IV
In the dramatization of the ‘Gilded Age’ Mark had a silent partner, the otherwise unknown Densmore. In the two other plays of his he was working in collaboration with associates of an assured fame, Howells and Bret Harte. In neither case was he fortunate in the alliance, for they were not experts in stage-craft, altho each of them had already ventured himself in the drama. What Mark needed, if he was to trot in double harness with a running mate, was an experienced playwright with an instinctive knowledge of the theater. When Mark yoked himself with Howells or with Harte, it was the blind leading the blind. The author of ‘Out of the Question’ and the author of ‘Two Men of Sandy Bar’ lacked just what the author of the ‘Gilded Age’ lacked,—practice in the application of the principles of playmaking.
The play written in collaboration with Bret Harte was called ‘Ah Sin,’ the name of the Heathen Chinee in ‘Plain Language from Truthful Jones.’ It was undertaken to enable Charles Parsloe, an actor now forgotten, to profit by the skill he had displayed in the small part of a Chinaman in Bret Harte’s earlier play, ‘Two Men of Sandy Bar,’ written for Stuart Robson, brought out in 1876 and withdrawn after a brief and inglorious career on the stage. Bret Harte did not know enough about playmaking to perceive that its failure had been due to its deficiency in that supporting skeleton of plot which is as necessary to a drama as the equally invisible steel-frame is to a skyscraper. But he was eager to try again, and he persuaded Mark to join him. Probably he had no need to be persuasive, since Mark had found his experience with the ‘Gilded Age’ exhilarating and profitable. Mark invited Harte to Hartford and they set to work. As I have always been curious about the secrets of collaboration, I asked Mark many years afterward, how they had gone about it. “Well,” he said, with his customary drawl, “Bret came to me at Hartford and we talked the whole thing out. Then Bret wrote the piece while I played billiards. Of course, I had to go over it and get the dialect right. Bret never did know anything about dialect.”
Mr. Paine, to whom I transmitted this information, thinks that it is “scarcely a fair statement of the case,” since “both authors worked on the play and worked hard.” But while what Mark said to me may have been an over-statement, I doubt if it was a misstatement. The original suggestion had come from Harte; and the probability is that the major part of the story was his also. The two partners may have worked hard but I doubt if they worked as seriously at their playmaking as they were wont to do at their story-telling. The man of letters who is not primarily a man of theater, is prone to be somewhat contemptuous in his condescending to the drama.
The play was produced in Washington in May, 1877, with Parsloe as Ah Sin. I saw it when it was brought to New York in the fall of 1877. From two of the foremost writers in America much was expected; and the result of their combined efforts was lamentably disappointing. It was unworthy of either of them, still more unworthy of both. All I can replevin from my dim recollections is a trial before Judge Lynch, which lit up the last act, and which I now recall as having more than a little of the energy and the vigor which I found afterward in the episode of the attempted lynching in ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ Mr. Paine tells me that the manuscript is still extant. Sooner or later it ought to be published, since nothing written by either Mark Twain or Bret Harte is negligible.
Yet this flat failure of ‘Ah Sin’ did not quench Mark’s dramatic ardor. Even before the ‘Gilded Age’ had been dramatized he had begun on ‘Tom Sawyer’; and his first intention was to write it as a play. Fortunately for us he soon perceived that Tom would have more freedom if his adventures were narrated. After Mark had published ‘Tom Sawyer’ he was fired with another dramatic idea; and he wrote Howells in the first flush of his enthusiasm, that he was deep in a comedy with an old detective as the principal character:
I skeletoned the first act, and wrote the second to-day, and am dog-tired now. Fifty-four pages of ms. in seven hours.
A few days later he wrote again, telling his friend that he had
piled up one hundred and fifty-one pages. The first, second and fourth acts are done, and done to my satisfaction too. Never had so much fun over anything in my life—such consuming interest and delight.
