My Mark Twain | Page 8

of Sellers
and the vast range of his imagination served our purpose in other ways.
Clemens made him a spiritualist, whose specialty in the occult was
materialization; he became on impulse an ardent temperance reformer,
and he headed a procession of temperance ladies after disinterestedly
testing the deleterious effects of liquor upon himself until he could not
walk straight; always he wore a marvellous fire-extinguisher strapped
on his back, to give proof in any emergency of the effectiveness of his
invention in that way.
We had a jubilant fortnight in working the particulars of these things
out. It was not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else, but I
could very easily write like Clemens, and we took the play scene and
scene about, quite secure of coming out in temperamental agreement.
The characters remained for the most part his, and I varied them only to
make them more like his than, if possible, he could. Several years after,
when I looked over a copy of the play, I could not always tell my work
from his; I only knew that I had done certain scenes. We would work

all day long at our several tasks, and then at night, before dinner, read
them over to each other. No dramatists ever got greater joy out of their
creations, and when I reflect that the public never had the chance of
sharing our joy I pity the public from a full heart. I still believe that the
play was immensely funny; I still believe that if it could once have got
behind the footlights it would have continued to pack the house before
them for an indefinite succession of nights. But this may be my
fondness.
At any rate, it was not to be. Raymond had identified himself with
Sellers in the play-going imagination, and whether consciously or
unconsciously we constantly worked with Raymond in our minds. But
before this time bitter displeasures had risen between Clemens and
Raymond, and Clemens was determined that Raymond should never
have the play. He first offered it to several other actors, who eagerly
caught it, only to give it back with the despairing renunciation, "That is
a Raymond play." We tried managers with it, but their only question
was whether they could get Raymond to do it. In the mean time
Raymond had provided himself with a play for the winter--a very good
play, by Demarest Lloyd; and he was in no hurry for ours. Perhaps he
did not really care for it perhaps he knew when he heard of it that it
must come to him in the end. In the end it did, from my hand, for
Clemens would not meet him. I found him in a mood of sweet
reasonableness, perhaps the more softened by one of those lunches
which our publisher, the hospitable James R. Osgood, was always
bringing people together over in Boston. He said that he could not do
the play that winter, but he was sure that he should like it, and he had
no doubt he would do it the next winter. So I gave him the manuscript,
in spite of Clemens's charges, for his suspicions and rancors were such
that he would not have had me leave it for a moment in the actor's
hands. But it seemed a conclusion that involved success and fortune for
us. In due time, but I do not remember how long after, Raymond
declared himself delighted with the piece; he entered into a satisfactory
agreement for it, and at the beginning of the next season he started with
it to Buffalo, where he was to give a first production. At Rochester he
paused long enough to return it, with the explanation that a friend had
noted to him the fact that Colonel Sellers in the play was a lunatic, and

insanity was so serious a thing that it could not be represented on the
stage without outraging the sensibilities of the audience; or words to
that effect. We were too far off to allege Hamlet to the contrary, or
King Lear, or to instance the delight which generations of readers
throughout the world had taken in the mad freaks of Don Quixote.
Whatever were the real reasons of Raymond for rejecting the play, we
had to be content with those he gave, and to set about getting it into
other hands. In this effort we failed even more signally than before, if
that were possible. At last a clever and charming elocutionist, who had
long wished to get himself on the stage, heard of it and asked to see it.
We would have shown it to any one by this time, and we very willingly
showed it to him. He came to Hartford and did some scenes from it for