Author Spent 20 Summers in N.Y. Town : Elmira Hopes to Cash In on Twain

Mark Twain was considered a shaggy dog when he spent summers here--a bushy-browed fellow who would shoot pool and trade yarns at Klapproth’s Cafe, then go up to the Elmira Reformatory and talk with inmates.

In Twain’s day, Elmira was the booming Queen City of the Southern Tier, and the knockabout writer had married above his station into the family of wealthy coal dealer Jervis Langdon.

Poling to the Rescue

Now that Elmira--a city of 35,000 that sits along the middle of the New York-Pennsylvania border--has the most depressed urban economy in the state, with unemployment of 9.7%, city leaders hope that Twain will come poling down the muddy Chemung River to the rescue.

Twain’s crinkly eyes and mustache are showing up this year on everything from welcome signs on the highways to the crests of spoons in the Aloha Gift Shop.

Tourism promoters want the world to know what scholars already recognize--that Twain spent about 20 summers in Elmira, writing “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “Life on the Mississippi,” and parts of other books, including “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Except for the occasional interruption from a visitor such as Rudyard Kipling, Twain found Elmira quieter and more conducive to writing than his winter home in Hartford, Conn.

“I think it’s largely Elmira’s fault that we didn’t call attention to it before,” said Robert Jerome, director of the local Mark Twain Society.

Rafts, Tales, Cats

For the 150th anniversary of Twain’s birth, the city tried to make up for lost time with a parade, a raft race, a tall-tales contest and even a Mark Twain Festival of Cats in honor of the author’s love of felines.

On view are Twain’s octagonal study, which has been transplanted to the downtown campus of Elmira College, and his simple grave in the Langdon family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Herbert Wisbey, a Twain scholar at Elmira College, says three cities are now recognized as important in the author’s life: “Hannibal (Mo.), where he grew up; Hartford, where he had his home, and Elmira, where he did his writing.”

Elmira’s business community was slow to see the potential in the Twain connection, says Holly Hewitt, director of tourism for the Chemung County Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s the hometown syndrome,” she said. “People don’t believe there’s anything here people would want to see.”

By Appointment Only

One thing people can’t see without an appointment is the interior of Quarry Farm, the hilltop farmhouse just outside the city where Twain spent those many productive summers.

Jervis Langdon, a retired railroad president related to Twain by marriage, donated it to Elmira College in 1982. The college sponsors public seminars and lectures about Twain at Quarry Farm.

The farm library contains volumes by Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle and other authors, many with Twain’s own incisive notes scribbled in the margins.