Before Howells went abroad Clemens had written:
Now I think that the play for you to write would be one entitled,
“Colonel Mulberry Sellers in Age” (75), with Lafayette Hawkins (at
50) still sticking to him and believing in him and calling him “My
lord.” He [Sellers] is a specialist and a scientist in various
ways. Your refined people and purity of speech would make the best
possible background, and when you are done, I could take your
manuscript and rewrite the Colonel's speeches, and make him properly
extravagant, and I would let the play go to Raymond, and bind him up
with a contract that would give him the bellyache every time he read
it. Shall we think this over, or drop it as being nonsense?
Howells, returned and settled in Boston once more, had revived an
interest in the play idea. He corresponded with Clemens concerning it
and agreed that the American Claimant, Leathers, should furnish the
initial impulse of the drama.
They decided to revive Colonel Sellers and make him the heir; Colonel
Sellers in old age, more wildly extravagant than ever, with new schemes,
new patents, new methods of ameliorating the ills of mankind.
Howells came down to Hartford from Boston full of enthusiasm. He found
Clemens with some ideas of the plan jotted down: certain effects and
situations which seemed to him amusing, but there was no general scheme
of action. Howells, telling of it, says:
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.
Howells, in turn, proposed a plan which Clemens approved, and they set
to work. Howells could imitate Clemens's literary manner, and they had a
riotously jubilant fortnight working out their humors. Howells has
told about it in his book, and he once related it to the writer of this
memoir. He said:
“Clemens took one scene and I another. We had loads and loads of fun
about it. We cracked our sides laughing over it as it went along. We
thought it mighty good, and I think to this day that it was mighty good.
We called the play 'Colonel Sellers.' We revived him. Clemens had
a notion of Sellers as a spiritual medium-there was a good deal of
excitement about spiritualism then; he also had a notion of Sellers
leading a women's temperance crusade. We conceived the idea of Sellers
wanting to try, in the presence of the audience, how a man felt who
had fallen, through drink. Sellers was to end with a sort of corkscrew
performance on the stage. He always wore a marvelous fire extinguisher,
one of his inventions, strapped on his back, so in any sudden emergency,
he could give proof of its effectiveness.”
In connection with the extinguisher, Howells provided Sellers with a
pair of wings, which Sellers declared would enable him to float around
in any altitude where the flames might break out. The extinguisher, was
not to be charged with water or any sort of liquid, but with Greek fire,
on the principle that like cures like; in other words, the building was
to be inoculated with Greek fire against the ordinary conflagration. Of
course the whole thing was as absurd as possible, and, reading the old
manuscript to-day, one is impressed with the roaring humor of some of
the scenes, and with the wild extravagance of the farce motive, not
wholly warranted by the previous character of Sellers, unless, indeed,
he had gone stark mad. It is, in fact, Sellers caricatured. The gentle,
tender side of Sellers--the best side--the side which Clemens and
Howells themselves cared for most, is not there. Chapter III of Mark
Twain's novel, The American Claimant, contains a scene between Colonel
Sellers and Washington Hawkins which presents the extravagance of the
Colonel's materialization scheme. It is a modified version of one of the
scenes in the play, and is as amusing and unoffending as any.
The authors' rollicking joy in their work convinced them that they had
produced a masterpiece for which the public in general, and the actors
in particular, were waiting. Howells went back to Boston tired out, but
elate in the prospect of imminent fortune.