My Mark Twain | Page 7

several short contributions from Clemens first, all of capital
quality, and then we had the series of papers which went mainly to the
making of his great book, 'Life on the Mississippi'. Upon the whole I
have the notion that Clemens thought this his greatest book, and he was
supported in his opinion by that of the 'portier' in his hotel at Vienna,
and that of the German Emperor, who, as he told me with equal respect
for the preference of each, united in thinking it his best; with such far-
sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found
himself without standing for opposition. At any rate, the papers won
instant appreciation from his editor and publisher, and from the readers
of their periodical, which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in
its circulation. But those were days of simpler acceptance of the
popular rights of newspapers than these are, when magazines strictly
guard their vested interests against them. 'The New York Times' and

the 'St. Louis Democrat' profited by the advance copies of the magazine
sent them to reprint the papers month by month. Together they covered
nearly the whole reading territory of the Union, and the terms of their
daily publication enabled them to anticipate the magazine in its own
restricted field. Its subscription list was not enlarged in the slightest
measure, and The Atlantic Monthly languished on the news-stands as
undesired as ever.

VI.
It was among my later visits to Hartford that we began to talk up the
notion of collaborating a play, but we did not arrive at any clear
intention, and it was a telegram out of the clear sky that one day
summoned me from Boston to help with a continuation of Colonel
Sellers. I had been a witness of the high joy of Clemens in the
prodigious triumph of the first Colonel Sellers, which had been
dramatized from the novel of 'The Gilded Age.' This was the joint work
of Clemens and Charles Dudley Warner, and the story had been put
upon the stage by some one in Utah, whom Clemens first brought to
book in the courts for violation of his copyright, and then indemnified
for such rights as his adaptation of the book had given him. The
structure of the play as John T. Raymond gave it was substantially the
work of this unknown dramatist. Clemens never pretended, to me at
any rate, that he had the least hand in it; he frankly owned that he was
incapable of dramatization; yet the vital part was his, for the characters
in the play were his as the book embodied them, and the success which
it won with the public was justly his. This he shared equally with the
actor, following the company with an agent, who counted out the
author's share of the gate money, and sent him a note of the amount
every day by postal card. The postals used to come about dinner-time,
and Clemens would read them aloud to us in wild triumph.
One hundred and fifty dollars--two hundred dollars--three hundred
dollars were the gay figures which they bore, and which he flaunted in
the air before he sat down at table, or rose from it to brandish, and then,
flinging his napkin into his chair, walked up and down to exult in.

By-and-by the popularity, of the play waned, and the time came when
he sickened of the whole affair, and withdrew his agent, and took
whatever gain from it the actor apportioned him. He was apt to have
these sudden surceases, following upon the intensities of his earlier
interest; though he seemed always to have the notion of making
something more of Colonel Sellers. But when I arrived in Hartford in
answer to his summons, I found him with no definite idea of what he
wanted to do with him. I represented that we must have some sort of
plan, and he agreed that we should both jot down a scenario overnight
and compare our respective schemes the next morning. As the author of
a large number of little plays which have been privately presented
throughout the United States and in parts of the United Kingdom,
without ever getting upon the public stage except for the noble ends of
charity, and then promptly getting off it, I felt authorized to make him
observe that his scheme was as nearly nothing as chaos could be. He
agreed hilariously with me, and was willing to let it stand in proof of
his entire dramatic inability. At the same time he liked my plot very
much, which ultimated Sellers, according to Clemens's intention, as a
man crazed by his own inventions and by his superstition that he was
the rightful heir to an English earldom. The exuberant nature