23 September 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: PHi, UCCL 01130)
Thank you very heartily. You have the Correct idea of Col. Sellers—I meant him to be at all times & under all circumstances a gentleman—& so he is, now, as Raymond plays him. And I said to Raymond the other day: ‘If you are a man of talent and genius, (& I think you are,) you will always be seeing opportunities to elaborate & perfect the character of Col. Sellers; & whenever you are moved to put a new speech into his mouth, always ask yourself this question first: Is this such a speech as a perfectly sincere, pure-minded & generous-hearted man would be likely to utter? If it isn’t, Col. Sellers could never by any possibility utter it.’
I am very glad you like the old speculator (he still lives, & is drawn from life, not imagination—I ate the turnip dinner with him, years ago,) & I feel sure that you will still like him when you see Raymond delineate him.2explanatory note
I remember our “time” at the Aldine dinner most pleasurably.3explanatory note Thanking you again, I am
Dr. R. Shelton MacKenzie.
Robert Shelton Mackenzie (1809–81), born in Ireland, was a novelist, a biographer of Dickens, and since 1857 the literary and dramatic critic of the Philadelphia Press. He had received a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow in 1834 (information courtesy of the Glasgow University Archives and Business Records Centre).
In the letter Clemens answered, which does not survive, Mackenzie presumably praised the Sellers of Clemens’s and Warner’s novel and anticipated seeing him on stage. (A speculation that he had read an amanuensis script of the Gilded Age play sent by Clemens is almost certainly mistaken: compare Thomason, 72–73.) Clemens was in fact never satisfied with Raymond’s portrayal of Sellers, despite its success with the critics and public. In 1910 Henry Watterson recalled James J. Lampton, their “mutual kinsman” (see 8? Nov 74 to Wattersonclick to open link), and especially how Clemens wanted him represented on the stage:
The pathos of the part, and not its comic aspects, had most impressed him. He designed and wrote it for Edwin Booth. From the first and always he was disgusted by Raymond’s portrayal. Except for its amazing popularity and money-making quality, he would have withdrawn it from the stage as, in a fit of pique, Raymond himself did, while it was yet packing the theatres. The original Sellers had partly brought him up and been very good to him; a second and perfect Don Quixote in appearance and not unlike the knight of La Mancha in character. It would have been safe for nobody to laugh at him—nay, by the slightest intimation, look, or gesture, to treat him with inconsideration, or any proposal of his—however preposterous—with levity. . . .
When Mark Twain had worked himself into a state of mind talking to one of us about “Old Jim,” his eyes would flood with tears, and I cannot myself write about him without a choking sensation. Never such a hero lived in such a fool’s paradise. Yet, as done by Raymond, never an impersonation on the American stage, or in any of our comic fictions, provoked louder and longer mirth. I do not know what Edwin Booth thought of Sellers, or indeed, whether he so much as read the part which had been intended for him. That Booth and Sellers were in Mark Twain’s mind conjointly tells its own and quite a different story.
Watterson further reported that when he once showed Raymond a typically “bombastic but most hospitable and sincere” letter from Lampton, Raymond “read it through with care and re-read it. ‘Do you know,’ said he, ‘it makes me want to cry. That is not the man I am trying to impersonate at all’” (Watterson 1910, 372–73). No details have been discovered to support either Watterson’s assertion that Lampton had “partly” brought Clemens up, or a more recent claim that Lampton stood “in the relation of a second father” to him (Lampton 1990, 137). But Watterson’s claim that the role of Sellers was meant for tragedian Edwin Booth was also made, at about the same time, by New York theatrical manager Daniel Frohman (Frohman, 50), and in 1922 by journalist and historian Henry W. Fischer. Fischer recalled that Clemens “did not write the part for an actor like” Raymond at all. Clemens had explained to him:
“I wrote it for Edwin Booth. That is, I had Edwin Booth in mind when I did the play. But Raymond was the superior money-maker. He had the masses with him—and I was pressed for funds.
