1 Clemens’s paraphrase of his answer survives on the envelope of the following letter (CU-MARK):

William James Lampton (1851?–1917) was the grandson of James Lampton (1787–1865), one of Jane Clemens’s seven paternal uncles. He was therefore Clemens’s second cousin (and a first cousin once removed of James J. Lampton, the model for Colonel Sellers). James Lampton became wealthy from iron ore discovered on his Kentucky land, and his business passed to William’s father, William Henry Lampton (1813–99). In 1873 William left Kentucky for St. Louis, where he took a position with Garrett, McDowell and Company, Commission Merchants and Dealers in Pig Iron. In 1876 he again wrote Clemens, proposing a visit, and was rebuffed: Clemens wrote on the envelope of his letter, “Declined to suffer the affliction of his visit” (Lampton to SLC, 26 June 76, CU-MARK). In 1877 Lampton succeeded in becoming a journalist by launching the Ashland (Kentucky) Weekly Review, with his father’s money. Around that time he may have managed to meet Clemens and his family, as suggested by his close to an exultant letter of 18 February 1882, on the letter-head of the Steubenville (Ohio) Herald (CU-MARK):

The editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Henry Watterson, of course recognized the name “Lampton,” and may have known of William’s family relationship to Clemens—and, more remotely, to himself. In later years Lampton wrote several books, as well as humorous poems he called “yawps,” which were printed in the New York Sun and collected in Yawps and Other Things (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, ca. 1900) (Selby, 15, 30, 112; Lampton 1990, 161–73).