Mark Twain, A Biography - Volume I, Part 1: 1835-1866 | Page 5

at Lynchburg, and doubtless studied at night. At all events, he acquired
an education, but injured his health in the mean time, and somewhat
later, with his mother and the younger children, removed to Adair
County, Kentucky, where the widow presently married a sweetheart of
her girlhood, one Simon Hancock, a good man. In due course, John
Clemens was sent to Columbia, the countyseat, to study law. When the
living heirs became of age he administered his father's estate, receiving
as his own share three negro slaves; also a mahogany sideboard, which
remains among the Clemens effects to this day.
This was in 1821. John Clemens was now a young man of twenty-three,
never very robust, but with a good profession, plenty of resolution, and
a heart full of hope and dreams. Sober, industrious, and unswervingly
upright, it seemed certain that he must make his mark. That he was
likely to be somewhat too optimistic, even visionary, was not then
regarded as a misfortune.
It was two years later that he met Jane Lampton; whose mother was a
Casey --a Montgomery-Casey whose father was of the Lamptons
(Lambtons) of Durham, England, and who on her own account was
reputed to be the handsomest girl and the wittiest, as well as the best
dancer, in all Kentucky. The Montgomeries and the Caseys of
Kentucky had been Indian fighters in the Daniel Boone period, and
grandmother Casey, who had been Jane Montgomery, had worn
moccasins in her girlhood, and once saved her life by jumping a fence
and out-running a redskin pursuer. The Montgomery and Casey annals
were full of blood-curdling adventures, and there is to-day a Casey
County next to Adair, with a Montgomery County somewhat farther
east. As for the Lamptons, there is an earldom in the English family,
and there were claimants even then in the American branch. All these
things were worth while in Kentucky, but it was rare Jane Lampton
herself--gay, buoyant, celebrated for her beauty and her grace; able to
dance all night, and all day too, for that matter--that won the heart of

John Marshall Clemens, swept him off his feet almost at the moment of
their meeting. Many of the characteristics that made Mark Twain
famous were inherited from his mother. His sense of humor, his prompt,
quaintly spoken philosophy, these were distinctly her contribution to
his fame. Speaking of her in a later day, he once said:
"She had a sort of ability which is rare in man and hardly existent in
woman--the ability to say a humorous thing with the perfect air of not
knowing it to be humorous."
She bequeathed him this, without doubt; also her delicate complexion;
her wonderful wealth of hair; her small, shapely hands and feet, and the
pleasant drawling speech which gave her wit, and his, a serene and
perfect setting.
It was a one-sided love affair, the brief courtship of Jane Lampton and
John Marshall Clemens. All her life, Jane Clemens honored her
husband, and while he lived served him loyally; but the choice of her
heart had been a young physician of Lexington with whom she had
quarreled, and her prompt engagement with John Clemens was a matter
of temper rather than tenderness. She stipulated that the wedding take
place at once, and on May 6, 1823, they were married. She was then
twenty; her husband twenty- five. More than sixty years later, when
John Clemens had long been dead, she took a railway journey to a city
where there was an Old Settlers' Convention, because among the names
of those attending she had noticed the name of the lover of her youth.
She meant to humble herself to him and ask forgiveness after all the
years. She arrived too late; the convention was over, and he was gone.
Mark Twain once spoke of this, and added:
"It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the field of my
personal experience in a long lifetime."

II
THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS

With all his ability and industry, and with the-best of intentions, John
Clemens would seem to have had an unerring faculty for making
business mistakes. It was his optimistic outlook, no doubt--his absolute
confidence in the prosperity that lay just ahead--which led him from
one unfortunate locality or enterprise to another, as long as he lived.
About a year after his marriage he settled with his young wife in
Gainsborough, Tennessee, a mountain town on the Cumberland River,
and here, in 1825, their first child, a boy, was born. They named him
Orion--after the constellation, perhaps--though they changed the accent
to the first syllable, calling it Orion. Gainsborough was a small place
with few enough law cases; but it could hardly have been as small, or
furnished as few cases;