I'm writing to express my disappointment with my l...

I'm writing to express my disappointment with my latest visit (my 6th) to the Mark Twain house.

My first visit to the house was over 20 years ago, in the days before the museum/visitors' center was built, when tickets for the house tour were purchased at one of the carriage house windows.

Here were the problems with my latest house visit:

1. Our tour guide, Bryan, had a cold or some throat problem, causing him to clear his throat every ten seconds during the tour. As my friend with me pithily observed, "That tour guide cleared his throat more in the thirty minutes of our tour than Twain himself did in the 15 16 years he lived in the house." When visitors pay $20 per person for a house tour, they should get a guide at his/her best.

2. For 20 years the tour always opened with the anecdote about Twain's using the phone booth in the house foyer. So imagine my annoyance when I was ineptly and cursorily told by Bryan that that anecdote wasn't part of the tour anymore. Again, he didn't explain why, only stating that some "new evidence" suggested that the phone had always been in the kitchen. To find out that this anecdote--this CORNERSTONE of Twain lore--was untrue, calls into question the veracity of the entire tour. If this isn't true, what else isn't true? The anecdote about Twain telling stories to his daughters based on the objects on the fireplace mantle? What? I thought that Clara was alive when the house was opened to the public, and therefore had vetted the locations of everything in the house.

3. For 20 years, visitors were always brought into Twain's bedroom to see the bed with the elaborate headboard. There, we were told the story of how he wrote in bed sitting at the foot of the bed so he could see the angels on the headboard. On my latest tour, not only were we not taken into the bedroom, but Twain's writing in bed was downplayed considerably.

4. Related to point #3, in the billiard room, Bryan played up the idea that Twain did *all* of his writing in there. In my previous 5 tours over 20 years, and in the many biographies of Twain that I've read, it has been emphasized that Twain actually did a great deal of his writing in bed. Also in the billiard room, Bryan wasn't going to mention Twain's pigeon holes for storing his manuscripts in progress until a visitor asked him about them.

5. I couldn't believe that the Mark Twain house is doing a "ghost" tour based on the death of Suzy in the house. Do you have any idea what poor taste this shows? Suzy died a profoundly sad and painful death. Before her death, she went blind, wandered the house alone and thought her mother was dead. How can the Mark Twain house profit from her and Twain's misfortune like this? I think you seriously need to weigh the "profit" gained by this sideshow against the damage to your reputation as a location of serious literary history.

6. Finally I was disappointed by the overall "Disneyfication" of the Mark Twain house. Whereas a visit to the house used to feel like a casual visit to a home of a beloved ancestor, it now feels like just another ride at Disneyworld--packing as many people into each "ride" as possible, packing as many rides into each day as possible, and keeping each ride as short as possible. If profits and efficiency are most important to the Mark Twain house, why not simply hire docents to watch over the house and allow visitors to do self-guided tours using their phones or iPads? The canned tour guide blather--material that now is clearly outdated, untrue and/or inconsistently delivered--needs to go away.

In general, I have to thank the Mark Twain house because this disappointing visit has made me much more circumspect about visiting historical sites in the future.

To potential visitors of the Mark Twain house: I strongly advise you to avoid yet another Disney attraction and simply read about his time there and peruse the Google images of the house interior. It truly is a beautiful home--lots of hand-carved mahogany and elaborate glass and tile--but the canned tour, at one time adequate, is now abysmal.