Traveling with Twain

Mark Twain built a summer home on 248 acres of land three miles outside of Redding, a southwestern Connecticut town near Bridgeport. But when he occupied the Italian-style villa, which he later called Stormfield (after the hero of “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”), he liked it so much that it became his year-round residence until his death in April 1910. He played billiards, wrote parts of his Autobiography, helped launch the Mark Twain Library of Redding and enjoyed such neighbors as A. B. Paine and Ida Tarbell. The only film footage of Twain shows him proudly exiting the front door of Stormfield in one of his fourteen trademark white flannel suits.

October 26