Hannibal Missouri - Cruising up the Mississippi River

Hannibal, Missouri offers unique view of Mark Twain’s novels aboard riverboat and in caves

I’m standing on the deck of the Mark Twain Riverboat. It’s my last night in Hannibal, Missouri, and I’m taking a dinner cruise on the Mississippi River. In the cabin, efficient servers clean up after a delectable meal, and musician L.A. Suess strums folk music on his banjo. Some people get up to dance. I stay where I am, enjoying night breezes that dance through my hair. The lights of Hannibal glimmer in the distance. The dark landscape slips past silently.

It’s no mystery to me why this vast river so profoundly affected a boy who was raised on its shores, a boy who would grow up to be a famous author and world traveler, but who would never stop writing love letters to the mighty Mississippi.

Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, moved to Hannibal with his family when he was four years old. It was here Clemens would do his growing up, where he’d explore caves and islands with his friends, gaze in horror at a dead body, and shyly kiss a girl. He would even take his pen name from the Mississippi - “Mark Twain” meant the water was a full two fathoms deep, and therefore safe sailing for the riverboats he loved.

It’s easy to find little Sam Clemens in this town. Unlike some cities that offer only a statue or a small corner in a museum to their writers, Hannibal revels in the memory of its favorite son with more than a dozen museums, historic sites, and tours dedicated to his memory.

A big fan of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I especially enjoyed seeing the room in the Mark Twain Boyhood Home where Twain actually slept - or often failed to sleep. The bedroom window that so often lured Twain’s characters out into the night apparently held the same fascination for Twain himself. Sneaking out was a favorite, though forbidden, activity.

Along the side of the house runs a tall white fence, much like the one Tom Sawyer conned his friends into whitewashing.

Across the street from the Mark Twain Boyhood Home stands the stately, green-shuttered home of Laura Hawkins, Twain’s childhood sweetheart. Hawkins found her way into American literary history as Becky Thatcher, the on-again off-again girlfriend of Tom Sawyer. Many of her belongings can be viewed in the elegant parlor, and for 25¢ visitors can hear a recording of Laura talking about her childhood and her friendship with Mark Twain.

At the J.M. Clemens Law Office, where Twain’s father worked as an attorney and later as a justice of the peace, visitors can see and hear how a 10-year-old Twain discovered a dead body one night. Life-sized models depict the exact moment that the moonlight revealed the body to the horrified boy, who was hiding in a back room of his father’s law office after skipping school to play on the riverbank.

Grant’s Drug Store/Pilaster House contains displays and recordings about the state of medicine in the 1800s. Visitors are guaranteed to leave thinking that perhaps their own doctors are not so bad. Twain’s family lived over the drug store for a time after they experienced financial hardship and lost the “boyhood home.”

The Mark Twain Museum and Gift Shop offers an extensive selection of Twain’s works. I salivated over copies of The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, all of which I loved as a teenager.

I also discovered books I had not heard about before, including Eve’s Diary, written by Twain as a tribute to his wife Olivia Langdon shortly after her death. Displays in this museum are fairly modest and include a selection of foreign editions of Twain’s books, a few costumes, and Twain’s orchestrelle (a type of organ).

The New Mark Twain Museum a few blocks away provides interactive displays. Children will enjoy being able to step on a large raft, “help” Tom Sawyer whitewash his fence, and sit in a model stagecoach.

Upstairs, visitors can view original Norman Rockwell paintings from special editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. According to the information posted, Rockwell was the only Twain illustrator to visit Hannibal in order to better understand the world Twain had known as a child. Rockwell believed his illustrations were enormously richer for the experience.

The town of Hannibal and the majesty of the Mississippi River influenced Twain’s life and his writing, but another powerful influence lay a few miles outside the town: the cave.

In Twain’s day, exploring the cave meant venturing forth with candles, rope, and luck. Getting lost was always a chilling possibility.

Today, visitors can purchase a safe, hour-long tour of the Mark Twain cave, the oldest show cave in Missouri. Knowledgeable guides recount the cave’s amazing history, point out interesting formations, and offer still more Twain factoids and anecdotes. When the cave lighting is dimmed for several seconds and the occasional bat swoops overhead, it takes little imagination to envision oneself gone astray in the immense blackness like Tom and Becky.

The dinner cruise is coming to an end. As the boat glides up to the dock, I can’t help looking around for a tow-headed boy with a fishing rod and a mischievous grin, a boy who has snuck out his bedroom window to play pirates or to cure his warts with a dead cat.

The boy isn’t there, of course. He exists only in the writings of the man he became. But the town has preserved the boy’s memory so well I must say I’m disappointed when I don’t see him.

Author: Debra Stang