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.