"'A Tale of Today' and Yesterday: Twelve Days at Quarry Farm"

EDITOR’S NOTE: We occasionally feature testimonials from recent Quarry Farm Fellows and Residents, which combine conversational illustrations of their research and writing process with personal reflections on their experiences as Twain scholars, teachers, and fellows. Applications for Quarry Farm Fellowships are due each Winter. Find more information HERE.

Susan Poulson is a Professor of History at the University of Scranton in northeast Pennsylvania, where she teaches twentieth-century US history and the history of American women. Her publications have been in gender, higher education and women’s rights and include Suffrage: The Epic Struggle for Women’s Right to Vote (Praeger, 2019), which chronicles the seventy-two-year struggle for the Nineteenth Amendment. Her current research is on the rising use of the insanity defense during the Gilded Age.

In their quest to describe a portion of the past, historians visit a variety of archives and libraries. With limited time, funding, and access, preplanning and efficiency are fundamental skills. I typically preview the holdings on-line, request them in advance, check into a nearby low-budget hotel, show up when it opens, sit and read at well-lit rectangular tables in quiet rooms, snap photos of documents to peruse later, leave when it closes—and repeat the next day. It means that archival research often feels strangely similar despite different locations and subject matter. But the experience at Quarry Farm, I knew, would be unique. How does one prepare for this?

My research aim for the Quarry Farm Fellowship was to understand Clemens’ objections to the insanity defense, a relatively new concept imported from Great Britain and used increasingly in American courts in the 1860s and 70s. The McNaughton Rule, which absolves a defendant of guilt if they did not know right from wrong when they committed the crime, underlay the acquittal of two defendants in notorious murders in New York City and San Francisco. Clemens claimed that unprincipled attorneys used the McNaughton Rule to get their guilty clients off by manipulating gullible jurors. This was also a major theme in his novel The Gilded Age, co-written with Charles Dudley Warner. Its subtitle–A Tale of Today–reflects that the insanity defense was one of several concerns Clemens harbored about the direction of American society in post-Civil War era, including the influence of money in politics and moral decay.

In some ways, the research at Quarry Farm was typical. I spent many hours looking at historical materials at a well-lit rectangular table in a quiet room. The available resources were deep and inspirational, and I particularly enjoyed the mix of primary and secondary sources.

But it was so much more. Living at the Farm, walking the grounds, and reading stories about the family and staff that facilitated Clemens’ writings was a profound experience. I was particularly struck by his relationship with Susan Crane, his sister-in-law who oversaw the Farm with efficiency, sustained Clemens with good humor, and had built for him the octagonal study where Clemens wrote several of his most famous works. The work of others meant that Clemens could rise in the morning, have breakfast, write for hours in a beautiful setting, and return in the evening to a good meal in a well-cared for home—this, after escaping what he thought would be an ideal life living in a luxurious home while editing the Buffalo Express. What he found instead was that he thrived in a simpler life with a happy domestic routine.

The Fellowship residency at Quarry Farm provided a sense of time and space often missed during brief visits to a historic place. Living there, one could feel what life was like in the era of horse and buggy, removed from the bustle of factories and railroads, especially at night when it was so quiet. I could picture Clemens walking the dusty summer roads to Elmira to visit the Langdon family and others. I could envision Rudyard Kipling randomly showing up at the Farm, hoping to meet Clemens, being graciously entertained on the front porch by Clemens’ daughter, then heading to the Langdon home in Elmira where he spent time with Clemens (who had not yet heard of him). Sitting in the Quarry Farm living room, I could envision evenings when Livy would read to the children while Clemens interjected humorous reflections. I could also better understand the “seasons” of Clemens life, when the Farm was a source of joy in his mid-life and later a place of sadness after losing two daughters and his beloved Livy. In our very analytical approach to academic subjects, these kinds of gleanings bring added depth to research.