Another one of our fantastic mutual cousins was the "Earl of Durham." I
ought to say that Mark Twain and I grew up on old wives' tales of estates
and titles, which, maybe due to a kindred sense of humor in both of us, we
treated with shocking irreverence. It happened some fifty years ago that
there turned up, first upon the plains and afterward in New York and
Washington, a lineal descendant of the oldest of the Virginia Lamptons--he
had somehow gotten hold of or had fabricated a bundle of documents--who
was what a certain famous American would have called a "corker." He wore
a sombrero with a rattlesnake for a band, and a belt with a couple of
six-shooters, and described himself and claimed to be the Earl of Durham.
"He touched me for a tenner the first time I ever saw him," drawled Mark
to me, "and I coughed it up and have been coughing them up, whenever he's
around, with punctuality and regularity."
The "Earl" was indeed a terror, especially when he had been drinking. His
belief in his peerage was as absolute as Colonel Sellers' in his millions.
All he wanted was money enough "to get over there" and "state his case."
During the Tichborne trial Mark Twain and I were in London, and one day he
said to me:
"I have investigated this Durham business down at the Herald's office.
There's nothing to it. The Lamptons passed out of the Demesne of Durham a
hundred years ago. They had long before dissipated the estates. Whatever
the title, it lapsed. The present earldom is a new creation, not the same
family at all. But, I tell you what, if you'll put up five hundred dollars
I'll put up five hundred more, we'll fetch our chap across and set him in
as a claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fat boy won't be a marker to
him!"
He was so pleased with his conceit that later along he wrote a novel and
called it The Claimant. It is the only one of his books, though I never
told him so, that I could not enjoy. Many years after, I happened to see
upon a hotel register in Rome these entries: "The Earl of Durham," and
in the same handwriting just below it, "Lady Anne Lambton" and "The Hon.
Reginald Lambton." So the Lambtons--they spelled it with a b instead of a
p--were yet in the peerage. A Lambton was Earl of Durham. The next time
I saw Mark I rated him on his deception. He did not defend himself, said
something about its being necessary to perfect the joke.
"Did you ever meet this present peer and possible usurper?" I asked.
"No," he answered, "I never did, but if he had called on me, I would have
had him come up."