In his book, Memories of a Manager, Mr. Daniel Frohman, who was the manager of New York's LYCEUM THEATRE, gives the following account of the only attempted production of the new Sellers play:
Once, at the Lyceum, I came near producing a play by Mark Twain. He had in years past written for the stage. He was the author of Colonel Sellers, in which John T. Raymond made a fortune. The famous catch phrase "There's millions in it!" came from this character. . .
. . . The play I refer to was one he wrote in conjunction with W. D. Howells, called The American Claimant, which was to be produced at the Lyceum in 1886 by A. P. Burbank, a popular lecture platform entertainer. Having read the play, I rented the Lyceum for a few weeks, before my regular season, to Mr. Clemens. The piece was full of humour. The hero was an inventor. One of his inventions was a fire-extinguisher. With this machine he makes his first entrance on the stage, and with it almost sets fire to the apartment. Rehearsals showed that the work was not likely to prove successful, and after some litigious correspondence between Mr. Clemens and myself I arranged to accept a suitable financial solatium for the time the withdrawal of the piece left vacant. (20)The whole episode of the new Sellers play brings up several interesting points. For one thing, Raymond had undeniably made the Sellers character his own, as attested to by Nat Goodwin's demands to change the names, and by the fact that Mr. Burbank approached the role as an impersonation of Raymond doing Sellers. Another interesting point is the fact that the Sellers in the new play was a reflection of Raymond's comic interpretation of the part, and not the "tragic," or "pathetic" figure that Clemens said he intended the character to be in The Gilded Age. Despite this, Clemens never let up on his public criticism of Raymond. In truth, each was greatly indebted to the other for the success and profitability of Colonel Sellers. Colonel Sellers as Scientist is preserved in a volume of collected plays by William Dean Howells. Twain, on the other hand, incorporated parts of the play into a work of fiction involving Sellers called, as was the LYCEUM stage production, The American Claimant.
It is documented that Sellers was still being performed by Raymond during the 1886-87 theatrical season, but April 10, 1887, sealed the fate of Colonel Mulberry Sellers as a stage presence, when John T. Raymond, at the age of 51, died of exhaustion and dysentery while playing the theatrical circuit. Unable to perform as scheduled in Evansville, Indiana, he died in his sleep in a hotel bed, with only his manager by his side.
The Evansville newspapers were filled with the story and with numerous tributes to the popular actor—tributes that inevitably called upon the memories of Colonel Sellers.
John T. Raymond is remembered in two basic ways: by Mark Twain as a portrait of a shallow, deceptive, scoundrel; and by William Winter, one time critic for the New York Tribune, as a picture of a talented, gifted comedian, who was sullen off-stage, without vice, and whose kind heart lead to the giving away of his considerable fortune to those in need, much the same as the character he played had done. Winter, in several of his sketches of Raymond, says that he had never heard an unkind word spoken of Raymond, except those of Samuel Clemens.
