Mark Twain's mother, Jane Lampton Clemens (1803-1890), believed that her father's family had aristocratic roots and could claim kinship with the Earl of Durham. Supposedly, the Lamptons were a collateral branch of the earl's family, the Lambtons. Jane liked to say that Lambton Castle in County Durham was her ancestral home.
Her son dismissed such talk as fantasy and said there was no point in boasting about family ties to an old castle. "She might as well be proud of being descended from a mortgage," he joked.
In truth, the castle was constructed in the 1820s, when Jane was a young woman living in Kentucky and Tennessee. But it was built to look old, and presumably Jane concluded that it must be her family's ancient home when she saw an illustration like the one above in some book or periodical published in her son's youth. Years later, Twain learned that the earldom wasn't even created until 1833.
Shortly after his mother's death he used his novel The American Claimant to satirize the idea of Americans looking to profit from imagined aristocratic ties. The main character, a hopelessly impractical Washington lawyer, insists that he is the rightful Earl of Rossmore and gives his daughter, Sally, the title "Lady Gwendolen."
Perhaps the most famous thing in the book is the author's bold assertion at the beginning: "No weather will be found in this book."
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