Mark Twain, A Biography - Volume I, Part 1: 1835-1866 | Page 8

were sent to Louisville; and with the aid of the money realized,
a few hundred dollars, John Clemens and his family "flitted out into the
great mysterious blank that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee." They
had a two-horse barouche, which would seem to have been preserved
out of their earlier fortunes. The barouche held the parents and the three
younger children, Pamela, Margaret, anal the little boy, Benjamin.
There were also two extra horses, which Orion, now ten, and Jennie,
the house-girl, a slave, rode. This was early in the spring of 1835.
They traveled by the way of their old home at Columbia, and paid a
visit to relatives. At Louisville they embarked on a steamer bound for
St. Louis; thence overland once more through wilderness and solitude

into what was then the Far West, the promised land.
They arrived one evening, and if Florida was not quite all in appearance
that John Clemens had dreamed, it was at least a haven--with John
Quarles, jovial, hospitable, and full of plans. The great Mississippi was
less than fifty miles away. Salt River, with a system of locks and dams,
would certainly become navigable to the Forks, with Florida as its head
of navigation. It was a Sellers fancy, though perhaps it should be said
here that John Quarles was not the chief original of that lovely
character in The Gilded Age. That was another relative--James
Lampton, a cousin--quite as lovable, and a builder of even more
insubstantial dreams.
John Quarles was already established in merchandise in Florida, and
was prospering in a small way. He had also acquired a good farm,
which he worked with thirty slaves, and was probably the rich man and
leading citizen of the community. He offered John Clemens a
partnership in his store, and agreed to aid him in the selection of some
land. Furthermore, he encouraged him to renew his practice of the law.
Thus far, at least, the Florida venture was not a mistake, for, whatever
came, matters could not be worse than they had been in Tennessee.
In a small frame building near the center of the village, John and Jane
Clemens established their household. It was a humble one-story affair,
with two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough
for its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied
when these lines are written, and it should be preserved and guarded as
a shrine for the American people; for it was here that the foremost
American-born author--the man most characteristically American in
every thought and word and action of his life--drew his first fluttering
breath, caught blinkingly the light of a world that in the years to come
would rise up and in its wide realm of letters hail him as a king.
It was on a bleak day, November 30, 1835, that he entered feebly the
domain he was to conquer. Long, afterward, one of those who knew
him best said:
"He always seemed to me like some great being from another

planet--never quite of this race or kind."
He may have been, for a great comet was in the sky that year, and it
would return no more until the day when he should be borne back into
the far spaces of silence and undiscovered suns. But nobody thought of
this, then.
He was a seven-months child, and there was no fanfare of welcome at
his coming. Perhaps it was even suggested that, in a house so small and
so sufficiently filled, there was no real need of his coming at all. One
Polly Ann Buchanan, who is said to have put the first garment of any
sort on him, lived to boast of the fact,--[This honor has been claimed
also for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were
present and assisted.]--but she had no particular pride in that matter
then. It was only a puny baby with a wavering promise of life. Still,
John Clemens must have regarded with favor this first gift of fortune in
a new land, for he named the little boy Samuel, after his father, and
added the name of an old and dear Virginia friend, Langhorne. The
family fortunes would seem to have been improving at this time, and he
may have regarded the arrival of another son as a good omen.
With a family of eight, now, including Jennie, the slavegirl, more room
was badly needed, and he began building without delay. The result was
not a mansion, by any means, being still of the one-story pattern, but it
was more commodious than the tiny two-room affair. The rooms were
larger, and there was at least one ell, or extension, for kitchen and
dining-room uses. This house, completed in 1836, occupied by the
Clemens family during