This piece was intended for Sol Smith Russell. But the theatrical experts to whom it was submitted did not share its author’s consuming interest. Dion Boucicault said that it was better than ‘Ah Sin’; but to say this was saying little. John Brougham wrote that it was “altogether too diffuse for dramatic representation.” In time Mark’s own opinion of his play seems to have cooled, and he put his manuscript aside. Possibly he utilized it more or less many years later when he wrote ‘Tom Sawyer, Detective’; but this is mere conjecture.
Then, after a longer interval he asked Howells to collaborate with him in a sequel to Colonel Sellers; and in ‘My Mark Twain’ Howells has given a detailed account of their conjoint misadventure. Mark had a host of suggestions but no story, so Howells supplied one as best he could; and the two friends spent a hilarious fortnight in writing the play. Mark had quarrelled with Raymond and did not want to let him reincarnate Sellers; and yet he had ultimately to recognize that Raymond was the only actor the public would accept in the character. So the piece was sent to Raymond, who accepted it, asking for certain alterations; and then most unexpectedly he returned the manuscript, refusing to have anything to do with it. After hawking their play about, the authors arranged to produce it themselves with Burbank (who was not an actor but an elocutionist-entertainer) as Sellers,—Burbank playing the part in imitation of Raymond. At last they had lost confidence in it so completely that they paid a forfeit rather than undertake the risk of a production in New York. So it was that the ‘American Claimant, or Mulberry Sellers Ten Years Later’ was made visible in New York only at a special matinee in the fall of 1887. It had a few performances in unimportant out of town theaters; and then it disappeared from the stage. Still, it had not lived in vain since it supplied material for several chapters in Mark’s later novel, to which he gave the same title, without the subtitle.
After this play had been withdrawn from the boards Mark’s ambition to establish himself as a dramatist did not again manifest itself. However, it is pleasant to believe that the pain of his own failure may have been more or less assuaged by the better fortune of dramatizations of two of his novels.
I have already noted that not long after the publication of the ‘Prince and the Pauper’ Mrs. Clemens had arranged scenes from it to be acted by members of the family and by their young friends, and that Mark himself had undertaken the part of Miles Hendon. A little later a dramatization of the whole story was made by Abby Sage Richardson; and this was produced in New York in January, 1890. It achieved instant popularity, as well it might, since the story is indisputably dramatic and since it has a more direct action than any other of Mark’s novels. This version, revised by Amélie Rives, was revived in 1920 by William Faversham, who appeared as Miles Hendon. The revival met with a reception as warm as that which had greeted the original production.
In one respect this professional dramatization was inferior to Mrs. Clemens’s amateur arrangement; it was so devised that one performer should assume two characters, the little Prince and the little Pauper; and this necessitated the omission of the culminating moment in the tale when the Prince and the Pauper stand face to face. And in both the amateur and the professional performances these two lads were impersonated by girls. This may have been necessary, since it is almost impossible to find competent boy actors, while there are girl actors aplenty; but none the less was it unfortunate, since a girl is never entirely satisfactory in boy’s clothes. Very rarely can she conceal from us the fact that she is a girl, doing her best to be a boy. Curiously enough, boys can act girls’ parts and make us forget for the moment that they are not what they seem.
Five years after Mrs. Richardson had dramatized the ‘Prince and the Pauper,’ Frank Mayo made a most effective play out of ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson.’ He arranged the title-part for his own vigorous and impressive acting. He simplified Mark’s story and he amplified it; he condensed it and he heightened it; he preserved the ingenious incidents and the veracious characters; he made his profit out of the telling dialog; and he was skilful in disentangling the essentially dramatic elements of Mark’s rather rambling story. He produced it in New York in the spring of 1895. Mark was then in Europe; but when he returned he made haste to see the piece. He was discovered by the audience and called upon for a speech, in which he congratulated the player-playwright on a “delightful play.” He ended by saying, “Confidentially I have always had an idea that I was well equipt to write plays, but I have never encountered a manager who has agreed with me”—which was not strictly accurate since two different managers had accepted the ‘Gilded Age’ and ‘Ah Sin.’