arrive were the American Barbizon painters, led by Henry Ward Ranger. Their style of painting was known as Tonalist. With the arrival of Childe Hassam in 1903, the colony's aesthetic shifted to Impressionism.

Nearly all the rooms of the house became bedrooms for the guests, and barns were converted into studios. Florence encouraged the artists to paint scenes on the door panels in the house and also on panels lining the walls of the dining room. They painted caricatures of each other, at times. They were a family unto themselves, and there was much laughter in the house. They adored Florence, and when she died in 1937 there were still some of the faithful living in the house who had cared for her in her last years.

Impressionist art and music are favorites of mine. This tour was exquisite! I saw all the paintings on the doors of the living room and other downstairs rooms and on the panels in the dining room, as well as a gallery of the painters' best works in the upstairs rooms. The light in all these pictures simply draws me in, and I must stand and look at each painting for quite some time. I wonder why it was that there was music of Debussy and Ravel running through my mind the whole time I was there...

Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, came to Hartford, Connecticut, to meet with a publisher in the early 1870s. He fell in love with the city and convinced his fiancee Olivia Langdon that they should live there. They married, moved to Hartford, rented a house, and started construction on this house on a large property they bought on Farmington Road. The house drew lots of attention while it was being built, as it was rather odd. The Clemens family moved into the house in 1874 and lived there until 1891. Many famous people came to visit there, and dinners and entertainments were always lively. Three daughters grew up in the house; they were Mr. Clemens' constant delight.

In 1891 Mr. and Mrs. Clemens and two younger daughters went to live in Europe. The oldest daughter Susie (then in her 20s) had remained in the U.S. a bit longer. Before she could join her family in Europe she became ill. She wanted to be home, so she opened up the house to stay there during her illness. Close friends were with her when she died of spinal meningitis within a few days of moving back in. Mr. and Mrs. Clemens were never able to come back to live in the house because of their heartbreak over their daughter's death, and they sold the place soon after.

Mark Twain said of the house:

"To us, our house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could not enter it unmoved."

My guide for the tour through the house was a retired teacher. He was steeped in knowledge about Mark Twain, and he even looked a little like the man! While we were waiting for the group to assemble I told him that I had a vested interest in this author because I was a descendent of Huckleberry Finn. When I say that to some people, they often say, "Oh, really!" or some similar exclamation. Then after a few seconds they catch on. The character Huck Finn is so real to people that they forget he wasn't! [My maiden name is Finn.] The tour guide said only, "Well, this is a first!"

While living in this house and working up in the billiard room on the third floor Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

This house, next door to Mark Twain's home in Hartford, Connecticut, belonged to Harriet Beecher Stowe. She purchased this modest house (modest because of the neighborhood it was in, although it had seventeen rooms) in 1873 and lived in it with her husband Calvin Stowe, a retired professor and Biblical scholar, and their adult twin daughters, Eliza and Harriet. Mrs. Stowe lived here until her death in 1896.

When the family moved in here, Mrs. Stowe was already famous because of her book Uncle Tom's Cabin, which we first heard about in Brunswick, Maine, on this website. Mrs. Stowe was one of the world's most widely read authors in her day. In addition to Uncle Tom's Cabin she wrote thirty other books, including novels, biographies, poetry, hymns, essays, and children's stories.

The gardens around the house reflect Mrs. Stowe's love (and knowledge) of Victorian gardens and plantings. The design of the kitchen in the house is based upon the efficient model that she and her sister Catharine Beecher wrote about in the book The American Woman's Home, published in 1869.

I suppose I need to confess to you that I didn't go inside. I had just toured Mark Twain's home, it was late in the day, the clouds were threatening a downpour, and it was nearing rush hour. A good bet was to miss that last horrendous fact and hurry out of the city to my campground.