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Autobiographical Dictation, 28 April 1908 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source document.

TS1      Typescript, leaves numbered 2495–98, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.

TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation.

[begin page 225]
Dictated April 28, 1908

“Lord Dundreary” as played by the elder Sothern and by his son.

Lord Dundreary has been revived, after an age-long silence, and is being played by Sothern’s sonexplanatory note. When my lord came on the stage the sight of him almost gave me a graveyard shiver; for the reproduction in face, form, manner and costume, of the Dundreary of a quarter of a century ago was nearlytextual note perfect in every detail, and it seemed to me for a moment that this was the long-ago dead man up and around again. I can distinctly remember the last time that I saw the elder Sothern play Dundreary. It must be all of twenty-five years ago, I should say. It was in Hartfordexplanatory note. The reason I remember it so well is, thattextual note I couldn’t keep my laughter within reasonable bounds, and was presently pretty nearly, and very uncomfortably, dividing the house’s attention with the actor—and so for decency’s sake I got up and went out in the midst of the performance.

In those days it was the funniest thing I had ever seen on the stage, and I find that it is just as funny now as it was then. I saw it yesterday. I am old and intelligenttextual note now, and by earnest and watchful effort was able to keep from going into hysterics over it, but there were others present who had not my luck. A girl in the next box to me was a positive calamity to the actors. She kept up a continual shriek of laughter that made it difficult for them to look unconscious of her and keep their attention upon their work.

A generation ago, Dundreary made in London the first long-run record of modern times. Sothern played it there every night for a couple of years, at a time when a hundred nights was a long runexplanatory note, and two hundred an extraordinary one. It was said that Sothern’s people became practically idiotic from saying and doing the same things every night for months and months on a stretch, and had to be laid off periodically to save their rotting mentality.

Daniel Frohman and his wife have been dining with usexplanatory note, and Frohman said that when Laura Keene accepted the play and staged it here in New Yorkexplanatory note, she cast Sothern for Dundreary’s part and he refused to play it. He was a stock actor on a moderate salary, but Dundreary was altogether too minor a part for even him. There were only seventeen lines of it, and nothing in the seventeen lines worth saying; besides they furnished no occasion for acting, and Sothern said that as between playing Dundreary and atextual note deaf and dumb Roman soldier, he would prefer the gentleman in the tin armor. Frohman said that in this emergency Laura Keene did what no manager ought ever to do—she gave up her mastership and told Sothern that if he would play the part he might do whatever he pleased with it. Sothern accepted the terms and took such liberal advantage of them that before long he was become the chief figure on the stage, and presently almost the only figure, and was talking fifteen words to anybody else’s one. The piece’s name, “The American Cousin,” sank out of sight and remained out of sight and hearing permanently. The piece came to be called “Lord Dundreary;” it is called so yet, and there is almost nothing left of the play; it isn’t a play any longer, it is only a monologue, and nobody cares for anything in it but the idiotic and fascinating nobleman.

Textual Notes Dictated April 28, 1908
  nearly ●  nearly  (TS1-SLC) 
  is, that ●  is, that  (TS1-SLC) 
  and intelligent ●  and intelligent  (TS1-SLC) 
  a ●  not in  (TS1) 
Explanatory Notes Dictated April 28, 1908
 

Lord Dundreary has been revived . . . played by Sothern’s son] Edward Askew Sothern (1826–81), an English comedian, first portrayed the witless peer Lord Dundreary in Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin in October 1858, when the play opened at Laura Keene’s Theatre in New York (see the note at 225.25). His son, Edward Hugh Sothern (1859–1933), a leading romantic and Shakespearean actor, revived the character fifty years later, in January 1908, at New York’s Lyric Theatre, where the play had a successful fifteen-month run. Clemens attended a performance on 25 April, accompanied by Isabel Lyon (New York Times: “History of ‘Our American Cousin,’ ” 26 Jan 1908, SM10; “Amusements,” 14 April 1909, 9; Lyon 1908, entry for 25 Apr).

