How a Cigar Lover Acquired a Dream Gazebo and Created Timeless Books There (13 photos)

Imagine an octagonal wooden gazebo in a quiet, remote location on the campus of a New York college. Inside, there's a creaky chair, an old desk with an inkwell, and a fireplace reeking of centuries-old smoke. Every morning, a mustachioed man in a white suit struts primly down the path, locks himself in this tiny little cage, and students peer at him through the glass. Who are we talking about? Mark Twain!

An interesting image, to be sure, but a misconception. This cozy little room was moved here in 1952, 42 years after Mark Twain's death. In life, it stood elsewhere: on the clifftop of Quarry Farm, on the property of his sister-in-law, Susan Crane.





Twain wasn't just a writer, he was also an avid smoker of cheap cigars. His study was usually so thick with smoke that it was impossible to see him. The Twain family spent almost every summer with relatives. Susan Crane, a practical woman who valued fresh air, firmly rejected the smog of tobacco in the house. In 1874, she gave her son-in-law a refuge—an open-air study, styled like the wheelhouse of a steamship, about 3.5 meters in diameter.



Twain was delighted. He wrote to friends:

It's an octagonal thing with a peaked roof, each facet pierced by a huge window. It sits all alone on the top of a hill, overlooking valleys, towns, and distant blue mountains. It's a cozy nest. And when storms rush through the valley, lightning strikes beyond the hills, and rain drums on the roof—imagine such luxury.





In the heat, he shed all unnecessary items, wrote in his underwear, pinning the papers to the table with bricks left over from the old quarry, and called his corner nothing less than "the most beautiful workshop you've ever seen." The only thing missing to complete his happiness was cats. So, special cat doors were installed in the floor of his office so that his furry friends could keep him company.



It was here, overlooking the meandering Chemung River, that he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and "Life on the Mississippi."



Today, Mark Twain's office is a major literary landmark in the country and part of the Twain Studies Center at Elmira College. It's open to visitors, but with a caveat: the original atmosphere of Quarrie Farm, a historic home in Elmira that belonged to the writer's sister-in-law, is closed to tourists and is used only for academic residencies.



The study itself recently underwent a major restoration for its 150th anniversary. Of course, you can no longer see the bearded genius behind the glass; only his old desk, the stove, and the cat holes that remember the paws of Mark Twain's muses. But the writer himself doesn't need to be looked for behind the glass. His talent and immortal heroes are forever etched in the history of literature and in our imaginations.







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