Mark Twain, A Biography - Volume I, Part 1: 1835-1866 | Page 4

William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T.
Goodman, and other old friends of Mark Twain:
I cannot let these volumes go to press without some grateful word to
you who have helped me during the six years and more that have gone
to their making.
First, I want to confess how I have envied you your association with
Mark Twain in those days when you and he "went gipsying, a long time
ago." Next, I want to express my wonder at your willingness to give me
so unstintedly from your precious letters and memories, when it is in
the nature of man to hoard such treasures, for himself and for those
who follow him. And, lastly, I want to tell you that I do not envy you
so much, any more, for in these chapters, one after another, through
your grace, I have gone gipsying with you all. Neither do I wonder now,
for I have come to know that out of your love for him grew that greater

unselfishness (or divine selfishness, as he himself might have termed it),
and that nothing short of the fullest you could do for his memory would
have contented your hearts.
My gratitude is measureless; and it is world-wide, for there is no land
so distant that it does not contain some one who has eagerly contributed
to the story. Only, I seem so poorly able to put my thanks into words.
Albert Bigelow Paine.

PREFATORY NOTE
Certain happenings as recorded in this work will be found to differ
materially from the same incidents and episodes as set down in the
writings of Mr. Clemens himself. Mark Twain's spirit was built of the
very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was concerned, but in his
earlier autobiographical writings--and most of his earlier writings were
autobiographical--he made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place,
or circumstance--seeking, as he said, "only to tell a good story"--while
in later years an ever-vivid imagination and a capricious memory made
history difficult, even when, as in his so-called "Autobiography," his
effort was in the direction of fact.
"When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened
or not," he once said, quaintly, "but I am getting old, and soon I shall
remember only the latter."
The reader may be assured, where discrepancies occur, that the writer
of this memoir has obtained his data from direct and positive sources:
letters, diaries, accountbooks, or other immediate memoranda; also
from the concurring testimony of eye-witnesses, supported by a unity
of circumstance and conditions, and not from hearsay or vagrant
printed items.

MARK TWAIN

A BIOGRAPHY
I
ANCESTORS
On page 492 of the old volume of Suetonius, which Mark Twain read
until his very last day, there is a reference to one Flavius Clemens, a
man of wide repute "for his want of energy," and in a marginal note he
has written:
"I guess this is where our line starts."
It was like him to write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion the
attitude of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which
was his chief characteristic and made him lovable--in his personality
and in his work.
Historically, we need not accept this identity of the Clemens ancestry.
The name itself has a kindly meaning, and was not an uncommon one
in Rome. There was an early pope by that name, and it appears now
and again in the annals of the Middle Ages. More lately there was a
Gregory Clemens, an English landowner who became a member of
Parliament under Cromwell and signed the death-warrant of Charles I.
Afterward he was tried as a regicide, his estates were confiscated, and
his head was exposed on a pole on the top of Westminster Hall.
Tradition says that the family of Gregory Clemens did not remain in
England, but emigrated to Virginia (or New Jersey), and from them, in
direct line, descended the Virginia Clemenses, including John Marshall
Clemens, the father of Mark Twain. Perhaps the line could be traced,
and its various steps identified, but, after all, an ancestor more or less
need not matter when it is the story of a descendant that is to be written.
Of Mark Twain's immediate forebears, however, there is something to
be said. His paternal grandfather, whose name also was Samuel, was a
man of culture and literary taste. In 1797 he married a Virginia girl,
Pamela Goggin; and of their five children John Marshall Clemens, born

August 11, 1798, was the eldest--becoming male head of the family at
the age of seven, when his father was accidentally killed at a
house-raising. The family was not a poor one, but the boy grew up with
a taste for work. As a youth he became a clerk in an iron manufactory,