Who the Hell Was Clarence?

It should be borne in mind that all other failures aside, Henrietta Wallace organized Clarence. Her original inspiration was a sort of expansion on amateur thespianism, and the impromptu children's plays of "Little Women."

Walker would say "aware on some level of her own comparative illiteracy, and unaware that if that quality was in her a placid pool, it was in King a mighty ocean, she recruited him to help her. King had not read anything in years which had to be got for more than a dime, and his pretensions to "reading" were limited largely to the pages of Argosy and its numerous paltry predecessors. Such works at least made him not feel outclassed, even if his lips moved, but if he had ever read a page of Tolstoy I should be roundly amazed." (Metagame Vol. XVII, No. 11, November 1922 Letter in response to "Clarence has Runs Once More Under Jung's Tender Ministrations")

However it was Henrietta whose hand drawn flyer was first distributed at her birthday party in 1902. And the name she selected was "An Evening with Clarence."

Marsden suggested "The game was to be a series of couples engaged in a sort of comedy of manners along the lines of Oscar Wilde, but of course far more polite and erudite. Frankly that was sabotaged by King's dime novel literacy, and the game became rather crass and garish, though I admit it might well have played better, and it would be a long time before something of a different nature would garner more than a handful of players." (Marsden - his Life and Work, by Miriam Jung, LARPham House, 1974)

"At a meeting many months later, it was pointed out that we had in fact somewhat more than the requisite twenty four characters, and that we had not written any Clarence. The original concept had been more or less that Clarence was some dignified figure who had called the entire group together. There were the standard recriminations, but ultimately there was little interest. It was Marsden who suggested a graceful out, which anticipated Samuel Beckett by forty five years - that Clarence should not in fact be a character at all, but rather that every player should receive a handsome invitation from Clarence, who never in fact appears at all. King was to print up the invitations on his Mimeograph. There would then be some plot regarding why Clarence was not present.

Needless to say this never got done. The first run it was never done, and of course the second run was actually worse in regards to materials with Marsden gone, and the Typewriter Incident. Afterwards as far as I know it was forgotten, though I later heard that some version of Clarence appeared in one of the games, but I am fairly sure this was a GM throw in, and a late one, probably something pulled out for Atlantic City. By then Walker and Marsden were much more sure of themselves and were attempting to get the old horse to run, though it did little better than trot.

It may seem strange that we were not willing to add characters in the early stages, though later we would be desperately trying to sell walk-ons at the door, thus the late night writing sessions. Remember however that the recession of 1903 first hit in September `02, but we didn't really feel it's teeth for some months. It wasn't until near production time that things were beginning to get tight, with both Thad and Abe out of a job. The Recession in May `07 resulted in the cancellation of the second Philadelphia run downtown, and the game ran with minimal players at the Cox' private house. That was a tough time - things were a little brighter in `09, but the economy soured again in `10 and stayed that way for two whole years, during which you just couldn't get anything off the ground.

But even in the panic, we never managed to get Clarence written, though that might have gotten done in `07, because they hoped the second Philly run would be rather big, which of course it wasn't - just the opposite.

- Cooke, Dolores, My Life and Times - A Struggle and a March, Fortress Books, 1937