Colonel Sellers as a Scientist: A Play by S. L. Clemens and W. D. Howells

COLONEL SELLERS AS A SCIENTISTI A PLAy BY S. L. CLnmNs AND W. D. HOWELLS As INTERESTING and as revealing of personality and artistic characteristics as anything Samuel Clemens and W. D. Howells ever did together is their venture into the world of the drama and the theater. Their interest in a combined dramatic work started during the summer of 1875 when Clemens proposed that Howells dramatize Tom Sawyer, but as Howells explained that he had not time and that Clemens should do it anyway, nothing came of the suggestion (July 19, 1875, Mildred Howells, Life in Letters, I, 208). Earlier that year Clemens had sent a Mr. Haskins, an actor with a plot, to Howells thinking that a play might result, but Howells was unimpressed. "I have seen Haskins," he wrote to Clemens (July 3, 1875, Life in Letters, I, 207). "His plot was a series of stage situations, which no mortal ingenuity could harness together." Actually, a number of years passed before the two writers compl~ted a play together, but in the meantime Clemens, in his peculiar way, tried to interest Howells in writiIig a play about his brother, Orion Clemens. "You must put him in a book or play right away," he wrote (February 9, 1879, Mark Twain Letters, I, 352). "You are the only man capable of doing it. You might die at any moment and your very greatest work would be lost to the world." As time passed Clemens' imagination worked more graphically on the subject. "Orion is a field which grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top dressing of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always melancholy, always trying to reform the world, always inventing something and losing a limb by a new kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap, he is good material." (September 15, 1879, Mark Twain Letters, I, 361). Howells, however, protested that he had "a compunction or two about helping to put your brother into a drama" (September 17, 1879, Life in Letters, I, 276); but they must have put some work on this play idea before Howells' sense of propriety overcame his desire to write drama. On January 21, 1879 (Mark Twain Letters, I, 346) Clemens wrote to Howells: "I have always been sorry that we threw up that play embodying Orion which 1. This play is included in my edition of The Complete Play. of W. D. Howells, to be published by the New York University Press in 1959. Quotations from l.ife in Letten of WiUiam Dean HOIDeUs are made through the kind pennission of Miss Mildred ilowells. PennissiOlt to quote from unpublished Howells letters in the Houghton Library of Harvard University has been kindly given by William White Howells, literary executor of the Howells Estate. Pennission to guote from the various Mark Twain letters has been given by the Trustees of the Mark Twain Estate: @ 1958 by the Mark Twain Company, material quoted from Mark Twain letters. 151 152 WALTER MESERVE December you began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it again." The play that Clemens and Howells finally wrote together concerned Colonel Sellers and was referred to in their letters as The Steam Generator or Orme's Motor. It was a failure, but, as Howells said, they had a lot of fun writing it. The idea originated with Clemens, who wrote to Howells just before the latter left for Europe (September 5, 1881, Unpublished Letter, Harvard Library): Osgood says something about your projecting a play. Now I think that the play for you to write would be one entitled "Col. Mulberry Sellers in Age" (75) with that fool of a Lafayette Hawkins (aged 50) still sticking to him & believing in him & calling him "My Lord" (S. being America's earl of Durham) & has cherished his delusion until he & his chuckleheaded household believe he is the rightful earl & that he is being shamefully treated by the House of Lords. He is a "specialist" & a "scientist" in various ways, makes collections...