slc
Sept. 23.
My Dear Dr MacKenzie:1
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.2
I remember our “time” at the Aldine dinner most pleasurably.3 Thanking you again, I am
Ys Truly
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Dr. R. Shelton MacKenzie.
Explanatory Notes
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withdrawn it from the stage as, in a fit of pique, Raymond himself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]).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 240–243.
Provenance:The Simon Gratz Collection was donated in 1917.