“As a matter of fact, my Colonel Sellers is a portrait study—a take-off on a fine old Southern gentleman, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, whom I knew in life. He had some funny traits about him, but these never counted with me. It was the pathos, relieved by a few funny things, I intended to put upon the stage. Raymond caricatured the part, and I often felt like taking it away from him.” (Fischer, 99)
It is not known if Clemens ever discussed the role with Booth, although—as noted earlier—he did offer it to tragedian Lawrence Barrett (see pp. 148–49). In an autobiographical sketch written in 1897–98, Clemens recalled that Lampton originated the slogan that Raymond made famous: “there’s millions in it—millions!” He continued:
Many persons regarded “Colonel Sellers” as a fiction, an invention, an extravagant impossibility, & did me the honor to call him a “creation;” but they were mistaken. I merely put him on paper as he was; he was not a person who could be exaggerated. The incidents which looked most extravagant, both in the book & on the stage, were not inventions of mine but were facts of his life; & I was present when they were developed. John T. Raymond’s audiences used to come near to dying with laughter over the turnip-eating scene; but, extravagant as the scene was, it was faithful to the facts, in all its absurd details. The thing happened in Lambton’s own house, & I was present. In fact I was myself the guest who ate the turnips. In the hands of a great actor that piteous scene would have dimmed any manly spectator’s eyes with tears, and racked his ribs apart with laughter at the same time. But Raymond was great in humorous portrayal only. In that he was superb, he was wonderful—in a word, great; in all things else he was a pigmy of the pigmies. The real Colonel Sellers, as I knew him in James Lambton, was a pathetic & beautiful spirit, a manly man, a straight & honorable man, a man with a big, foolish, unselfish heart in his bosom, a man born to be loved; & he was loved by all his friends, & by his family worshiped. It is the right word. To them he was but little less than a god. The real Colonel Sellers was never on the stage. Only half of him was there. Raymond could not play the other half of him; it was above his level. That half was made up of qualities of which Raymond was wholly destitute. For Raymond was not a manly man, he was not an honorable man nor an honest one, he was empty & selfish & vulgar & ignorant & silly, & there was a vacancy in him where his heart should have been. There was only one man who could have played the whole of Colonel Sellers, & that was Frank Mayo. (SLC 1897–98, 19–22)
(For Clemens’s interest in Mayo, see pp. 148–49.) Clemens had voiced his displeasure with Raymond, in particular with his rendition of the turnip-dinner scene (from chapter 11 of The Gilded Age), as early as 16 September, in his curtain speech on opening night in New York (see pp. 650–51). The actual turnip dinner probably occurred in the late 1850s, when Clemens was a Mississippi River pilot and regularly visited Lampton’s St. Louis home. For further critical discussion of Lampton as Sellers, see Lampton 1989, 1–56, and Bryant Morey French, 164–76 (where, however, James J. Lampton is confused with James Andrew Hays Lampton [1824–79], Jane Clemens’s half-brother [Lampton 1990, 35]).
On 23 February 1872 the Aldine magazine hosted a dinner for publishers, writers, and artists in New York (see L5 , 47–48 n. 1). Clemens and Mackenzie could have first met on either 7 December 1869 or 20 November 1871, when Clemens lectured in Philadelphia. Mackenzie may have written the appreciative notice of the second lecture published in the Philadelphia Press on 21 November 1871. He certainly wrote the Press’s favorable review of The Innocents Abroad, enclosing it in a letter to Clemens on 11 October 1870, the day it was published (CU-MARK; L3 , 485; L4 , 497; Philadelphia Press: “‘The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrim’s Progress . . . ,’” 11 Oct 70, 2; “Mark Twain,” 21 Nov 71, 8).
MS, Simon Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (PHi).
L6 , 240–243.
The Simon Gratz Collection was donated in 1917.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.