SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 52 (of 78)
The Birth of Jean (1880)
Chapter 52
The Birth of Jean (1880)
On the 26th day of July, 1880, our fourth and final child and our third and last daughter was born to us, in Hartford. We named her Jane Lampton Clemens, for my mother. Our first three children were named for Livy’s family and friends, so my side of the house finally got a showing with Jean.
Yes, she was always known as “Jean” rather than Jane. I don’t know why; perhaps there was a Jean among my wife’s girlhood friends, or a distant relation of hers, of which I was unaware.
Jean loved animals from babyhood, and never altered a bit in that special affection she held for the creatures of the hearth, the pen, the field, and the pasture.
She inherited this love of the animal creation from me, for the most part. This devotion of Jean’s to the animal kingdom moved her to fight for animal rights all her life. It was through her passions expressed in this realm—as well as my own feelings and convictions—that I felt compelled to write such stories as “A Dog’s Tale,” which was a strike against the vicious practice of vivisection.
EDITOR’S NOTES: In 1880, the year Jean was born, Twain wrote a sketch entitled “Cat Tale,” which gives insight into his telling of improvised stories to his daughters. Susy was eight years old at the time, and Clara was six.
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Like Jean, Susy was an animal lover. Calling her by the nickname he had given to her because of her “hairdo,” Twain wrote of her at the age of two:
The Modoc rips and tears around outdoors most of the time and consequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on the place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up the hill through the red clover beds to the summer house there was a long procession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster who can look over the Modoc’s head. The devotion of these vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she goes.
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In his running commentary on Susy’s biography of him, as recorded in his autobiography, Twain wrote:
Apparently Susy was born with humane feelings for the animals and compassion for their troubles. This enabled her to see a new point in an old story, once, when she was only six years old—a point which had been overlooked by older and perhaps duller people for many ages. Her mother told her the moving story of the sale of Joseph by his brethren, the staining of his coat with the blood of the slaughtered kid, and the rest of it. She dwelt upon the inhumanity of the brothers, their cruelty toward their helpless young brother, and the unbrotherly treachery which they practiced upon him; for she hoped to teach the child a lesson in gentle pity and mercifulness which she would remember. Apparently her desire was accomplished, for the tears came into Susy’s eyes and she was deeply moved. Then she said, “Poor little kid!”
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.