 

I can distinctly remember . . . It was in Hartford] Clemens evidently saw the elder Sothern perform as Lord Dundreary in Hartford in March 1874. Sothern had first enacted the role there in January 1872, when Clemens was absent on a lecture tour (“Sothern’s Father Played Here in ’72,” Hartford Courant, 1 Apr 1922, 6; “Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872,” L4, 559–60; 26 Apr 1875 to Jennings, L6, 468–69 n. 6).

 

Dundreary made in London the first long-run record . . . when a hundred nights was a long run] After a successful six-month run in New York in 1858–59, Sothern took the play to London. At first it was a failure, but after the manager of the Haymarket Theatre “papered” the house for six weeks, according to the New York Times, “Lord Dundreary became the cynosure of all eyes, and ‘The American Cousin’ was played to crowded and enthusiastic audiences for 477 consecutive nights” (“History of ‘Our American Cousin,’ ” New York Times, 26 Jan 1908, SM10).

 

Daniel Frohman and his wife have been dining with us] Clemens had known Frohman since at least 1886, when Frohman planned to produce the play Colonel Sellers as a Scientist, a project conceived by Clemens and Howells but never produced. In 1889–90 he mounted Richardson’s short-lived stage adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper ( N&J3, 237 n. 39; see AD, 28 Aug 1907, notes at 115.6–11 and 115.34–37). Under Frohman’s management, from the mid-1880s until 1898, the younger Sothern became a star, and in 1900 noted actress Margaret Illington (1879–1934) made her debut on Frohman’s stage. Despite the nearly thirty years’ difference in their ages, she and Frohman married in 1903 (“E. H. Sothern Dies of Pneumonia at 73,” New York Times, 30 Oct 1933, 1; Schmidt 2009). Clemens was very fond of Illington, and dined with the Frohmans several times in 1908, most recently on 26 April (Lyon 1908, entries for 5 Jan, 19 and 26 Apr, and 10 May). On 12 May Clemens wrote to Dorothy Quick, “Margaret Illington has been trying to get into our Aquarium, & I wouldn’t let her; but Sunday night she came here to dinner with her husband (Daniel Frohman), & she was dressed for 12 years, & had pink ribbons at the back of her neck & looked about 14 years old; so I admitted her as an angel-fish, & pinned the badge on her bosom” (CU-MARK, in Cooley 1991, 154). The Frohmans were divorced in 1909, and Illington was remarried a few days later to Edward J. Bowes, a wealthy real estate developer. On 26 January 1910 Clemens wrote to her, “I am so glad to know you are happy! for I love you so. Some are born for one thing, some for another; but you were specially born to love & be loved, & be happy—& so, things are with you now as they ought to be” (photocopy in CU-MARK, in Cooley 1991, 270–71).

 

Laura Keene accepted the play and staged it here in New York] Keene (1826–73) was born in England and emigrated to the United States in 1852. Within a few years she had established herself as a successful theater manager as well as an accomplished actress. According to the New York Times,

Tom Taylor wrote the comedy for the English stage, and his idea was to exploit the uncouth sort of American who was coming into humorous literature on both sides of the Atlantic. . . . The author sent the play over to Laura Keene, then in the height of her glory in New York, perhaps because the London comedians could not see any sympathetic interest in the part of Asa Trenchard, or did not believe that the London public would be interested in the American yokel so differentiated from the English Tony Lumpkin type which held so large a place on the English stage. (“History of ‘Our American Cousin,’ ” New York Times, 26 Jan 1908, SM10)

Although Keene “did not see great possibilities” in the script, she decided to stage it to fill a schedule gap. She asked Joe Jefferson (1829–1905), a member of her stock company, to play the “yokel” Asa Trenchard—the character that was soon eclipsed by Sothern’s creative impersonation of Lord Dundreary.